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Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

Plus there was no way they knew beforehand they'd only make 12BTC. People always overestimate the value of twitter and conversion rates when an actual action is required - even with targeted audiences like cryptocurrency people in this case.

People seem to assume everyone takes tweets at face value and won't do a double take when it doesn't sound like something they would normally say.

Even here there was plenty of people on HN who were claiming outlandish possibilities while it was happening.

View on HN

12 BTC could be retirement level money in some countries.

Not really, when you factor in inflation, unless you're planning on living in abject poverty your whole life or not planning on living very long.

e.g., Vietnam is a livable place and GDP per capita is ~$2600. That'd get you a very modest living. GDP/capita is also up 2x from 10 years ago and 10x from 20 years ago. You could maybe squeak out 20 years with very modest living and few unplanned expenses and assuming the economy and thus cost of living doesn't grow tremendously (like it likely will).

Somalia would give you a little more value for your money. But I think if someone suddenly had that much money in Somalia, they'd probably be getting out of Somalia or hoping nobody found out.

I could easily survive and be happy on 12 BTC for the rest of my life and I live in one of the most expensive countries in the world.

$110k for the rest of your life? $500/month for 18 years? That wouldn’t cover health insurance plus rent (even though I’m sharing rent with a partner) here in Berlin, and Berlin is cheap compared to the UK or the bits of the USA I’ve visited.

Seems more likely that they expected to get more.

I’m surprised they pulled off that much.

I can't help but make the obvious observation here. It's bitcoin... The space has a prior for people who are willing to rush head first into something they don't understand in order to attempt to make a quick buck. I'm surprised it was only 12 BTC.

They used several different BTC addresses and even some Monero and other crypto ones. It's not just 12 BTC.

I hope Twitter's report includes a list of all the attacker's tweets.

But there's also a precedent of scams like this being posted on twitter, esp. from accounts impersonating e.g. Elon Musk. Just because it's tweeted by an official account doesn't suddenly make it less scammy - sure some people clearly fell for it, but I reckon most people using twitter with an interest in cryptocurrency would immediately recognise these tweets as a scam, regardless of the source

I could go for 12 BTC right about now

They may not have: It's normally for various cons to pay themselves to some extent to add legitimacy to their actions and generate more attention.

I'm surprised they didn't get more.

Poorly executed, frankly. The tweet just wreaked of spam.

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