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Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

For example look at the real price history of a VC funded token called "Internet Computer" [0] by selecting "ALL" on Coinbase. Out of no where on launch, it was listed on Coinbase and Binance already with the top 10 coins of the largest market capitalisations. Only VCs and angel investors with such connections to these exchanges could have made such a listing like that possible.

After that, then came the VC dump with the price now at $59 - $60 for weeks with the bagholders entering at >$200 or >$400 on listing day.

When I see charts like that, that is what you call a VC pump and dump.

[0] https://www.coinbase.com/price/internet-computer

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Was just talking with friends yesterday about this - Internet Computer getting absolutely dumped by the VCs who pumped it so hard from the beginning. Once I saw that they were headquartered in the Bay, had their entire team in the Bay, and wanted to be the “everything for everyone” computer, that was kinda my sign that this was a scam.

Internet Computer aka DFINITY is not a scam. The price action is fishy, but when you investigate the project’s vision, the technical architecture, the team behind it, and the community building on it, you’ll discover that it’s perhaps the most serious, innovative, and ambitious system out there.

I agree that people often use scam to mean “it’s not worth what people think it is”, “this is going to be vaporware”, “this doesn’t have much real world use”. I expect that the folks at DFINITY are actually trying to build something.

But it’s a little beside the point. I’ve seen some of how the sausage was made in creating and listing new crypto projects, and it’s pretty ugly. There’s a lot of focus on pumping, shilling each other (all while putting in a facade of independence), “tokenomics” which is 50% euphemism for Ponzi scheme. There are likely scam-like qualities to the way that this was listed, who was involved in providing early liquidity / pricing (the initial listing price/pump matters a lot in keeping the price stable above a certain value), and a suite of lesser benefits the inner crowd get.

I left before ICP so I don’t have any facts, but what I saw with projects before that make me confident the exact same thing happened.

I chuckled at the analogy with sausage-making. Thank you for getting your point across!

How large are those bags you’re holding I wonder?

Dfinity is a typical example of shady behavior in crypto space. Private VCs got in on 0.02$/token, then presale was 4 $/token and then on launch day there was probably lots of wash trading to lure the suckers into buying it at 300 $ - 650 $ /token.... A classic premeditated pump & dump. Nothing unusual, many crypto projects have done it and exchanges are in on it. Welcome to crypto 2.0. This is how it's done now. I think the projects has some merit, but the way that funding is done is just pure exploitation on unregulated markets. I'm wondering what crypto 3.0 will bring when the next bull cycle emerges.

To anyone familiar with these matters, is this likely going to be investigated by SEC? If this is not investment scam I don’t know what is.

It’s not different than a direct listing for $100B and dumping shares on everyone as fast as you can

Which was obvious Coinbase was going to do and did in their own stock market listing, to me

You sell into liquidity, liquidity comes from people wanting financial exposure, people wanting financial exposure comes from buzz and marketing

When things are actually under SEC purview, the only difference between fraud and not fraud is disclosure. If you tell people and they only watch youtubers instead of reading, you are fine

No, tokens typically are not under SEC purview and they’ve gotten better at ensuring that

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