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itake

It would be nice if everyone that held him up (YouTubers and influencers) also saw similar legal actions

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This would be reasonable if Terra was a clear scam. But it wasn’t.

Terra was a successful blockchain.

Investors lost money and they had to blame the leader.

how is what do did different from what marketers did?

I think building something interesting, but not marketing it to investors, should be legal/ok, but the moment you start telling the story of this product being a safe 20% return investment is when you need to get in trouble.

"successful blockchain"

Ponzi schemes are often successful until they aren't.

The parent also claimed a false premise: Do Kwon wasn't running a "clear" scam.

PAYING* 4.5 billion in SEC fines for FRAUD and running around with forged passports check that box for me.

*edit: AFAIK, the firm is going through bankruptcy and hasn't necessarily paid anything yet.

The NY stock exchange will be successful right up until it isn’t, the only difference is that it’s backed by a very powerful military.

>the only difference is that it’s backed by a very powerful military.

No, actually there are lots of material differences between the NYSE and Yet Another Shitcoin.

"Successful" seems a rather generous description. If an apartment building is built on quicksand and collapses overnight, are the people who bought apartments the ones to blame?

At some point if you’re buying your apartment in a vast field of quicksand surrounded by hundreds of other sinking and sunk buildings… yes?

I think "successful blockchain" means like "successful crime".

If you are buying in a region entirely located on quicksand, with the intent of selling it off for more before it sinks - yes.

What happens if the developer has built a fake level that hides the quicksand so that you don’t find out about until later?

Let's not pretend that people who put money into such crypto "investments" don't know exactly what is going on. The goal is always to pull money out before the inevitable collapse and leave some other sucker holding the bag. And if you get too greedy and don't manage to do it in time just cry fraud and turn to the government for help. After hundreds of such high profile incidents this is still regularly happening today (see the "Hawk Tuah coin" for example). I have no sympathy for anyone involved in these scams, whether perpetrator or victim.

There were plenty of unwitting, first-time crypto investors in the case of HAWK. The reason that influencers like Ms. Welsh are of such great value to crypto scammers is that they introduce or legitimize crypto investment to new unexperienced and unwitting investors.

These folks are scammers, the people who fall for the scams are victims.

I specifically remember that time and anyone that believed 20% APY could go on forever was either stupid or fooling themselves. And when you said this you were attacked so I’ve never had a bit of sympathy for them.

It had a death loop which got triggered by market pressure on a stablecoin leading to a run on the native token which actually made it converge to zero: can't get much more unsuccessful than that.

i actually disagree with this philosophy. If you are a small business and you co market or collaborate with another and have no idea about their ethics should you see legal action for them being illicit in any way? How would a youtuber be able to audit and actually get enough information to determine a massive company wasn't above board.

if you're going to tell people to buy stuff, make sure its legit stuff before advertising it.

Youtubers aren't indie anymore, they're businesses.

They are YouTubers not auditors, even auditors have a hard time figuring out if companies are legit or not (Wirecard). Why would a YouTuber or influencer be able to do that task as a side thing when getting advertising deals?

Maybe they should take advertising deals from reputable companies? And skip the scam coins? And here’s a hint, they are all scam coins. Promoting a crypto project is just a bad idea.

There’s no way the hawk tuah girl was running an illegitimate coin scam. The premise was so solid!

FTX was considered to be a very reputable company, Bernie Maddoff was a reputable money manager, Enron had quite the reputation, Boeing, VW, Theranos, SVB, etc...

Easy to say that you should only do business with reputable entities until you try and figure out who that is.

In this specific case it was obvious that Luna was based on dubious economics. It didn’t require auditor skills. Barely high school economics. If YouTubers are not blamed for promoting scams without appropriate disclaimers, the crypto industry will grow the wrong way. Making the promoters responsible for this would help legitimate projects.

Please don’t hold me liable for spreading misinformation that I have no ability to verify but just trust me mkay!!!

Those poor little YouTubers get no sympathy from me.

I understand your point, but I still don't think "I couldn't tell whether this was bullshit or not but I got paid a lot to say it" should be a viable defence. Everything with a healthy dose of nuance in the real world though of course.

Imagine if the YouTuber was advertising a blandly illegal product, should the be immune too?

I hate it when one person in organization gets in trouble, and everyone else gets away Scott free

I wonder what the legal line is that makes speech or affiliation into aiding and abetting?

Bar is low, but somewhat vague. One example is anti-touting law [0] where you can't pimp a security and not disclose incentives.

[0] https://www.afslaw.com/perspectives/alerts/crypto-anti-touti....

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