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Comment by dusted | Hacker News Reader

> noticed an ad that was endorsed by two well-known celebrities showing you could earn more money than you could earn in a bank

I can't even.

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"sophisticated"

If something is promising you 500% returns or whatever, ask yourself why they aren't investing their marketing budget in their goldmine, ask yourself why are they trying to get you to invest.

This.. "Oh, so you're a millionaire, and you have this opportunity for _ME_ to put my money into to make more money, and you just chose to forego putting your own millions into it out of the goodness of your heart? Right, seems legit."

Celebrities should start to be held liable for their endorsements. The crypto.com endorsement by Matt Damon is a huge example imo

lost all respect for him after that ad. investing in crypto is like voyaging in space? give me a break

How would Matt Damon know it's a scam? If it was a scam, wouldn't they be trying to fool him as well?

Hard to call him a victim with a payday like that, but I think he'd be closer to victim than a charlatan.

Without taking a stance on whether crypto is a scam or not, and whether him doing the ad was good or bad, he's an A-list celebrity.

His ability to charge $ for his celebrity comes from his image/reputation. He has access to paid professionals whose job is to safeguard and burnish his reputation.

Right, I understand the idea... but these companies are not out here saying "HEY THIS IS A SCAM EVERYONE" — a lot of them believe their own nonsense. Professionals are fooled all the time. Outside of an email chain that literally says something like "Hey Matt Damon, can you promote our scam" it seems like a legal boondoggle. How would you prove they knew it was a scam? How would you prove that they didn't do sufficient due-diligence in this example?

We might be talking past each other. I was reading "scam" in a general way, versus as a legal term of art indicating a crime had happened. When the OP said celebrities should be "held liable", I didn't read it to mean criminally liable, just, reputationally liable.

Health and wealth, in particular, are sensitive subjects that are often the source of scams. If I type into Google, "is crypto a", the top autosuggest hits include "a ponzi scheme", "a pyramid scheme", "a bubble", "a scam". Clearly some folks have some concerns. There are editorials in mass market papers discussing whether crypto is a scam, and have been for several years.

If a celebrity still wants to lend their name to such a project, that's their choice, of course. And they might well have a good faith rationale to do so. And perhaps crypto is not a scam! But... it still seems to me that it's a risky proposition, and it should be evident to them and their PR team that it's a risky proposition. If it goes poorly, which it seems like it is, it's reasonable that people will conclude that Matt Damon preferred to make a bunch of money at the risk of other people's financial wellbeing. (And that's fine, too -- fortune favours the bold, after all.)

Ah ok, thanks for clarifying! Yeah I generally agree

This has nothing to do with Matt Damon.

The comment I'm replying to directly mentions Matt Damon, so I'm not sure what the point of your comment is. Can you elaborate?

Sure. Both you and the comment you are replying to are talking in the context of "celebrity endorses crypto, man loses pension". This is not the context in the OP. In OP case no celebrity was endorsing the scam, the scammers simply used the likeness of celebrities without permission to advertise their fake trading website that wasn't actually dealing with crypto at all.

So the context of your discussion is misleading in 2 ways:

1) You're implying that OP has something to do with crypto investments. It doesn't.

2) You're implying that OP has something to do with celebrities endorsing crypto investments. It doesn't.

Celebrities are used to being mouthpieces for various questionable products all the time. Their job is literally to sell their name and likeness. I have a far bigger problem with the so-called tech luminaries peddling this junk in various guises, from the likes of Musk, Altman, Dorsey, Thiel, A16Z, Ohanian, etc. on down. These are the people who lend a real air of legitimacy to the whole space, and I ultimately hold them responsible for the suckering of the regular folks. Musk is right about the dangers of mind-viruses. Too bad he and so many "visionaries" have already been infected by one of the worst.

Nope, celebrities are not acting as mouthpieces in this case. Their likeness is used without permission.

The comment I was responding to was referring to actual paid celebrity endorsements. Matt Damon got a reported $80M for his crypto.com ad.

Sure, but that's not related to OP at all. In OP case the scammers merely photoshopped celebrities to give fake endorsements. That's different from celebrities actually endorsing something.

You're off the mark. The celebrities who are referenced in OP had nothing whatsoever to do with the scam.

That becomes real nasty real fast when scammers literally just copy photos of people and those people have no idea their face is on the next "coin" promising to take everyone to the moons of mars. OR when the scammer uses ai to replace their face with Clooney before telling everyone just to hodl.

Fake celebrity endorsements are often used on these scams. Well-known UK finance media guy Martin Lewis constantly has to try to shut down ads using his image.

My bank right now gives something like 0.01% APY interest, so "more than you could earn in a bank" doesn't really scream "worth the risk" to me. But I guess someone fell for it.

Fortune favors the brave https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gor-8erHxoY

Fortune favors the brave who also dedicate to studying and hard-working.

Addiction (or jail, depending on methods) favors the brave gamblers who pursuit "easy" fortunes. [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160721-the-buzz-that-ke...

[2] https://theconversation.com/get-rich-or-die-trying-when-gamb...

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