Business/Markets/Stocks/Economics Random, Random

[ti-amie]

Mike Pierce
@millennial_debt
The scale of these "small" crypto fraud rings is breathtaking.

I can't think of anything else quite like it.

A $575 million fraud would be front page news in any other market.

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TL;dr

The people we took to the cleaners don't want their names made public because they should've known better.

[ponchi101]

Or (and I don't want to justify this ponzi).
Crypto seems to me to be a perfect scheme for money laundering. Something with no specific value, which can be inflated rapidly and with no justification. So maybe, just maybe, FTX was a gigantic washing machine, turn to the max. And you would not want this to be investigated too much if you put in there a few tens of millions to clean a few hundred.

[ti-amie]

Or (and I don't want to justify this ponzi).
Crypto seems to me to be a perfect scheme for money laundering. Something with no specific value, which can be inflated rapidly and with no justification. So maybe, just maybe, FTX was a gigantic washing machine, turn to the max. And you would not want this to be investigated too much if you put in there a few tens of millions to clean a few hundred.

This is what I thought from the beginning. It's why the world wide criminal element loves it. It's just one big ol' laundromat.

[JazzNU]

More than a few got paid out just like a Ponzi scheme. Crypto is a more than decade-long scheme with cartoonishly high exchange rates going on several years now. That's why when it exploded into the 20k range a few years ago you had people who were buying mansions and fancy cars and showing them off online and when the government started taxing crypto you had fools on Reddit who were like oh damn, I don't have cash to cover this gargantuan bill because they apparently don't know math. FTX hasn't been around long, but it was around for the highest of the highs, many got paid out of it.

For me, what you've got here are hundreds of thousands of greedy people angry that they stayed in the scam too long, kept buying into it and now looking to blame someone for not getting out earlier. You didn't sell when it was worth $60k? Fine, maybe you thought this was going to go a bit higher. But when it dropped to 50K? then 40k? then 30k? Why didn't you dump almost every Bitcoin you own at that point? Could've and should've taken the money and run. I sure as heck would've if I had bought Bitcoin when I first started hearing more about it and not cared a lick about it being less than the $60k height, just been thrilled to get anything out of this scam. But people were greedy trying to double down on crypto with no tangible value, some of which took like 3 transactions to attempt to even turn it into a usable currency.

[ti-amie]

I was wondering why Elmo was having a meltdown.

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[Suliso]

More than a few got paid out just like a Ponzi scheme. Crypto is a more than decade-long scheme with cartoonishly high exchange rates going on several years now. That's why when it exploded into the 20k range a few years ago you had people who were buying mansions and fancy cars and showing them off online and when the government started taxing crypto you had fools on Reddit who were like oh damn, I don't have cash to cover this gargantuan bill because they apparently don't know math. FTX hasn't been around long, but it was around for the highest of the highs, many got paid out of it.

For me, what you've got here are hundreds of thousands of greedy people angry that they stayed in the scam too long, kept buying into it and now looking to blame someone for not getting out earlier. You didn't sell when it was worth $60k? Fine, maybe you thought this was going to go a bit higher. But when it dropped to 50K? then 40k? then 30k? Why didn't you dump almost every Bitcoin you own at that point? Could've and should've taken the money and run. I sure as heck would've if I had bought Bitcoin when I first started hearing more about it and not cared a lick about it being less than the $60k height, just been thrilled to get anything out of this scam. But people were greedy trying to double down on crypto with no tangible value, some of which took like 3 transactions to attempt to even turn it into a usable currency.

This 5x. There was indeed plenty of opportunity to get rich from bitcoin if you started early enough and were a bit more of a risk taker than me.

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[ponchi101]

I'm missing something.
They think the Russians are going to sell them oil at a $20/bbl discount, when China and India will pay a better price? Are they delusional?

[skatingfan]

I'm missing something.
They think the Russians are going to sell them oil at a $20/bbl discount, when China and India will pay a better price? Are they delusional?

No, they're compromised - they want to keep the Putin-allied countries in the European Union.

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