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Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

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Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#241

Post by suikadayo »

Nextgrid wrote: post #51
CommieBobDole wrote: post #5

A good rule of thumb is if somebody you've just met introduces you to someone with an exciting new NFT project that they want your help testing, you're probably being scammed. While NFTs probably have some useful purpose that will emerge eventually, for now you should consider any proposal or offer that involves the term 'NFT' as having about the same value as any offer involving the term 'Nigerian prince'.

The "problem" in this case is that the victim himself is all-in on NFTs and crypto.

No, victim himself has said in his post that he doesn’t really dabble in the NFT community

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#242

Post by thebean11 »

woodruffw wrote: post #181
randomhodler84 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s degrees of suspension of disbelief. Software is just tricking sand into to thinking. I have no issue believing that an imaginary consensus stored ledger in thousands of computers all secured by massive amounts of energy and limited to 21M units over 100 years might be valuable. The ability for people to copy this software idea? Not valuable. The ability for people to issue new tokens on existing chains? Not valu…

> I have no issue believing that an imaginary consensus stored ledger in thousands of computers all secured by massive amounts of energy and limited to 21M units over 100 years might be valuable. It's not "secured" by energy. You can't convert a Bitcoin into the original amount of power required to produce it, which is the defining quality of a financial security. It's more accurate to say that Bitcoin's value is ret…

The person you are replying to is using the word secured in a literal sense I think. Not the financial sense meaning backed by.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#244

Post by hypertele-Xii »

sidcool wrote: post #18

I feel incredibly dumb for not getting the details of how it happened.

Let's use cash as an analogy.

Someone comes to you and says "I'll give you X Euro if you let me hold onto your Y Dollars until you give me X Euro back."

You think, well Euro are useful, maybe you need Euro specifically to invest in an European business. So you agree.

But when you review the contract presented it just says you give Y Dollars, so you go "wtf?" and refuse to sign.

Apparently, some people are dumb enough to hand over their cash without reading the contract, and an entire industry exists to fool people into doing so.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#245

Post by thebean11 »

ryan29 wrote: post #188
whatshisface wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NFTs could be used to manage domain names, which might be a helpful replacement for ICANN.

I own one. All the blockchain domains are a dream come true for squatters and scammers. I'll take the oversight, stability, accountability, and mutability of ICANN and the current registry/registrar system every single time given the choice.

Come on, there is realistically nothing stopping you from hosting a scam on a normal ICANN domain. What accountability are you talking about?

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#246

Post by Qub3d »

Nextgrid wrote: post #51
CommieBobDole wrote: post #5

A good rule of thumb is if somebody you've just met introduces you to someone with an exciting new NFT project that they want your help testing, you're probably being scammed. While NFTs probably have some useful purpose that will emerge eventually, for now you should consider any proposal or offer that involves the term 'NFT' as having about the same value as any offer involving the term 'Nigerian prince'.

The "problem" in this case is that the victim himself is all-in on NFTs and crypto.

Well, yes and no. They are clearly all-in on crypto (and who wouldn't be, if I made 100 million on tulip bulbs I'd probably be all-in on tulips, too) but they do state in the featured thread that they "aren't really an NFT guy".

Certainly not a great look to have >$100 million in an asset sitting in a single account of any form, though.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#247

Post by thebean11 »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #229
whatshisface wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NFT part keeps track of who owns what domain. It would improve the situation by getting rid of the questionable organization running things presently. (See: the .org scandal)

My domain is secured by the ministry of telecommunications of my local government. To transfer ownership of my domain requires a hard copy of a random code snail-mailed to me by the ministry. It's literally tied to my legal citizenship. That's the opposite of "questionable."

That has some obvious downsides. It probably doesn't matter for you personally but being able to take someone's domain away for political reasons isn't ideal.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#248

Post by suikadayo »

Grim-444 wrote: post #137
throwaway8174 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I paid off all my student loan debt and bought a house last summer because I got scammed into buying ETH about 2 years ago. Thanks for your insight though.

As a thought experiment, replace crypto in this situation for beanie babies. You managed to buy a bunch of beanie babies before a beanie baby craze started, and sold them at exorbitant prices to other people coming in that were convinced that beanie baby prices would only keep skyrocketing. You took their money, and now I guess as long as they're the bag holders still holding beanie babies when it all falls apart and…

I’ve seen people say what you’ve said for almost 10 years now. I wonder when the crypto beanie baby fad is going to die down. Maybe 100 years later?

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#250

Post by suikadayo »

djur wrote: post #221
samarama wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except beanie babies have no inherent value, but ETH has vast inherent value in numerous ways 1. Immutability 2. Decentralization 3. Cheap, fast, secure cross-country money transfers 4. Protection against inflation 5. Independence of banks or arbitrary freezes of your funds 6. Access to a vast variety of financials services 7. Is quite likely the replacement of money The fact that people still don’t get that in 2022…

1 is questionably valuable and arguably harmful, 2 is increasingly untrue, 3 and 6 aren't inherent benefits of Ethereum, 4 and 5 aren't true, and 7 is speculative and begs the question.

Decentralization increasingly untrue? Ethereum consensus and execution layer nodes are at about 6k, under Bitcoin, and way above other projects.
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