YouTube channel “TechLead” creator has created a crypto and pulled the rug
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"If you were to sell 0.001 token for $1.00, you'd then have a Billion Dollar Valuation. ;-)
This reminds me of a stock market simulation in my Econ 102 class. With a fellow student, we picked a few stocks, and sold them to each other for a very low price, and then bought all of them up as the other students watched the trends. We repeated this for 1/2 of the stocks in the simulation. We then sold each other 1 share of those stocks for $99.99 (the maximum price in the simulation), and ended up with almost all the money. 8)
The professor thought we must have hacked the computer, but we played by the rules."
Sounds like a terrible prof then. What is such a simulation supposed to teach if not that those kinds of attacks are possible? These are inherent in the construction of the system and your prof should have just given you cudos for having understood that.
> we picked a few stocks, and sold them to each other for a very low price, and then bought all of them up as the other students watched the trends. We repeated this for 1/2 of the stocks in the simulation.
I can see how you could use this strategy to exchange a fairly low amount of money for these stocks. But that would mean you have less money than you started with, and more stock.
> We then sold each other 1 share of those stocks for $99.99 (the maximum price in the simulation), and ended up with almost all the money.
And then this trade causes you to have the same amount of money and the same amount of stock. How did you get the money back? Did you actually end up with almost all of the money, or did you end up with almost all of the market capitalization?
It shouldn't be possible to make any sales of a stock at the maximum price, because the only thing that can happen to you, if you buy a stock at the maximum price, is that the price of your stock goes down.
Everyone in the class started with a random set of stocks, and a set amount of funds. We looked at our portfolios and decided which to pump, and which to dump... then reversed when it was time to max out our portfolio values.
When everyone is focused on the small picture, it is really easy to play the macro game.
Note: You could put any price on a sell order, but someone had to match it in order to buy, so two people could quickly set the price of anything with a 1 share transaction.
It's been almost 40 years, but I think we maxed out things with few hours work across a semester.
Sounds like the answer is "yes, we maxed the total market cap" which is distinctly different from "we ended up with almost all the money". You didn't have the money, you only had a fake stock valuation bubble.
Had the Prof been a better teacher, he might have pointed it out, instead of me learning that lesson on HN decades later. 8)
I never worried about the funds, only the portfolio value, since the funds were a zero sum game.
Amazing system we got.
But it also sounds like it's worth noting here that in reality, you cannot borrow money based on a stock valuation set by a very low-volume trade to which you were a party.
Isn't the whole stock market? I always wondered, they call these companies "billion dollar companies", but does that take into account the order book and how steep sorted order prices drop of?
Apparently this tech lead guy created programming videos to teach you how to get hired at big tech companies. It turned out the partner guy in the videos wasn’t even a developer but had maybe interned somewhere in data science? And both of these guys were claiming to be career professionals, as if they were staff or principal engineers.
The ads reminded me of another character from many years ago that would show off a Lamborghini or some sports car in his garage with a wall of books - another scammy self help guru.
Edit: I looked tech lead up on YouTube as I read the Reddit post and typed up this post. I can’t tell if this guy is trying to be a parody/using dry humor or if he’s a narcissist sociopath.
Seriously though, it pains me to see the young and naive fall for these scams. Also, wasn't there a data science YouTuber recently that was busted for more or less plagiarizing their content?
You might be thinking of Siraj Raval?
https://mobile.twitter.com/AndrewM_Webb/status/1183150368945...
(Or not, I’m sure there’s been a dozen other cases of this in data science alone)
“Here in my garage, just bought this new Lamborghini here. It’s fun to drive up here in the Hollywood hills. But you know what I like more than materialistic things? Knowledge. In fact, I’m a lot more proud of these seven new bookshelves that I had to get installed to hold two thousand new books that I bought. It’s like the billionaire Warren Buffett says, “the more you learn, the more you earn.””
Unfortunately it looks they all got pulled from youtube. Not on bitchute either.
Art imitates life imitates art...
He's clearly comedic, the question is whether he's also an unhealthy person. I lost interest in him when it looked like he was destroying his own life while simultaneously making a show out of it. I do hope it truly is just a show, because otherwise it's sad that he basically lost his family while being absorbed into an absurd YT personality.
That's his shtick.
Backstory: an H-1B Facebook Ads-team employee was on a PIP, was denied internal transfer, and had a SEV follow-up task he was called to present at a SEV Review. I don't have any first-hand knowledge of pressure-levels within Ads, but considering that's where the money comes from I assume it's pretty high. He tried to request more time, but a task nagbot kept changing the task "due date" back any time he tried to adjust it. He never made it to that SEV Review #JusticeForQin
Luckily he's a very bad actor as well, he doesn't sound very trustworthy when trying to pull a fast one.
It's a meme.
You would describe someone as a narcissistic sociopath from the basis of your web psychoanalysis?
It's a very serious claim to say that someone has mental illness, or that they are engaged in criminal behavior over cryptocurrency scams, especially in a public forum where you have zero ability to unring a bell.
- The reddit post only provides an etherscan link to the transaction in which he adds liquidity. Where did he remove liquidity?
- Permanent removal of liquidity clearly breaks the promise of 1MM for at least 1 USDC. But a temporary removal does not, correct?
- As long as more people want to buy MM, a temporary removal of liquidity leads to a shortage of MM thereby driving price quicker.
- I flat out don't understand the "selling without selling" part.
It appears to me so far neither "MM will go to the moon" nor "1MM for 1USDC is guaranteed" appear to be false statements. Let's not call him a fraudster just yet.
He HODLS 1M in his wallet in solidarity with the community to show he is not selling, but simultaneously secretly sells inflation to profit the same - is what the author is claiming.
Most importantly he seems to be very good at YouTube marketing. Apparently many have watched his videos, even in this crowd, which means he knows how to attract views.
My intuition is that this is a stunt, but there is a non zero chance that he is in over his head.
If there was no ambiguity then it would be just really boring channel.
Cram the videos with how to be rich keywords and then provide just enough content people still watch the video
Now you're good at YouTube marketing too
He has a very good video recently on a scam being run by influencers and provides some pretty damning evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv6ne6VQCZI
All good and well except they started to create the drama and their fans would dogpile on people or as twitter would describe 'Targeted harassment campaigns'.
CoffeeZilla is a drama channel often with dubious opinion driven videos. There a few other drama channels in the professional world but I won't give them spotlight.
As a dev my first products are generally pretty average and my prices are high to filter to people that actually want the solution I'm selling.
My opinions is being a scammer you have the intention to take someone's money with out delivering any marketed value.
So there is the problem who can comment on someone intention.
I remember when coffeezila went after a youtuber who created a course. It was his first course but he sold 2 millions worth, everyone's first course sucks, he was unlucky enough to have a lot of people buy his first product. Then be labeled a scammer by drama channels because it wasn't university quality content.
These people are producing nothing themselves just amplifying problems in other people.
While you are doing a social good by keeping violent offenders behind bars you also have a profit motive to ensure you have a stready stream of working entering the system to keep up with contracts and order quantity. Leading to many prisons being nothing more than forced labour camps.
In the same way, drama channels start out doing a social good. But they have a profit motive to find 'problematic' people, were the bar is lowered to ensure you have enough content.
You are basically punishing trying, raising the risks of failing to the level of social outcast.
Most of the obvious scams are obviously scams. So at what point do drama channels provide any more value than entertainment, when anyone can clearly see you are not going to make a million dollars drop shipping toasters.
Now their is the grey area, where its uncertain if a product is a scam. Talking about it is fine, but that's not how drama channels work. They make black and white claims, more often black because sensational content sells.
Let's not confuse things, these channels are for entertainment not social good.
I my girlfriend watches drama channels and I watched curiously as each and every successful female pop culture channel was targeted and brought down for being 'problematic'. I thought it was funny at first because they participated in the system that brought them down. Then I realised these channels were a form of social policing were after you remove the threat, the treashold for normal behaviour is lowered until you became the target of the mob.
I later figured out its envy that drives these channels, its entertaining to people to watch others fall from grace.
It’s so hard to take crypto seriously.
That's how he's gotten a million subscribers.
I also have to feel sorry for him since his wife left him and took his kid. Maybe it was deserved... I don't know. As a fellow survivor of a California divorce(why I needed a FANG income to begin with), I can't help but pity him. It could be why he's pushing the scams so hard now.
The fact that he is being serious half of the time makes it funnier, IMO.
I like his channel.. been following him for quite a while, and I mostly agree with the things he says. He makes it sound like it's all a joke or made up, but it's really not.
It tries to avoid making biased or personal assessments about people in order to be inclusive. Obviously major red flags or cheating will be noted, but you don’t want to assume someone is an a*hole just because they are matter-of-fact ( IMO, there’s a thin line between the two ) and you have different communication styles
It seems the solution is to have a real world pair programming or collaboration where there is areas to disagree, debate, compromise on. Algorithmic Interviews that have a clear right/wrong answer leaves little room for personal opinion
Obviously there are cultural differences, where an article that was trending on HackerNews was how Russians don’t smile as much.
In plenty of interviews I've had the "this person seems difficult to work with" vibe. In the few situations where I've hired that person, the reality has been much worse than I expected.
People being jerks may only manifest in certain environments.
That’s true. But I’ve met jerky people who feel secure about their tenure , or secure that people are too nice to call them out (Google’s not the most confrontational place, everyone has a cushy job), irregardless of the environment. If those people are comfortable doing in that environment, it’s not unlikely that TechLead’s character is very much real
https://guruscoach.com/techlead-patrick-shyu/#Making_over_a_...
When someone has different opinion on certain thinks, it does not make them toxic.
Secondly. There is "no rug pull" whatever that means.
The coin is trading at 17 USD after being introduced at 1 USD less than a week ago:
https://info.uniswap.org/#/tokens/0x6b4c7a5e3f0b99fcd83e9c08...
The coin is described here:
TechLead is a satirical channel and a satirical character. And this is a satirical project.
The coin is worthless. It is 4 lines of original code. Basically just saying the supply is fixed at 1 mio tokens.
It was introduced via Uniswaps liquidity provider mechanism with a thousand USD or so in liquidity. This will buy back the coin at 1 USD as long as the liquidity provider is running.
Giving the coin a "market value" of 1 mio. USD even though it is of course absolutely worthless.
Seeing this the crypto community started to traded it - higher and higher - while the founder of course sells into it.
There have been ICOs which definitely have been represented as securities and have been regulated/quashed/fined.
But when not used as a representation of ownership of currencies or assets... what is a cryptocurrency and does it fit into existing law about securities fraud?
Another way to ask the question: should the SEC regulate pump and dump schemes with collectables? (I'd say beanie babies and pokemon cards to date myself, I don't know what people are speculating on these days)
The tax guidance in Canada says yes, they are.
I don’t think they’re being advertised like collectibles. They’re advertised like investments. This is the first time I’ve actually heard them compared to collectibles.
My personal experience makes me believe there’s not much liquidity. Also, as a class of currency the crypto scene is printing money faster than anything we’ve ever seen in history IMO.
A security is very specifically an instrument which represents the value of something else.
And tax guidance isn't the same as general classification of something (there are lots of really weird tax rules. For example: the US supreme court decided that a tomato was a vegetable, not a fruit for tax purposes while it is without any question actually a fruit.
The SEC regulates how companies represent themselves to investors and how certain things representing ownership are traded and represented. The exact surface that fits inside the SEC I don't know exactly and one has to be an expert to know (and the SEC doesn't necessarily know itself).
Cryptocurrencies went from being completely outside regulation to somewhat inside, but the laws, courts, and regulations are starting to slowly catch up. Everyone is still figuring out things as they go along.
When cryptos are used to represent a piece of ownership though, it is cut and dry, they are securities and subject to existing regulations.
When cryptos don't correspond to the value of something external though, they are somewhat new and just don't yet fit into the existing regulatory framework and the attitude of regulators is generally wait and see while going after the most clear abuses and easy cases first to build up a framework for whatever the future will hold.
"common sense" of what cryptos are or aren't doesn't work, whatever regulators do, there will be high profile lawsuits for the courts to decide what they are and aren't, shaping this process and doing things which are clearly legal or illegal first in the best interests of the regulator is what happens. (in other words, they don't want to go out on a limb right away in tricky edge cases, they want to get things in a pattern and decided with the easy cases first)
So then it would be more accurate for me to have said that in Canada all crypto gains and losses are considered income or capital gains/losses for tax purposes. IE: You have to track your gains/losses like you do for stocks.
I only considered my side of the view where there’s not much difference. I’m guessing you’re talking about the side that creates coins where the technicalities of whether or not they’re securities makes a huge difference for regulatory requirements.
Thanks for explaining.
In the case of the Web, the answer clearly turned out to be a deafening No. Years ago, I had higher hopes for Bitcoin in this regard. Same for so called “censorship resistant decentralized platforms”. I spent years pondering how such a thing might work, before I realized that no technology, no matter how advanced, cannot be struck down by a single act of Congress. Save for cases of crystal clear constitutional protection, if any technology becomes a big enough problem, or a problem for the right people, it will have its day, and then it will be kneecapped.
Once something becomes the lowest-common-denominator populist solution or the solution for the privileged, those use cases become "bad" because of value judgements of the people using them.
It's a kind of romanticism for rebellion, and with cryptos usually a broad misunderstanding of what money is, what it does, and how it works.
Indeed nothing can be the growing rebellious trend forever. It either wins and becomes the standard or dies failing to live up to whatever ideals it didn't actually have.
>can smart people create anything ingenious that escapes being coopted / subsumed by the establishment? Or, can such a thing survive popularity on its own terms?
No, everything has vulnerabilities that will be eventually exploited.
The American constitution and the many governments around the world inspired by it have done a pretty good job of avoiding a complete consumption (in ways that, for example, communism did not), in part by specifically designing not just to handle or avoid greed and control, but to use those characteristics of societies as a feature.
I can plant tobacco and make "unregulated cigarretes" with the goal of not being regulated by any government. The goal is that you can smoke it anywhere, no regulations on its composition, and I can advertise it anywhere.
That does not matter, it is still regulated and I cannot unilaterally opt-out of government regulations. (Or I can, but that is a crime and is what crime organizations do).
"I found it to be, quite interesting SOCIAL EXPERIMENT!". (8m 33s)
------------ I see this: ------------
1. SOCIAL EXPERIMENT! Nothing else!
2. Funny experiment. Attacking the very current psychological aspects of people on internet. CLICK-HERE, and for 1$ USD you can have Yacht, Luxury Mansion, ... just tell them about 1M $, Crypto and Tokens! People will do whatever without thinking about it.
The problem I have with it is the extreme deadpan delivery, the arrogance and closeness to reality.
Obviously he’s playing a character; but I wish I didn’t get so much of a “this is serious” vibe.
I really don't think he's playing a character. His videos have been like this for years, it's only in the last year or so that he's ramped up the "satire" content to a ridiculous level.
Like the numerous “this one tip” videos where he goes on and on about the tip and then it turns out to be “be predestined for this job” or “get referred” or something.
Of course I could be misreading it.
Suppose I see a guy on the street selling 1 dollar raffle tickets for a nearby sports car. If I buy the ticket knowing that I'm probably not going to win and there's a decent chance the guy on the street doesn't even own the car and is just going to run off - am I really getting scammed, or am I knowingly participating in a high risk and high reward bet?
With the Million Token thing, he's not even pretending that the token does anything. I had honestly understood it as a comedic illustration of the uselessness of cryptocurrency. You can buy into it and if you sell at the right time you might make money, but it is definitely a zero sum game. Is this a scam?
Obviously it's a scam if he promised he would buy the token at a minimum of 1 dollar and he isn't doing that. He should face whatever criminal or civil penalties are applicable if he's committing fraud. But, if he does what he said he would do, then it seems like a transparent bad odds gambling game where he gets a significant cut/advantage.
For the record I always thought he was somewhat on the spectrum but much of what he does is his attempt at humor(and I often find it funny).
I think cryptocurrencies generally are scams, but this one doesn't seem like any more of a scam than any other token. Maybe TechLead is selling some - but why wouldn't he? It's a gimmick token.
1 - https://info.uniswap.org/#/pools/0x84383fb05f610222430f69727...
Million Token - Answering questions and status update (as a Millionaire) ^[1]
Making jokes and making people laugh is an old trick in the hustler and charmer book. But what is behind the façade? Even the life of a digital nomad, if it's staying in hotel rooms or living alone. Not a good life even for people on the spectrum.
Unfortunately people mix up these oppositional personality traits all the time.
"Karma bit me hard, as a millionaire."
EDIT: wrong thread nevermind
god. do people actually fall for this crap?
Elderly folks getting scammed?
Imagine Dollar and Apples as our currencies. The exchange rate is 1 to 1 for this example. So in order to provide Uniswap with liquidity you give them 100 dollar and 100 apples. People can trade against those assets, in turn you get a small fee for every trade. If person A comes along and buys 40 Apples, the Uniswap wallet now contains 140 dollar and 60 apples. These still belong to you, as they represent your share in the wallets.
What Techlead did is, he created a coin (like our Apples) and provided Uniswap with his coin and USDC (basically a coin tied to the dollar). This way people could buy his coin. No, after them buying he pulled out money from the wallets, now his shares are predominantly in USDC. By removing the liquidity the pools are now incapable to provide sellers of his coin with USDC, therefor the market is dead.
imagine digging dirt out of the ground in your backyard and claiming it has value
thats how i view crypto
Then imagine folks that just fail to see this after 10+ years still think about coal power plants!
Not the most elegant pump n dump, exit scams I've seen so far, but really, if anyone is saying "to the moon" or mentions the 'moon' it is a red flag here. Come on. Its obvious in the name: 'MillionToken'
> "as a millionaire".
This time as a scamillionaire.
Also him and another youtuber domain squatted another coding prep site which they sued for and won it back.
It’s simply not worth the effort to spend a couple of hours on Google for some half remembered internet celebrity.