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Comment by deng | Hacker News Reader

Indeed, the Gas-Town token is down 97% from all-time high, see https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/gas-town/

He's obviously a smart guy, so he definitely should've known better. It's weird how these AI evangelists use AI for everything, but somehow he didn't ask ChatGPT what all of this means and if it may have reputational damage, because I just asked if I should claim these trading fees, and it said:

   Claiming could be interpreted as:

   * Endorsing the token

   * Being complicit if others get rugged later

   * This matters if your X account has real followers.

and in the end told me to NOT claim these fees unless I'm OK with being associated with that token.

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When you're under a lot of stress, your internal evaluation function for what is moral can start to break down. It may have been hard for him to turn the money down, especially if he's addicted to the sense of power he's getting from his coding agent spend. As he said, his wife suggested they can't afford it.

There's another thing. A certain type of engineer seems to get sucked into Amazon's pressure culture. They either are, or end up, a bit manic. Laid back and relaxed one day (especially after holidays), but wound up and under a lot of internal pressure to produce the next, and a lot more of the latter. Something like Gas Town must be a crazy fix when you're feeling that pain. Combined with the vision that if you don't, you're unemployed/unemployable in 12 to 24 months, you might feel you have no choice but to spend every waking minute at it.

It's a bit (more than a bit) rude to analyse someone at a distance. And to be honest, I think something like Gas Town is probably one of the possible shapes of things to come. I don't think what I can observe looks super healthy, is all.

> Indeed, the Gas-Town token is down 97% from all-time high,

What else could possibly have happened? Surely every one put their money in with the express intention of participating in a pump and dump.

Not taking the money would have been the high road. I don't think basing the economy on gambling and scams is good for society. But who could realistically claim to be a 'victim' here?

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