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Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

bbc.co.uk

161–166 of 166 posts

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#161
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being stupid is no defense against being conned. On the contrary, a truly stupid mark isn't going to understand the scheme; an intelligent person will immediately see the way they stand to benefit. It's the willingness to cheat that gets you in trouble. Check out The Big Con by David Maurer

The truly intelligent person will see the way the other person stands to benefit. That's how you avoid getting scammed. Unless you truly believe some stranger is offering you this great opportunity out of the goodness of their heart (in which case you have a thing or two to learn about people in general). And if I can't understand how the other person benefits? I'm immediately suspicious.

This is not really a factor. A good scam involves the scammer and the mark going in on something together. What the scammer (ostensibly) gets out of the scheme is part and parcel of the pitch.

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#162
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People get shot over things that amount to less than a minimum wage paycheck, that doesn't mean she is dead. No, just that there is a fair chance. > Your example of Bulger is bad, he was 89 at the time of his death, that's 10 years older than the avg European male's lifespan. My point was: and yet he didn't make it. His end wasn't exactly peaceful by any stretch of the imagination and he was an outlier for living t…

We agree she could be dead or end up dead over this, but that could be said for any criminal scammer. Madoff isn't dead, and he ran the biggest scam in the world. There is nothing unique about this case, or any specific piece of evidence you can point to that indicates her death, other than a hunch. Bulger lasted 16 years laying low, why not her?

Based on court documents, Ruja left to Athens, where she was accompanied by Russians. Now it is anyone's guess.

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That website looks and reads like they’re selling some high end Breitling or Patek Philippe

No not watches, 'quantum' cryptography. More background: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/09/crown_sterlin...

I know, just commenting on the aesthetics

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government currencies have a concrete function - if you are legally required to pay taxes in it that gives it a very concrete value of being needed to operate legitimately in a country. That makes it very different from just faith even taking the most cynical possible view of governments - even if a complete collapse in faith would undermine it greatly.

It's even more than that. You are legally required to accept the national currency for the settlement of debts. If you are a US entity and we have a contract where I owe you 1 btc, you must accept the equivalent amount of dollars as settlement of the debt. You are allowed to accept payments in different currencies, or even barter, but you can't require them.

That is not true for UK where there are different pounds which are printed by different banks. Some of these pounds are NOT LEGAL - you are free to refuse accept them. They are there because people agree to use them.

And no - money has nothing to do with taxes and initially it was based on social agreement. Pacific stone coins weight tonns - some of the ones that are still in use physically do not exist anymore or are inaccessible in the bottom of ocean.

So from that viewpoint these cryptocurrencies all are like early monies - based on agreements and trust.

And ffs - people are weird these days - money is worth only when dealing with other people - taxes(earliest form of robbery) is not and wont be one of the reasons for money to exist. Goverment, that takes care for people and decide what they have to do and think don't need money to run society. Money is needed when independent people/souzerains deal with other people - slaves and children and sick/unsane dependant people and pet animals do not need money as they have no voice in these matters

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#165
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faith is the only difference between scam and valuable. USD/CAD is also just paper blessed by a central bank..

Not exactly. Money used to be backed by something valuable like gold (while the gold itself was mostly faith-based valueable). These days, it is backed by debt. Money comes into existence in some federal bank/central bank out of thin air, and is then put into circulation by granting loans i.e. creating debt. So money was and is really an IOU. And governments guarantee that you will be able to collect on it, one way o…

> (work that cannot be recovered and it lost forever and therefore worthless)

That work secures all the transactions that came before it, it's certainly not worthless.

> with not even an IOU backing it.

That is not backing, it's just a promise that you'll get your faith-based paper back.

Re: Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished

#166
post #148
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Sonarr good? I use plex and some manual steps, but it looks interesting from their website alone.

Absolutely. Automate TV downloads, pick the quality, pick the language if you want, and let it do its thing. If it’s not in your Usenet/Plex pipeline you need to add it. There’s one for movies called Radarr and one for music called Lidarr. I’ve found them less useful and don’t use them but it’s worth a try.

Why do you find radarr less useful?

With jackett you can use the same interface as sonarr to an indexer. They are very similar in concepts too (radarr is based on sonarr).

The only truly missing feature is the ability to request a movie in another language. Radarr is strictly one language per movie.

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