Live data from Hacker News

A crypto founder faked his death. We found him alive at his dad's house

sfstandard.com

131–139 of 139 posts

Re: A crypto founder faked his death. We found him alive at his dad's house

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of criminals that are smart get caught, because even smart people fuck up sometime. When some smart guy fucks up at his e-commerce site probably there just has to be a code rollback and maybe a talking to, if a smart criminal fucks up it's probably the cops come calling.

A cop once told me "Criminals almost always get caught because of probability. The vast majority of criminals don't commit just one crime, so chances are, they will eventually get caught. To never get caught, they have to get lucky every time. I only need to get lucky once."

You met a cop who actually catches criminals? Joking aside, probability works both ways and if the police don't actually do anything about crime, low level theft etc then those criminals will never get caught.

Re: A crypto founder faked his death. We found him alive at his dad's house

#132
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the utility behind it? I don't see people using to actually do any transactions because of the volatility and fluctuating transaction fees. Scams can have momentum behind them

True fiscal self-sovereignty. Albeit quite volatile.

You can't have this if you are a citizen of any country

Re: A crypto founder faked his death. We found him alive at his dad's house

#133
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the utility behind it? I don't see people using to actually do any transactions because of the volatility and fluctuating transaction fees. Scams can have momentum behind them

There are people who use crypto for transactions. Stablecoins are stable and for some people the fees are far lower than any alternatives.

I'm not much aware of this type of use case, but is that really the future of crypto? Stablecoins for countries hit by sanctions, etc.?

Re: A crypto founder faked his death. We found him alive at his dad's house

#134
post #33

I believe in crypto, I think it will even protect people online when done right. And not everything is scam, there are good projects. That being said the behavior of people and organizations in crypto is poor and will slow adoption. I still regularly see major crypto ecosystems rug pull their own developers. They simply can’t help themselves.

What are the good projects?

The ones that

* don't financially benefit their creators

* are not a copy-paste of an existing coin with some trivial changes

Re: A crypto founder faked his death. We found him alive at his dad's house

#135
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cop once told me "Criminals almost always get caught because of probability. The vast majority of criminals don't commit just one crime, so chances are, they will eventually get caught. To never get caught, they have to get lucky every time. I only need to get lucky once."

You met a cop who actually catches criminals? Joking aside, probability works both ways and if the police don't actually do anything about crime, low level theft etc then those criminals will never get caught.

you don't do anything about low level theft because you will catch those criminals in the act at some point, rather than investigating after the fact which takes lots of resources, and then the system will take into account that most criminals have committed many crimes before being caught.

Re: A crypto founder faked his death. We found him alive at his dad's house

#136

How... how did he think this was going to turn out? You fake your death, then run to mommy & daddy's house, and hope no one finds you? And just keep the cash?

Jacques Philippa, a member of the SS, spent 29 years in the attic of his parents after the second world war to escape his death penalty. He was only found out because his mother died and elderly father could no longer take care of him.

It seems the main difference is that Philippa spent most of this timed confined to the attic rather than just walk around outside assuming no one would find him. Or trading his crypto assuming no one would notice.

Kind of an amazing story by the way, but not many resources available about it in English. But for those who can speak Dutch there's e.g. https://meitotmei.nl/zoldernazi-jacques-philippa-begon-zijn-... or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQceZ5O2oog

Re: A crypto founder faked his death. We found him alive at his dad's house

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true but his records were well hidden, and the Bitcoin ledger is public.

Nothing in the Bitcoin ledger will tell you when someone's doing wash trading to manipulate the price.

Interesting point about wash trading being somewhat untraceable. How about a coin that connects a hash whatever to each chunk of the token as it moves around so every coin has a backstory written into the blockchain. And that sounds like current fiat banking.
Post reply on HN