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Javier Milei backtracks on $4.4B memecoin after 'insiders' pocket $87M

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Re: Javier Milei backtracks on $4.4B memecoin after 'insiders' pocket $87M

#61
post #17

Christ, why is it just ok for politicians to outright create and promote Ponzi and Pump 'n Dump schemes? It doesn't seem that long ago that this would have been a scandal but now with the moron in the Oval Office creating his own meme coins without even trying to hide his business interests, and now the president of Argentina is doing the same shit? Is this really the world that we want? I mean, I guess the answer is…

Fraud runs rampant before large market collapses.

https://www.history.com/news/roaring-twenties-scams-ponzi-wa...

It happened in the 20s, before 2008, and it's happening again. Trump doing this is an extra level of depraved, and I suspect the coming crash will follow suit.

Re: Javier Milei backtracks on $4.4B memecoin after 'insiders' pocket $87M

#62
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your pitch would be significantly stronger if the resources you linked didn't largely revolve around "What if Snoop Dogg had his own currency?" I'm not ... completely unable to be persuaded that there are use cases for cryptocurrency. But "Ashton Kutcher should have Aston Kutchercoin, and develop some sort of referral-based pyramid-shaped scheme with it for his fans" is... what is that?

That's... 1) A way to fill unsold seats at venues, and always have sold-out events 2) A way to reward his members for spreading his message and bringing more people 3) A way to turn his audience into an army of promoters 4) A way to be independent of banks, and accept global payments 5) A way to have a global online movement that becomes bigger than Ashton Kutcher himself... having subcommunities be empowered to get…

Point 2 is the basis for a pyramid scheme.

Re: Javier Milei backtracks on $4.4B memecoin after 'insiders' pocket $87M

#63
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I really appreciate your comment. I'm being totally sincere. I did see the news reports about him with a chainsaw. He seemed like a nut when I saw that. And I then watched the Lex Friedman interview and read the profile in the New Yorker. I was surprised in that my initial glance at him was not positive but my opinions shifted. Please give me other nuanced and intelligent discussions. I'm sorry I missed the ones you…

I don't know how productive it would be to give you random examples as I am wuite biased and find just about all of his actions to be despicable. It sounds like you may be living in something of an echo chamber of sorts. I recommend seeking out news sources that may challenge your beliefs and relying less on social media and YouTube videos. I'm not really sure how to help you to be honest though. Are you watching/reading some form of news on the regular? For me it's NPR but I try to watch some conservative news as well to see what the other side is up to, how they're reacting.

Re: Javier Milei backtracks on $4.4B memecoin after 'insiders' pocket $87M

#64
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's... 1) A way to fill unsold seats at venues, and always have sold-out events 2) A way to reward his members for spreading his message and bringing more people 3) A way to turn his audience into an army of promoters 4) A way to be independent of banks, and accept global payments 5) A way to have a global online movement that becomes bigger than Ashton Kutcher himself... having subcommunities be empowered to get…

Ok, I'll bite. I read this and my first reactions are: 1. How? 2. Reward them with what? 3. Fans are already promoters. 4. Why is this a good thing? 5. This is just describing fandom, which already exists?

1. Well, you want to have your coin usable to pay for something in your own community. The first thing you can offer are unsold seats and other things that literally cost you nothing. People who earned your coin can buy seats at your events, or sell them to other people (e.g. who live locally) to attend the event.

2. With your own coin, obviously. If the coin has value aboard a cruise ship, or events, etc. then everyone wins. There are many businesses that can benefit from selling unused inventory, and they may as well sell it for coins earned for things like bring other paying customers, contributing great testimonials, content, etc. Imagine being able to go on stage if you earned enough "loyalty points" or whatever.

3. Loyalty points have been around forever. And no, fans are not already promoters. I know in my own personal experience that even INVESTORS who invested in your company often sit back and hope that you'll make them a profit somehow, instead of bringing others in behind them. Let alone people who just come to a show. The easier you make it for them, e.g. having your own site with custom links that they can share and earn "affiliate revenue" in your own coin, the more traffic you'll get.

4. You get more traffic. More audience. More capital. More money. More loyalty. Independence from having your speech restricted or demonetized. Look at all the youtube personalities openly saying that they can't say this or that. Many comedians and performers are sensitive to being censored.

5) Also you can easily collect money from a global audience, and pay out to a global audience, without being a central bottleneck (FinTech) and without being required to post surety bonds as a "money-transmitter", instead letting people transact directly and you don't have the liability, and they don't have to trust you like they trust Binance or FTX or Celsius with custody of their funds etc. etc. You just provide the Web interface, they do the transaction, facilitated by IMMUTABLE smart contracts.

Re: Javier Milei backtracks on $4.4B memecoin after 'insiders' pocket $87M

#65
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all honesty, I've read a bunch of positive articles about Millei, and watched the Friedman interview with him. He has multiple economics degrees and really seems to understand economics in a way that Trump does not, IMHO. And, so this is horribly embarassing that he does not understand the basics of cryptocurrencies and tokens and the scoundrels. Understanding economics is not the only point when you are running a…

You got conned. Anyone who watches his actual interviews first hand can see that he’s mentally unstable, holds a degree from a third-rate university, and is more concerned with his own narcissistic tendencies than actually governing.

I do have to admit more and more Friedman seems like he is more intent on building his subscriber count than actually asking tough questions. I can't say I feel like his fact checking is worth anything if it ever was. I should have known better.

Re: Javier Milei backtracks on $4.4B memecoin after 'insiders' pocket $87M

#69
Just to clarify, here are some important differences compared to the Trump case:

1. Milei did not sell this as a memecoin at all, unlike Trump, he sold it as a "financial instrument to help finance small Argentinan enterprises".

2. Trump tweeted about $TRUMP BEFORE stepping into office, Milei is already the president of Argentina. This constitutes an obvious ethical violation, and possibly a legal one as well.

3. 80% of the marketshare was concentrated in just 10 accounts, these accounts made transactions at 0-1 seconds after the president's tweet. There was some clear insider training here.

Was Milei on this or was he just the victim of a scam? In either way he has pictures and met with the coin's creators 3-4 times as the record shows, so he cannot claim he knew nothing about this. I don't personally think he intended to be part of a scam, but it shows some clear incompetence and he cannot promote such things in his official account, scam or not.

I hope this helps people from outside Argentina get another view of Javier Milei, I've read way too many uninformed comments here on Hacker News and other sites about how he's a genius in economy and he's helping Argentina's economy, and that cannot be further from the truth sadly. If he made such a blunder in finance which supposedly is one of his specialties just imagine how incompetent he and most of the government right now is on other matters.

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