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Comment by hntrader | Hacker News Reader

Promoting something that you own isn't illegal. Jack Dorsey and thousands of others are promoting BTC while simultaneously owning it on social media. Musk also promotes TSLA and SpaceX to his benefit (since he holds equity).

It may be a bit of a grey area ethically since he didn't disclose his ownership until later, but if he was doing it because he really believes in crypto and it's not just a cynical attempt to pump something he's holding and then close the position into the buying frenzy a day later, then I have no problem with it. Of course, though, it's not possible to read this intention from a distance.

One interpretation is that this is in the same ethical category as Instagram influencers who get paid to flash products in front of their users without disclosing that they're being paid.

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> who get paid to flash products in front of their users without disclosing that they're being paid.

Which is why it's not just ethically wrong but also illegal in many countries. Why the US allowing such behavior is beyond me.

There's also a more charitable interpretation though. It's not clear to me that the lack of disclosure benefited Musk.

Compare these two sequences of events:

1 - Initial purchase followed by disclosure followed by promotion

2 - Initial purchase followed by promotion followed by disclosure

In either case, Musk bought BTC at around 35k.

Do we have reason to think that the BTC price is higher now because Musk followed path (2) than (1)? It's not clear to me that that's the case here. And if it's not the case, then why on a first principles basis are we upset?

I agree though that "best practice" is to disclose upfront, if for little other reason than pump and dumpers (which Musk is not) have muddied the waters and this has become a generally good tradition to uphold as a result.

It is not legal in the US. If you're being paid to show or use something and there's no reasonable expectation that you would be, it must be disclosed. The FTC has guidelines on this and has gotten involved in the larger cases of this happening (such as the CS:Go skin gambling scandal where big streamers were being paid to stream gambling on the site, often a fake version with no actual risk and/or distorted rewards). You'll find most larger 'influencers' are aware of this and take steps to mention when something is sponsored, but there's a huge number of smaller ones where there's little enforcement.

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