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Comment by bagacrap | Hacker News Reader

My pet theory regarding why DFV held onto many of his shares so long is that he's trying to avoid SEC scrutiny. I don't believe he intended to create a bubble, but profiting from it too much might lead to legal action.

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What law do you think he broke? We don't have any evidence to suggest he played both sides of the trade.

Personally I don't think he's worried. He has tons of Youtube videos in which he goes through his own due diligence. You're allowed to publish your thesis and position.

I didn't say he broke a law, I have no knowledge on that matter, but since the SEC is all three branches of government in one I don't expect it to be fair. However they are reportedly searching reddit for hype posts. I just figure you can't be accused of a pump and dump if there's no dump. IANAL

50 Cent did this about ten years ago. He was hawking a pink sheets stock on Twitter. At least one reason the SEC didn't come down on him like a ton of bricks because he never executed the dump after pumping it.

This is a ridiculous take in context of some of the things that institutional names get up to on national television.

If you’re going to hold someone else’s opinion up for ridicule, perhaps you should first consider the matter a bit more. If you mean institutional names as in individuals like the much maligned Jim Cramer, if you look into it you’ll find that there are very specific rules in place regarding his own ability to hold positions in the companies he discusses. This influencer we’re talking about reached similar if not greater sway over his audience, all the while directly profiting from their misunderstandings and gullibility. He may have hoped that his viral screenshots would save him from legal consequences, but in the end they may instead work against him. Of course, he had no personal brand name to trade on when he started out, so those very screenshots were also his best way of getting anyone’s attention in the first place.

The ones who deserve ridicule here are the people who continued to amplify this pump and dump long after it was readily apparent that that’s what it was. They are still doing this, including sadly here at Hacker News.

> there are very specific rules in place regarding his own ability to hold positions in the companies he discusses.

Would that be...being CEO of a giant "nonprofit" charitable trust?

Yes, and one that has somehow avoided benefiting from cashing in on any quixotic public attempts at a short squeeze he personally launched and curated.

Pump and dump? Can you explain how you reached this conclusion?

It truly feels like WSB organically triggered a contrarian move against the shorts to squeeze them. At least that is the reality I see — so why should we reject this?

Although the exact time is a matter for debate, at some point, the value shorts exited their position and "buy and hold" remained the refrain. At that point it became a speculative bubble with no real end goal. The bubble is a pump & dump because there were still a lot of hype posts ("10k is not a meme").

My pet theory is that he hedged it either in another account or partially through the retail etf

To be fair he took like 13m in profits and will have millions more if it levels off at 90ish. And remember we're just going based off screenshots, so if he were actually trying to be deceptive, he could just fake the screenshots. I hope he didn't, because that sounds like something the SEC wouldn't like. However yesterday's update he said would be his last, so I'm thinking his lawyer might have told him to shut up.

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