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Comment by cronix | Hacker News Reader

This all seems like a nice attack vector for a nation state or large group of organized hackers. Flood a forum with bots spouting pro-stock x and "stick it to the man" messages, buy a bunch of shares and sit back and wait. Sell at 4-5x, Profit, Rinse, Repeat and leave the suckers holding the bag.

There will be suckers. We just haven't hit that point yet.

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Sure, but aren’t we all adults and isn’t this a free market . Somehow when hedge funds do it in secret then no one is to blame but now that game has caught in somehow people not in suits are to be blamed . Either way there were always suckers and always will be . I would rather have information out and then decide rather than a bunch of hedge fund bro’s frat secret.

No “we’re all adults” and “we can think for ourselves” clearly doesn’t work. You need hard government regulation on foreign direct investment.

I believe that the fascinating thing about WSB is how they are communicating. Using invented language and rapidly changing memes makes it very hard for an actor to do spam/bots at scale. Maybe this is the future of language that is resistant to misinformation, symbols/word change so fast and the only way to communicate is to use the most community accepted viral alphabet.

> This all seems like a nice attack vector for a nation state

I keep seeing stuff like this but I don't understand the motivation. What would a rival to the US have to gain by bankrupting a handfull of US hedge funds?

The buck does not stop at the hedge funds. You are bankrupting from bottom to top. Owing 100k to a bank is your problem. Owing 1 billion to a bank is the banks problem. It can turn into a systemic crash like event as seen in 2008.

Because bankrupting these funds has a negative effect on the ENTIRE market. Look at what's being setup up now. Volatility is cranked, the S&P shaved off a few %, the dollar is pumping. Things are NOT looking good.

Any argument that boils down to "we need to protect you from yourself" needs to be considered with extreme skepticism.

Why don't they just target hedge-funds? Its easier because there are less people to manipulate.

Why are we not funding this?

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