Comment by errantmind | Hacker News Reader

Comment by errantmind | Hacker News Reader

I posted this in a related thread, but it is relevant here as well.

Anyone who has spent significant time in certain corners of the internet has seen the high prevalence of get-rich-quick desperation in (some) cryptocurrencies. It repeats each cycle, but was at high intensity this year due to the low barrier to entry with BSC smart contracts. Anyone could create a PnD shitcoin.

All these scammers do is set up a nice looking website, fake some 'partnerships', then get influencers and spammers to put the word out. Once the scammers determine the market is at peak liquidity, they 'rug pull' by selling through all the liquidity, driving the price into the ground. Some rug pulls are instant, others are slow, to milk the buyers.

These scams are very common.. there are thousands of them. A lot of people willingly participate because it is possible to make some profit off suckers before the developers pull the rug. The profits are drying up as suckers are running out of money or are finally getting wise to the formula.

Despite how it sounds, I'm not in favor of regulation. I'm all for people learning lessons the hard way. I did at various times in my life and am better for it

> Despite how it sounds, I'm not in favor of regulation. I'm all for people learning lessons the hard way.

If your neighbors pile their trash up on their lawn they might learn a lesson about rats the hard way, but the rats aren't going to stay put on their property.

While people are "learning their lesson" the number of scams are growing, the scams grow more sophisticated, the money the scammers earn gets funneled into other kinds of crime. I feel like there's a common but naive sentiment that you can take a "social Darwinism" approach to petty crime without the small fry growing until their activities start impacting you and your loved ones. Scamming is an ecosystem like any other and it will grow healthier and more robust if you let it flourish.

Unfair comparison. In your example the neighbor is forcing rats onto my property through their poor decisions. That is not the case with them making risky financial investments, and these scams are not some slippery slope that infect all of society. People are generally resilient against most scams after they encounter them once or twice.

You could use your argument to justify government regulation for almost any decision that has consequences. This isn't 'social Darwinism', nor is it 'tough love'. It is about being able to make your own financial decisions without coercion and without obstruction

If people choose to enter into poor 'investments' in a hope to get-rich-quick, that is their decision and they can live with the consequences

Letting crypto scams flourish hurts the ability for crypto to be taken seriously by a lot of people.

If you're bored and want to see receipts for a decent number of them, check out https://old.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/

Current favorite whipping targets are Safemoon and Doge.

Don't forget Internet Computer Protocol (ICP), which tries to replace the Internet but is also based on it.

The price of ICP immediately following the listing on Coinbase should have been the signal to exit the current market cycle for anyone paying attention.

Safemoon I'd say could definitely qualify (although I could see this one coming back with a vengeance eventually), but Doge is a perennial favorite with a long history and I think it's perfectly reasonable to invest in that one with the expectation that you'll most likely make some decent returns in ~5 years.

I'm also a dog parent to a Shiba Inu so I feel like I must own some Doge, so I might be a bit biased.

We can argue about "reasonable to invest" but it's certainly true that Doge is perhaps the original memecoin and it's unlikely there can be a rug-pull the way other coins do.

It's likely that selling at .70 was the way to go (give those bags to someone else) however, could be a long time until it returns there.

I agree it's probably not getting back up to .70 anytime soon, and we might not see the insane price increases it had earlier this year again, but I do expect long-term it could be good to get (and I do have some myself), despite the only thing it really has going for it is Elon tweets and the meme factor.

/r/Buttcoin has been about as bad smelling their own farts over the years as the Bitcoin subreddit has.

The occasional blog post by long-time critics (Gerard et al) is the only thing of value you can find there.

Also, sometimes the different between a scam and a bad product is hard to tell - the founders may not even know.

I do know that being a big or famous name in tech made it very easy to capitalize on that name value by selling coins with your backing. Some of you are on this site reading this right now!

It ends up not mattering if the project is a complete dud. You become a multi-millionarie anyways. And it was all legal. But not a lot of value was produced.

Crypto: never assume competent malice when you can assume incompetent malice.

Yes, much of the valuations are purely speculative and, as a result, some people end up gaining wealth that doesn't appear 'earned', but this is true of any very early investor. There will always be people who say "there was no way you could have known this would become as big as it did"

Cryptocurrency is teaching a lot of people about finance, who wouldn't otherwise know nor be allowed to participate. I believe that is overall a net positive, even if some people lose money in the process.

I once tracked newly listed pancakeswap pairs. Literally 98% of then rugged within 2-3 hours of launch.

I'm waiting for the dragon satoshi to wake up on day and transfer one USD out :D That d be the rug pull to rule them all.

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