Argentinian president backs away from LIBRA memecoin after 90% crash | Hacker News Reader

Argentinian president backs away from LIBRA memecoin after 90% crash

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45 pointswslh28 comments

In British Columbia there used to be the mining exploration companies that would list on the Vancouver Stock Exchange (which no longer exists). As far as I could tell, they would send one or two people into the boonies in BC somewhere. They would then write an hyperbole filled prospectus to persuade people to buy shares in this company. I once emailed the owner of one these companies to ask what the exit was: in other words, what would the payout be if I held out until the end, assuming they had actually obtained rights to a viable gold or other valuable mineral deposit. Instead of an email reply, I got a phone call from the owner. He never answered the question, just lots of BS about why I should buy more shares. But at least in the case of these scams, there was the small (vanishngly small?) possibility of a good payout. But what is the exit for memecoins? As far as I can tell, the idea is you buy them on issue, hope the hype drives them up to ridiculous values within hours, and then dump them. Please correct me if I'm am missing something.

No, you pretty much got it. It's a game of chicken and the last ones holding are the losers.

There is the small possibility they graduate from a memecoin to a full fledged crypto coin. Hell if you're lucky enough an entire governmental agency will be named after your coin and the value will skyrocket. [1]

If you want to learn more about meme coins, I highly recommend the QAA episode on it. [2]

1. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dogecoin/

2. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-qaa-podcast-30956096/epis...

I think you mean coins that trade in a sustained market.

> send one or two people into the boonies ... there was the small (vanishngly small?) possibility of a good payout

This was called "wild catting." It gave people an excuse to carry TNT dynamite into the boonies and detonate explosives for fun (like fireworks for grown ups).

Memecoins are pump and dump schemes. I guess it’ll take more time for the world to know, till then it’s going to wreak havoc

Sometimes things just happen. I mean, nobody could have foreseen this!

Haha, except the people running it..

and the economic monetary theorists.

In my experience, most people participating are aware of it. The clueless people you see are minority. It’s not any different from lottery that people know they won’t win but still put money into except with better optics (skill vs luck)

Interesting, I have the opposite experience: most folks I know who gamble think they will win. I’m pretty sure some even think they are winning while actively losing.

Edit: I looked for more information online and this resonates, those who don’t know if they will win at least think it is their only shot at a better life.

I miss the days when they had to at least write a ‘white paper’ to try and sell their pump and dump scheme. Now it’s just low effort grifting, yet it somehow seems to keep working.

I’m kind of glad that its reached its logical conclusion. It’s always been pure speculation, at least now they’ve dropped the pretense.

The secret sauce is how to be in the front, being able to scam a president is huge. I am not saying that Milei is not responsible for that but just a talk with his inner circle will tell him to not proceed, he is happy-tweeting. I think in this case the scammers themselves went too far, one thing is to try the pump-and-dump in dozens of Telegram accounts and another is to have a president in front.

The ppresident of US did it, we should not be surprised seeing other presidents trying it

I believe Mr Milei got his lion's share and so he is going to let it slide.

How is Bitcoin and Ethereum not a pump and dump scheme?

Bitcoin and Ethereum don't have "insiders", and the ownership pool is sizeable and diverse enough to make pump and dump difficult to perform with them.

It's important to recognize that pump-and-dump coins (scams), memecoins, and (for lack of a better term) cryptocurrencies have separate characteristics.

Pump-and-dump coins have insiders that control the majority of the coins and know when to exit. They are "in" on the game, and they specifically manipulate others to exit with a windfall with no expectation of the coin to last past the exit. TRUMP is an example of a pump-and-dump coin.

Memecoins have enough diverse holders that there's nobody with enough coins for a dump to kill it completely. Memecoins are volatile because they still respond to hype and the people involved acknowledge their questionable value, but there's not a person or group of people that know what's going to happen to the coin. DOGE is an example of a memecoin.

The more classic, well-established cryptocurrencies are like memecoins where the market sees real value in them or their future. Not only do they have a large and diverse pool of holders, but they serve general use cases that the holders perceive has having value (note, not the same as the holders perceiving the coin has value, but that the use-cases for the coin drive its value). BTC is an example of a cryptocurrency.

BTC and ETH may still have as much inherent value as pump-and-dump coins, but if they take a ride to zero, it will happen differently than a pump-and-dump.

I agree with you that ETH and BTC are also based on speculation but they differ from Memecoins in their characteristics. Memecoins have no chance of recovering after a very large rag-pull but ETH and BTC have been around for a while to make a ragpull harder to pull off and sometimes not even that advantageous to the rug pullers in the sense "Had they waited longer they'd probably draw more profit in"

What was the hope here? That it replaces the Pesos? Privatized money creation like in the middle ages?

(My guess is that he was just scammed himself or it was corruption)

How is this surprising? He's an anarcho-capitalist, his profound belief is that people getting scammed deserve it. What's surprising to me is that he didn't do it earlier.

My bet is late 2025 for the same thing happening in the US.

Well, he is not an anarcho-capitalist in motion since the Argentinian currency rate is not free to trade, so there is an incredible act here promoting an scammy token: you are free to buy and sell an scam, will be scammed, but you cannot trade a real asset in the free market.

Anarcho capitalists are never in motion to be fair. Once they understand the two words are contradictory, they quite often turn towards authoritarian capitalism/liberalism.

He did it before; he publicly admitted that he got ~ us$10k to promote CoinX, and another time with $VULC.

I don't understand how people don't realize memecoins are a Ponzi scheme

i think many understand the scheme, but think they are clever enough to profit from the scheme or see it as acceptable way of gambling

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crypto-in-trump-2-0-wi...

Long story short, most people buying these are going in knowing its a game. There are some unwritten "norms", like the issuer doesn't "pull the rug" immediately. But they could and the norms sometimes get violated, as there are no real rules around it yet.

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