[HN Gopher] Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanishe... ___________________________________________________________________ Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished (2019) Author : mgh2 Score : 192 points Date : 2021-05-15 15:49 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.bbc.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com) | jacquesm wrote: | Pretty good chance that she didn't vanish but was killed, | vanishing is a trick that is becoming exceedingly hard. | brobdingnagians wrote: | Especially disappearing from people with money and power. | | > "I can't discuss that. It starts to get very very very scary, | very very very fast." According to Bjercke, Dr Ruja never | expected OneCoin to grow so big. People involved at the early | stages have told him it was never supposed to be a billion- | dollar scam. She tried to close it down, he says, but the dark | forces wouldn't let her. | | Even if you think you are going to get something and profit, | one big reason to stay away from scams and fraud is that there | are big players in the area that are 1. already established, 2. | willing to do much worse things than you to get their way, 3. | don't want someone else stepping on their territory. The mafia | doesn't let petty thieves steal in their areas. You simply | become a pawn to their schemes; then forced to do things you | never anticipated having to do. | | Also reminds me of the Inner Ring by CS Lewis [1]. Stay away | from secret societies, fraud, corruption, and crime. There are | some very bad people in the world with some very organized | problems. | | It's a much simpler life to just be an honest, unknown, middle | class person. | | [1] https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/ | Baeocystin wrote: | Excellent read, and spot-on, IMO. Thanks for the link. | da_big_ghey wrote: | i am hating this fact. now each document is electronic | validationed so cannot fake. no way for to leave and become new | person. no way for to disappear. damn surveilance state. | andix wrote: | In some countries you can buy real identities with real | passports, including a citizenship. Should be possible to do | in Serbia or Bosnia. Maybe even in Bulgaria (EU). | | During the war in Yugoslavia a lot of records got lost and it | is still common practice to reissue birth certificates based | on some witness statements. | da_big_ghey wrote: | true, and for these i am many glad. by end of my life time, | though, it is maybe not longer be possibile. biometric | identity making it so by some time. | raunak wrote: | At the end of the day, you can shuck all your | responsibilities, buy land in some remote area of the | world (Midwestern USA, Canadian Yukon?, South America), | and live as a hunter-gatherer - there's nothing stopping | you and after a certain point you'd be effectively | isolated and identity-less | macintux wrote: | You'd have to find someplace without property tax at the | least, I'd think. | krisoft wrote: | In what sense do you want to disappear? Do you want the | option to abandon everyone you know and start a new life in a | new place? You can totally do that. The state is not stopping | you. If people from your former life report you missing and | the police finds you, you can always say "i do not wish to be | contacted by them" and if you are an adult they will leave | you at that. Pretty extreme thing to do, but happens all the | time. | | Do you want to get away with murder? Run away from debts and | obligations? Why would we as society let you do that? | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | Not all countries provide adequate protection for those who | wish to go no-contact with family. Sometimes you can hide | from former friends and acquaintances, but family members | are allowed to continue trying to obtrusively contact you | or confront you in public, or can involve the police again | and again. In countries where family relationships are | considered especially sacrosanct, the police may began to | hassle you as the supposed bad guy if you are avoiding | contact with parents. | folli wrote: | That's actually a good point. | | However, it becomes much murkier from a moral standpoint if | you consider a scenario where you try to hide from a | corrupt state for e.g. digging up dirt on a high ranking | official. Or due to political, racial, religious oppression | etc. | [deleted] | ardit33 wrote: | Could be. But also the Balkan mafia operates in another level | when it comes to identities. There are stories, of eventually | someone getting caught, and it is realized that the guy was | wanted for 15+ years, by some (usually Western Europe) country, | interpol and all, has changed their names 3 times and they live | care free in another country. | | They completely change identities, new names, new passports, | new looks, new citizenship. With enough money, it becomes just | a routine thing. It is like they run a Tor network ring, but on | personal identities. | | Often, they are found when they get in trouble with their old | pals (usually unsettled scores), and not the police. | blackearl wrote: | They're never truly living carefree. Everywhere you go you'll | always be looking over your shoulder, waiting for the day | they get you. | vbsteven wrote: | Katatonia - Omerta is an amazing song about this. | dmix wrote: | Osama Bin Laden had an extremely long run, considering the CIA | and NSA was after him at max agenda. Almost embarrassingly | long. | | Ayman al-Zawahiri (the defacto "leader" of Al-queda today) | could easily be in some back room hidden in Pakistan right now. | He technically is not listed as dead either. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_al-Zawahiri | | Stranger things have happened in our world. | | It depends on how much these experts law enforcement people | care too. A random IRS guy found the Silk Road guy, not some | fancy investigation. The question is anyone in India, or where | ever with corrupt police and military, are even looking hard | for her. | | You probably need someone like the Americans, UK, or Russians | (see Shamil Basayev | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamil_Basayev) IRL to really | care at this level. | | Note: I haven't listened to the podcast or deeply into her, | just my point of view on that subject. | skinnymuch wrote: | Bin Laden is one thing. But what's the use of taking out the | de facto leader of an org that will have no problem having a | replacement immediately like Al-queda? It makes more sense | when you're doing a full on or strong attack like right after | 9/11 or for When ISIS was brought down a ton. | | -- | | For the Silk Road. That's true. However the next two silk | roads had the people arrested fairly quickly. | | - | | Note: I don't know much or anything about hiding out or | disappearing. | Nasrudith wrote: | The use of it is depleting the leadership chain of command | and leave third and fourth stringers at the top at best. It | won't actually eliminate them but it will reduce their | effectiveness greatly. | | In Al Qaeda's case the futility comes more from the vacuum | in their niche. | dunmalg wrote: | "living charismatic leader the enemy can't seem to catch" | has much greater recruitment value than "dead leader | martyred, but we'll keep fighting". | yawaworht1978 wrote: | Nope, it is not that hard, just cannot live the big life. I am | not so sure if she was the real head of operation anyway, more | like the publicly visible rep(bit like a nominee director). | encryptluks2 wrote: | Cryptos have become more like a cult than actual tech. Don't get | me wrong, some of them are legitimate but try pointing out their | deficiencies in their communities and you'll get attacked from | all angles. Most people involved in crypto aren't there for the | tech, they only care about money they are making from it. | blocked_again wrote: | > Most people involved in crypto aren't there for the tech, | they only care about money they are making from it. | | Most people involved in anything aren't there for the thing, | they only care about money they are making from it. | | There. Fixed it for you. | PMan74 wrote: | Most people involved in tech aren't there for the tech, they | only care about money they are making from it. | | (And there's no judgement in that, if you make a living selling | fridge freezers it doesn't mean you have to care much about | fridge freezers) | encryptluks2 wrote: | That assumes there is no harm in what they are doing. A lot | of these cryptos are more like pyramid schemes. Selling | freezers is one thing, but if you know the freezer has some | major defects and you continue selling them telling everyone | how great they are while misleading them about issues then it | is more like a scam. Don't get me wrong, some cryptos have | the potential to make a lot of people money but often the | people making the money are the initial investors not the | public. | matheusmoreira wrote: | > often the people making the money are the initial | investors not the public | | What is wrong with this? Of course people who believed in | cryptocurrencies since the beginning have seen greater | returns compared to people who started investing now. | | Every investment disproportionally rewards early adopters. | Stocks, even simple savings accounts. | deckard1 wrote: | I mean. Yes and no. Someone doing some CRUD apps at some car | insurance firm just to put dinner on the table is completely | fine. | | But then you have Theranos and WeWork and all of that late | '90s dot-com crap. Most of those companies had nothing to do | with tech, but still raked in lots of VC money hoping to | sucker people into purchasing their worthless stock after | their inflated IPOs. | | Of course, it has to be mentioned that the line between fraud | and value gets incredibly fuzzy in tech. So much tech is | "solutionized" into products that solve problems that are | nonsense to begin with. Everyone believes they need cloud- | this, or managed K8S, or auto-scaling whatever. The whole | industry looks like a fraud at times. Especially enterprise | marketing and sales. IBM, Oracle, and others have made a | racket on this. And yes they have actual products with actual | features, what they are _selling_ are dreams and fairy tales. | Look closely at crypto and you 'll see the same cottage | industry around it today. I mean, what is NFT other than | credit default swaps (CDS) for the art market? It's | abstracted ownership ("ownership" with a _huge_ asterisk next | to it). You even have initial coin offerings (ICO). Every | thing from the dot-com and 2008 financial engineering crisis | have all been replicated in crypto. | alisonkisk wrote: | Dot-com bubble was real companies with inflated valuations | from speculators and experimental business models that | weren't all solvent. | | Theranos was trying to make and sell a real product but the | product didn't work so they lied and cheated to cover that | up because they had nothing else to offer. | | Every business is dreams and fairytales because extra | sizzle gets more customers | | It's different from cryptocurrencies which are pure scam | plays from the start. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | At least within my bubble, the people I know who spend the most | time trading cryptocurrencies hold no illusions that | cryptocurrency and utility tokens are actually useful. They | approach it like a game: Try to spot the next big hype cycle | before everyone else, then try to exit the trade before the | hype dies out and the price retreats. | | It's like trading stocks, but without any fundamentals or | underlying value to interfere with the "to the moon" narrative. | andrepd wrote: | There _are_ definitely fundamentals, there 's no point | pretending that there are not. But at this point it's now | buried under mountains of hype, and has balooned to many | times its reasonable price (again, reasonable in terms of | fundamentals/utility, not speculation). | narrator wrote: | You know how you create a cryptocurrency that immediately rivals | Bitcoin with no effort? You fork Bitcoin and give it a cute | mascot. Dogecoin has a $65 billion marketcap and was made in | about two hours as a JOKE. It's totally open source, so there's | nothing even illegal about it: | | https://twitter.com/BillyM2k/status/1393271686384914432/phot... | | I remember seeing Ethereum starting up and they had a demo where | you could make your own cryptocurrency in about a page of code. I | thought this shit is never going to work. I WAS SO WRONG. | | I am sure this cryptoqueen scammer put a ridiculous amount of | effort into her scam when these people who actually made absurd | amounts of money legally in altcoins did far less work. | agumonkey wrote: | a few semi pro traders i've seen made one for the lulz (with | absurd names like karencoin) and the price rocketed (illiquid | asset) which made them withdraw their trade from the market | because they assumed it was a sign of dumb level bubble hit | narrator wrote: | How about Losercoin? Two self-described broke losers in rural | China created it and put their life savings into providing it | with liquidity. It now has a 53 million dollar market cap. | alisonkisk wrote: | Isn't all this altcoin "market cap" stuff fake cap | generated by bots that thinly trade new coins until a | sucker buys them out? | KETpXDDzR wrote: | AWS and until recently Azure have Blockchain-as-a-service. The | real winner of a gold rush are the people selling pickaxes. | | https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/blockchain-servic... | | https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain | dehrmann wrote: | With cryptocurrencies, the pickaxes are GPUs and ASICs. I | doubt this is a serious revenue generator for AWS because of | how few things actually need and use blockchains. It's mostly | there so consultants can sell blockchain solutions to | companies desperate for a blockchain strategy. | hunter2_ wrote: | Out of whatever cases may exist for what you're describing | (re: desperation, etc.), do they almost always involve | someone getting conned? | 55555 wrote: | > The real winner of a gold rush are the people selling | pickaxes. | | No I'm pretty sure the people who hoarded gold (coins) have | made more money from blockchain than IBM and AWS. | xondono wrote: | Nvidia is getting nice profits, and with way less risk than | those "investing" in crypto | aplummer wrote: | You'd think so, but Pickaxe coins like the graph have | significantly less gains than dog meme coins. I actually | think a sure sign of when a coin won't go mega is when it | tries to do something practical, since then its obvious its | not that great a practical utility after all (as almost | nothing is on a blockchain, except gambling). | arambhashura wrote: | Microsoft is apparently shutting down its blockchain service, | though: https://docs.microsoft.com/en- | us/azure/blockchain/service/mi... | dleslie wrote: | Dogecoin may as well be called Eloncoin, now; the value tracks | his tweets about it. | | A practically-infinite cap and always-easy mining? It's | designed to rapidly deflate in value. _That's the joke_. And | yet it bubbles. | eloff wrote: | Those properties mean it could actually work as a currency, | unlike bitcoin. | | It also can handle higher transaction volume with cheaper | fees. | | I don't think it'd be a good currency, but it's funny to | compare it with bitcoin which was marketed as such but is | totally a failure for that use case. | aplummer wrote: | ELON already exists, 630m market cap right now... | | https://www.dextools.io/app/uniswap/pair- | explorer/0x7b736449... | spinny wrote: | He just realized that he can, so he does it. | | Probably got on the market before the BTC/Tesla announcement | and then pumped it, then thew DOGE in the for the memes and | then Tesla announces that BTC consumes too much energy and | that are looking out for a greener alternative. ETH is | switching to PoS. At this point, he is probably slowly | filling bags of ETH and gonna pump as soon as PoW on ETH | ends. Expect a series of excited twits from Elon then | dleslie wrote: | I expect the same, incidentally. | | As soon as Tesla stated that btc was bad for the | environment it was clear they'd be leaping on eth in the | future. | gh55 wrote: | Just so you know, Dogecoin's blockchain is trivial to attack; | its ledger can be altered at such low cost it is unlikely | several such attacks aren't already underway. Upon publushing | of new "longest chains" it will no longer be possible to | determine which doge chain is valid, putting all balances in | danger until the Proof of Work mechanism is replaced - which | will only work briefly before the same problem recurs, due to | the nature of how blockchains are secured. This will | demonstrate why Bitcoin and Ethereum are valuable. More info: | https://www.intuitecon.com/post/why-dogecoin-is-going-to-zer... | paulpauper wrote: | fraud is profitable because it makes exaggerated claims. that | is why people do it. | | legit projects are expensive and have high rate of failure | | doge is just one success out of probably thousands of others | that tried similar concepts. Doge was able to gain a loyal | following and community early on. | trompetenaccoun wrote: | She's not a programmer. As far as I know OneCoin never even had | a blockchain, it was just a regular ponzi scheme they sold as | cryptocurrency. Not the first time this happened and it won't | be the last, sadly. I actually have a distant relative who | bought into another such scam. | bennysomething wrote: | It didn't have a block chain. There's a great BBc iPlayer | podcast about it, crypto queen. Worth a listen. Apologies if | this has already been mentioned. | djrogers wrote: | That detail is in the article, which is about the making of | the podcast... | Waterluvian wrote: | I think the difference is likelihood of success. | | If you and I did what you'd describe it would almost certainly | not succeed. A high effort fraud has a much higher likelihood | of returns. | puranjay wrote: | "Hey hey heyyyy" | RichardHeart wrote: | Here's how you solve scams: 1. More law enforcement (Doesn't work | in countries that can't even enforce laws against murder so well. | Only works after the fact, and the money is nearly never | recovered.) | | 2. Yell as loudly as you can for people to stop getting scammed. | (They thing you're wrong, and you have no marketing budget to get | your voice heard. It takes 10 units of energy to disprove | bullshit and only 1 unit of energy to generate it. It's harder to | convince people they've been scammed. This is also known as the | curse of the duped. | | 3. Actively advertise superior investments with longer time | horizons so that they don't have the money sitting in their hands | to so easily be scammed out of. You can even generate a marketing | budget to get eyes away from the scams onto the good things. (You | will be yelled at by everyone that doesn't like what you built. | Especially if its successful.) | dmix wrote: | > I tested this explanation on my mother, the family technophobe, | and she told me I'd failed to make it clear enough and should | start again. So don't worry too much if you don't follow it | either | | It makes you wonder if the BBC author should have tried to | explain what crypto was at such detail at all in the first place. | | The 3 long technical paragraphs disrupt the narrative. | | Just give some witty one or two lines for the luddites. I doubt | they care about public internet databases anyway. | rbanffy wrote: | Not knowing this little bit of what a cryptocurrency is allowed | Onecoin to be such a large scam. | Marciplan wrote: | This podcast had such insane production quality --- but also a | sincerely huge lack of journalism. So. Many. Holes. In every | thing they "report". | 55555 wrote: | lol kthx Dr. Ruja | raunak wrote: | Examples of said holes? Out of curiosity | woodpanel wrote: | Interesting how on a per-capita base, Germany where I live, seems | to be the most gullibe society. I think it is not a coincidence | that Ruga lived and worked in Germany prior to OC most of her | life. | | I was almost sucked into OC. Some non-tech friend in his mid- | thirties approached me about it, he had already invested all his | savings (~20kEUR and another 10kEUR from his mother). | | He gave me OC's prep-talk and got me interested, so as an | overpaid programmer within minutes I've concluded: Why not buy | the biggest package or even more? | | Hooked as I was, every piece of due dilligence I've tried to | apply made the whole thing appear as a scam quickly. I've phoned | with the BaFin (our financial authority) multiple times it took | about a year afterwards for a very timid response against OC (in | hindsight their lack of action in this case mirrors their lack of | competence in the wirecard scam). | | For me there are two major culprits: | | 1. OC leadership, especially Ruga | | I think what makes OC so sinister is how they specifically | targeted groups of people with low technical knowledge and who | feel (and are) financially unskilled / underpriviledged. Once | they've had to flee one country they've moved to another nation, | again looking for underprivliged non-technical people. | | The OC footsoldier's that I've met all came from Germany's lower | classes (I guess most marketers are victims as well). | | In Britain they've targeted mostly muslims. They went to India, | China and so forth. | | 2. Financial Authorities | | A scam that targeted small time investors (entry package was | 500EUR; who often don't even know the name of their financial | authority or what it does) highlights the importance of taking | action for a BaFin: A fair society cannot treat predation of poor | people differently that that of rich people. Swifter action | whould have prevented a lot of the levels that pyramid eventually | built up. | | 500EURs or 5.000EURs in damage apparently isn't much for the | BaFin to do a lot (AFAIK none of the footsoldies I've met faced | any criminal charges). But for the victims it often amounts to | 100% of savings or even debt they took on, not even to mention | ruined friendships, self-doubt, guilt etc. Ruga and the BaFin | broke already broken people. | | PS: I think Tim Tayshun's article | (https://news.bitcoin.com/beware-definitive-onecoin-ponzi/) must | have saved a lot of people from this! | alisonkisk wrote: | There are similar scams in many countries. It's not a German | culture thing. | woodpanel wrote: | I'm not saiying it's a German thing. Just that on the | statistics mentioned in the article, my country seemed to be | one of the more gullible ones. | | I might also add: Wirecard as well as IOTA did most wreckage | in Germany. Partly because their founders are German | speaking. Partly because authorities are inept. | unnouinceput wrote: | Quote: "...says there are similarities between OneCoin and | messianic millennium cults, where people believe they are part of | something big that is going to change the world - and no matter | what the evidence, once they've signed up, it's very hard for | them to admit they are wrong." | | Yeah, I can say the same about Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim and any | other major religion in this world. Ever talked with any of these | bigots? You want to run for the hills. | daenz wrote: | Reading this made me realize that even though Bitcoin is | legitimate, Satoshi was pretty wise to conceal their identity | before it gained any traction. | skinnymuch wrote: | Satoshi could still be a small team from a high level Govt | agency. Or something else. Might not be one or a few civilians | at all. | botwriter wrote: | Didn't one of her associates turn up dead in Cambodia this week? | | https://www.khmer440.com/chat_forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=720... | handmodel wrote: | This was such a good podcast as long as you are ok with a bit of | the journalists inserting their research process into things. | | They went to Uganda where OneCoin was big. They had created a MLM | type system there where they got the local priests to give | sermons on why it was good. They interviewed people who sold | their livestock - even though they didn't own a computer or cell | phone so had no idea what it was - for a few hundred dollars to | invest. | | It was also highly marketed in the Arab world where it was | marketed specifically towards people who can't invest in | companies that have interest on loans. | | Truly a wild scheme. | Animats wrote: | If they'd actually implemented a blockchain, they would have been | in the clear. No worse than many altcoins. | andix wrote: | As soon as they would have turned the system on, people | would've been able to sell One Coin. And it would've got a real | price, determined by the market. Not some fake price, set by | the company. | cookguyruffles wrote: | Artificial pricing is still possible in the blockchain world, | it's just called staking over there | kolinko wrote: | What? Staking has nothing to do with a price | woah wrote: | If they'd actually implemented a blockchain that did what they | said it did, it wouldn't have been a scam. As it is, this has | about as much to do with cryptocurrency as most Nigerian | princes have to do with the African nobility | nicklecompte wrote: | Quite a contrast in reactions between the guy who made millions | of dollars from the OneCoin scam and bought a big fancy house: | | > After Dr Ruja's non-appearance in Lisbon, a point came when | Igor Alberts, like Jen McAdam, asked to see evidence of the | blockchain. He didn't get it, and in December 2017 he quit. | | > I ask if he felt guilty, for having sold so many people a coin | that didn't exist, and for having made so much money in the | process. | | > "I felt responsibility. Not guilt," he replies. "You can never | be blamed for believing in something. I had no clue that it could | be false. I didn't even know what is a blockchain... What doubt | can I have?" | | Versus the woman who lost a lot of money and convinced her | friends/family to also throw away their money: | | > By contrast, Jen McAdam says she bears a heavy burden of guilt. | I ask her how much she earned from selling OneCoin and she says | it was EUR3,000 - EUR1,800 of which she received in cash, and | which she used to buy more OneCoin. | | The line about "you can never be blamed for believing in | something" is of course self-evidently ridiculous and not | something Mr. Roberts would pretend to believe in any other | context. But "I'm not a bad person, I was a hapless victim like | everyone else" has a compelling logic when you're profiting from | a bad system. | danmaz74 wrote: | As the article says, Igor Alberts was already an established | multi level marketer making a lot of money with other products | when he started with OneCoin. Considering the nature of MLM, | I'm not at all surprised about him being rather impervious to | feelings of guilt. | jollybean wrote: | Cryptos are MLM's. | | If you made a really solid crypto today, that was designed to | remain solid and relatively flat, it wouldn't be popular - | because the whole attraction is the 'easy money' euphoria. | | No euphoria, no attention. | | It's why a 'really good Bitcoin' - which tried to price at $1 | USD today, and remain at that real valuation and avoid | devaluation, would be hard pressed to exist - it wouldn't | take hold. Or rather - that kind of financial instrument | would have to be sold to banks, not small change MLM people, | and banks are really conservative. It may happen at some | point. | gh55 wrote: | Tether, the 6th largest cryptocurrency has a market cap of | ~$160B, seems pretty "popular" to me. | | USDC TUSD and BUSD are further popular examples. | | Cryptocurrencies are not MLMs, you would do yourself a huge | favour by learning what they are. | | In brief, Bitcoin is a scarce asset, and Ethereum is the | credit required to run trustless logical conditions | relating to a transaction, and also securing assets | involved in those conditions. | TazeTSchnitzel wrote: | The vast majority of the Tether market cap is fake money | (not actually backed by USD). It will collapse if enough | people try to cash out. | wnevets wrote: | Elon wouldn't be tweeting about it that's for damn sure. | dleslie wrote: | It certainly is a bizarre argument. With absolution of guilt | for wrongly held beliefs, one could engage in deplorable | actions without a tinge of later guilt. | | We all have a responsibility to question our beliefs, and what | harm our actions cause. | FpUser wrote: | >"We all have a responsibility to question our beliefs, and | what harm our actions cause." | | Can you point me to any source that spells it in legal terms | in relation to general public (not specific cases like food | inspector)? Like some written law. | | Also if existed think of what would such law would to to | politicians unless they're specifically exempt. | dleslie wrote: | Laws are not always rules for ethical behaviour, let alone | the authoritative rules for ethical behaviour. | marnett wrote: | Yes we do have that responsibility and obligation. Reading | his fallacious defense had me immediately thinking of the | essay "The Ethics of Belief"[0]. | | [0] http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/Clifford_ethics.pdf | ivanhoe wrote: | Perhaps she's just a more socially skillful, so she offered a | better sounding excuse? That guy has a douche written all over | his face, but that doesn't mean others involved are any | better... | t8e56vd4ih wrote: | you should check the footage of her on YouTube promoting her coin | purely for entertainment. it's utterly ridiculous. she's a | personified red flag. | vmception wrote: | I had a European girlfriend at the time, (I'm an American and we | were both in America) her sister was exposed to onecoin and was | her sisters sole exposure to blockchain ideology. | | So I asked her to forward the marketing materials to me, and oh | my god, it is not possible to discern the problems wrong with it | without formal education in both computer science like linked | lists and initial exposure to real blockchains. | | Its doesn't matter that the first question to ask was "ok where | is the block explorer and what consensus model does it use" | because nobody exposed to onecoin _first_ would ask that | | The other thing, which I find much funnier, is that they become | not fraudulent just by launching a token on an existing | blockchain or deploying their own, and that's all they had to do | but didn't. | pjc50 wrote: | > that they become not fraudulent just by launching a token on | an existing blockchain or deploying their own, and that's all | they had to do but didn't | | I submit that that would not be enough to make it not | fraudulent. | | > ok where is the block explorer and what consensus model does | it use" because nobody exposed to onecoin first would ask that | | Doesn't matter. What matters is who's shilling and how | effective they are. Like Elon and Bitcoin. | vmception wrote: | > I submit that that would not be enough to make it not | fraudulent. | | It would still be a rip-off for purchasers, but it would have | reduced their legal liability to nothing in the various | countries involved. Then they could just squirm around | securities laws based on how they marketed it, like everyone | else. | spuz wrote: | Did you convince your girlfriend's sister that it was a scam? | vmception wrote: | She didnt put money into it. But she was just as excited | about blockchain ideology as I was and I would just be the | second prophet she was exposed to. It is impossible to | discern the difference when religious-like ideology has | already occupied that register in your brain. | lph wrote: | > I am sure this cryptoqueen scammer put a ridiculous amount of | effort into her scam when these people who actually made absurd | amounts of money legally in altcoins did far less work. | | Right?! All they had to do is fork an open-source | cryptocurrency, and they couldn't even do that. It's hilarious. | With the hype empire OneCoin controlled, it's quite possible | that it could have astro-turfed its way to a bubble like those | of bitcoin or dogecoin. | ivantopalov wrote: | I wish people would stop associating this fraud with the | cryptocurrency phenomenon. This had nothing to do with crypto. It | was an ordinary ponzi scheme, they just added "coin" to the end | of their product's name because at that time cryptocurrencies | were already very popular. | II2II wrote: | As an outsider, cryptocurrencies appear to be an ideal | environment for fraud: most of the talk is around investing in | it, its value is highly speculative, and it has relatively | little uptake for its stated purpose. Even when a give | cryptocurrency is legitimate, something that is difficult to | discern through all of the noise, the instability in its value | makes it a target for fraud. | TazeTSchnitzel wrote: | Sounds a lot like Bitconnect. | daenz wrote: | >It was a cryptocurrency company, and it had been running for a | while - but it didn't have a blockchain. "So we need you to build | a blockchain," he went on. | | I have seen this first hand, on a much smaller scale, at a | startup that was riding the blockchain hype with investors. It is | really incredible and eye-opening to me what you can accomplish | with hype and trust, with absolutely nothing backing it. It makes | you realize that it doesn't matter if what you build is cool or | innovative, if you can't get people to trust you, it won't | succeed. | lottin wrote: | One thing I've noticed about the crypto crowd is many of them | seem to genuinely struggle to differentiate a scam from a | legitimate business. Some are obviously scammers, but others it | seems they don't really know what they're doing... they think | they're running a business. | kordlessagain wrote: | Most of them would struggle to understand how the shit works | as well. | 46756e wrote: | This is very true for crypto. The amount of people hyped on it | without understanding much about it seems crazy high to me. | | Granted, I recently graduated college, so I may be bias from | experience. I just have seen a giant amount of finance frat | bros that pour money into Bitcoin cause "banks are like the | horse and buggy". | Nasrudith wrote: | They are an especially pathological manifestation of Buzzword | Zombies who shamble around brainlessly suggesting use of | their golden hammer in all contexts. | | Actual finance graduated though? What the fuck were they | doing in class all of those years to even think of the two as | comparable?! For one let me know when I can get a mortgage or | auto loan from bitcoin itself. | hanniabu wrote: | The amount of people that discredit it without understanding | is also crazy high. Just because scams exist doesn't mean | there aren't real projects and use cases. | saagarjha wrote: | ...which are? | EvilEy3 wrote: | Name one. | | Crypto is one huge scam and pyramid. Period. | heavyset_go wrote: | So far, the only valid use case I've seen is buying or | selling things on the grey/black market. | ccortes wrote: | USDC | tootie wrote: | Theranos springs to mind. When you can dazzle enough rich | people with FOMO over technologies they don't understand, it | can be pretty easy. | pessimizer wrote: | The only difference between selling bullshit and selling | quality is that quality will get you more positive word-of- | mouth advertising per sale. If you're selling bullshit, you | need to either actively suppress the word-of-mouth, drown it | out with marketing spend, or offer a cut of future profits (or | something that looks like a cut of future profits) to buyers. | varsketiz wrote: | What about recurring customers? Clearly this is not the only | difference. | amelius wrote: | I think this is because "cool startup" works as a signal for | speculation. It doesn't matter that there is no value backing | it, investors have this unwritten agreement that cool sounding | projects get investments and with money behind the project, it | automatically becomes more valuable. | tudorw wrote: | Let's not knock it, vast swathes of internet were built with | hype money, if something is really novel, it takes a leap of | faith to invest. | alisonkisk wrote: | Not really. Government grants, paying telecom customers, ad | buyers, porn buyers. | [deleted] | imiric wrote: | Con artistry is an old profession, this is just the modern take | on it. | | It's the Theranos approach. With a charismatic and strong | character as founder you can build hype and get investments | without even having a product. Being on friendly terms with | investors also helps to establish trust. | alisonkisk wrote: | Theranos desperately tried to build a product. They failed | and lied about it. The plan wasn't to profit from the fake | stuff and exit. | Nasrudith wrote: | Here is something which struck me as obvious yet would get | furiously disputed: if you care about the charisma of a | company head, or any other superficial aspect like City of | London fashion etiquette you are being an idiot and are | asking to get scammed by privileging what you expect to see | above talent. It is what they do that is the important part. | saagarjha wrote: | Some discussion from earlier: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21618346 | klaudius wrote: | I was at one of their scam seminars. There was some sociopath | lying for an hour straight and trying to get people to purchase | some package for mining Onecoin. It was ridiculous. I was invited | by a (former) friend who tried to recruit me and make some money | exploiting me. | henvic wrote: | Once the Bitcoin & cryptocurrency proof-of-work fraud dies off, | we're going to hear a lot of stories like this. | | https://henvic.dev/posts/bitcoin/ | RivieraKid wrote: | You're the author of this article? I really enjoyed it. One | thing I'm not sure I agree is that fiat is an unsustainable | shitcoin. Economics and monetary policy is a complex topic, | some very smart and knowledgable people have a different view. | neom wrote: | Relatively good mini doc about this: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64xcgvEJ3Ys | | tbh I've spent waaay more time than I'd care to admit diving deep | into onecoin over the past few years. It's really really really | wild the more you dig. Happy to answer any questions. | hatmatrix wrote: | What's wilder than already covered in these docs and podcasts | neom wrote: | I'm not sure what you've consumed so that's somewhat | difficult to answer, but the part I found the most | interesting is all the "dealshaker" stuff that happened | after, and I think might still be going on. | paulpauper wrote: | I think there is more that is not being disclosed. It seems hard | to believe someone could be so public and just vanish like that | after having stolen so much. | zmix wrote: | LOL, I never heard about OneCoin! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-05-15 23:00 UTC)