A sitting US president launched two memecoins that wiped out $4.3B+ | Hacker News Reader

A sitting US president launched two memecoins that wiped out $4.3B+

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That is nothing! Did you know that Obama wore a tan suit one day as the US president? That's the real scandal!

He also used treasonous condiments.

Don't forget about his latte!

Memecoins? More like bribe/money laundering special vehicles

His stablecoin, USD1, is his primary instrument for laundering. It now constitutes roughly 1/3 of his entire net worth. Attached article gives a great breakdown.

https://archive.is/4ieKD

Wow, that article makes you want to vomit.

And that article is from National Review, a conservative magazine, not the Atlantic or some leftist paper.

Isn't all memecoin just a pump and dump anyways?

I always thought of it as an alternative to lottery tickets or slot machines.

I wish someone could help me understand why GenZ predominantly doesn't get this after they keep getting burned by get rich quick schemes. How did we raise a generation of rubes?

Sure, easy answer: it's simply not a generational thing. What you're observing is your own bias. Prior generations (including yours) get scammed just as often.

Meme coins are closest to gambling like day-trading. There's at least an opportunity to win money from other rubes, even if the EV is bad. It's also one of those forms of gambling where you can easily convince yourself that you have an edge this time.

I guess compared to slot machines or lottery tickets (which are instant loss if not a win) if you lose initially on memecoin there is a shred of a chance it rebounds and you can make some of it back.

Maybe they see this as a "better" vice to have with excess income.

It’s rational if you cognize that being the beneficiary of a long shot scheme or gamble is the only viable path to economic security for most, given the overall trajectory of the economy. Simply plot the median wage in terms of gold or any other hard commodity (as opposed to the gamed CPI metric).

I dont know, I thought no child was supposed to be left behind

It's the American dream.

Distrust of mianstream media and institutions and high trust in streamers, youtubers and podcasters who aren't regulated by the FCC or any sort of editorial guidelines and happily parrot conspiracies, fringe economic theories, pump shitcoins, promote BetterHelp "therapy" and random dropship brand supplements.

More an alternative to pigeon drop and spanish prisoner

"Crypto president my ass."

I don't know, it seems like this is exactly crypto.

Yep, judging a tree by its fruit.

It was nice having laws while they lasted.

In the US, laws were only for the affluent, male, white class anyways. Richard Rothstein wrote a great book about it called "Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Color_of_Law

It's just that the middle class is no longer going to be the "In" group.

Oh come on. Yeah the law has never been applied equally. Terribly so.

That has nothing to do with the specific thing I’m obviously saying.

The unspecified, specific thing.

It’s an article about the president making memecoins and doing rug pulls to enrich himself. That could also easily be used as a method to transfer very large bribes.

It’s very clearly a comment on the lack of norms or enforcement of rules (emoluments clause, among MANY others) on the presidency.

So, my comment was directly relevant afterall.

It's probably difficult to find out (but someone here could probably analyze the blockchain), but it would be interesting to know the mean and median stake of the investors who got wiped out.

If the mean is large, it's mostly an off-the-books bribery scheme. If the average stake is small, it's mostly a pump-and-dump con of regular people.

But it was probably just a gambling scheme with just one big bet, where as ever, the house always wins.

It can be both. Use the "Contributions" from "Donors" to make it appear that the coin is going to the moon and then dump it once enough credulous victims buy into the scam. Reward the donors with their appropriate tit-for-tat and then pocket it all.

> It can be both. Use the "Contributions" from "Donors" to make it appear that the coin is going to the moon and then dump it once enough credulous victims buy into the scam.

Sure, and cynically, just like in traditional casino gambling, the wipe-out could be viewed as the price of "entertainment".

If there is no class action lawsuit, then we know that the people who got wiped out thought the price was worth whatever they got for it, whether favors or fun.

It's probably just too early for the class actions. There are a couple suits against Bannon and Trump for the "Let's go Brandon" coin.

Those contributions are by the way, the direct bribe. Just send confirmation of your wallet and when Trump pulls the rug the bribe is paid and the pardon (or whatever) is done.

Yeah, even worse is that you can leverage the contributions of the briber to make the coin appear to be increasing in worth over time and dupe people into investing in it. This allows you to make ten times more than the amount of the bribe.

What were we supposed to do, vote for a woman?

If it makes anyone feel better even after he and his family have stolen as much as they can possible steal, a fortune more than capable of supporting generational wealth, they'll have already squandered nearly all of it and be back on TV trying to turn the family name into fifteen dollars for autographed socks manufactured in a country they despise or a donation from voters they also despise.

The irony of the president coming to office to "drain the swamp" becomes the easily most corrupt, in plain sight, president in US history.

The great thing about populist slogans like “drain the swamp” is that they don’t specify what exactly will be done and how, so they are highly malleable.

Mission accomplished

https://archive.today/G02Gy

"Wiped out" - that money went somewhere..

Yeah as a technical matter $4.3bn wiped out is kind of wrong. If I issue a billion iffy coins, sell one for a dollar and then it goes to zero that's more one dollar wiped than the theoretical billion.

I'd say this is $600m transferred from investors to insiders.

An interesting question is how much of that $600m was degen gamblers and how much was bribes.

Welcome to the Corrupt State situation. This is how developing, poor and struggling nations function. I hope it will not last long because the US citizens don't deserve it (although the same is said for every other nation)

We’re probably settling into what they call a “hybrid regime”.

We’ll likely wobble between periods of relative stability, with about the amount of liberty and corruption we’re used to at the federal level, and more-authoritarian high-corruption periods like this one.

Breaking out of the cycle, I rate less likely than a full collapse into authoritarianism. I just don’t see a viable path to the kinds of reforms we’d need. And it’ll get harder the longer this goes on, as the rot of corruption affects state capacity, industrial capacity, and drives even more entrenched local corruption than we already deal with. Plus we’ve got multiple debt and cost crises about to slam into us full-force, over the next 1-3 decades.

But for now: hybrid regime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_regime

He mostly stole it from his idiotic voter base, so it's a net positive in my book.

That's what I thought as well at first, but I've come to think that is just the cover story. While some of his base likely did buy in, I expect that _most_ of the inflows were from individuals or groups looking to influence the administration (aka bribes).

Yet he didn't feel the need to hide the plane he received from the Saudis, or the gold bars he got from tech companies. Hell, he even bragged about those. Because there's no one able and willing to stop his naked corruption, he has zero reason to hide it. Shamelessness is his signature, after all. No, his coins were organically fed by people who believe his lies.

He doesn't have any shame, but some of the people bribing him may not want to be so public about that. His bribecoins gave them the ability to funnel money without having to worry about any fallout (legal or reputational).

> Yet he didn't feel the need to hide the plane he received from the Saudis, or the gold bars he got from tech companies.

You are willfully obtuse if you believe these are equivocal examples.

And not that it matters, but the plane in question was 'gifted' from the Qatari royal family, not 'the Saudis'.

> He mostly stole it from his idiotic voter base, so it's a net positive in my book.

Some of it was done to receive bribes in exchange of favors from the govt. We all paid for that shit.

> He mostly stole it from his idiotic voter base, so it's a net positive in my book.

Have some empathy. With your attitude, we'll have many more Trumps to come.

I agree with your sentiment but I no longer think empathy is a good long term plan.

One of my favorite books is Excellent Cadavers. It's about two judges in Sicily who systematically rooted out the Mafia. And were both assassinated for their work.

The moral is: action is necessary. Trump is hoping we all stop at trying to find empathy for his team.

> Trump is hoping we all stop at trying to find empathy for his team.

I'm not talking about his team, I'm talking about the people who voted for him.

For instance, he wouldn't have even got off the ground if free trade hadn't decimated the US manufacturing sector. I won't fault anyone with a blue-collar job for voting for him, because the choice was him vs. some neoliberal. When the choices are bad, I understand making a desperate move.

And now we have even worse polarization, which fuels his type even more. More and deeper polarized "action" (like the snide remark I responded to upthread) is not the way to make things better.

That's a good point. I totally agree.

> For instance, he wouldn't have even got off the ground if free trade hadn't decimated the US manufacturing sector. I won't fault anyone with a blue-collar job for voting for him, because the choice was him vs. some neoliberal.

And I would agree with you for the 2016 election. However, when Trump lost more manufacturing jobs under his first term than were lost under Obama despite all his bluster about saving and restoring said jobs, and his administration's only legislative win was a big tax cut for the wealthy, it's no longer a valid reason to vote for the guy in 2020 or 2024.

And, the joke's on any who did vote for him a second and third time: he's lost even more manufacturing jobs.

The tragedy is if you look at the actual data, manufacturing jobs generally recover under Democrat administrations, and they tend to be lost in significant numbers under Republican administrations. People are more easily swayed by memes and sound bites than actual data, though.

See: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/manemp

Empathy is deserved. I have none for the lunatics that defended the recent ICE murders or still try to deny Trump's pedophila. If these people finally realize how garbage their views are, maybe we could think about forgiveness and empathy. Until then, disenfranchisement is the most efficient strategy.

> Empathy is deserved. I have none for the lunatics that defended the recent ICE murders or still try to deny Trump's pedophila. If these people finally realize how garbage their views are, maybe we could think about forgiveness and empathy. Until then, disenfranchisement is the most efficient strategy.

That's some pretty messed up shit you wrote there. I'm sure you imagine yourself as somehow better than Trump, but you're just like him. You're part of the problem, and for the sake of all that is good: stop being such a terrible person.

Also, what you wrote is also embarrassingly dumb and short-sighted. Like, do you have any understanding how your ideas sound outside your own head? Saying such things, especially in public, harms your cause.

Far from "harming my cause", vindictiveness wins elections. Weakness toward the fascist idiots currently tearing this world appart only made them stronger, and worsened the situation.

I have empathy for those wronged by our messed up economic systems, and I believe the policies and candidates I advocate for will help everyone in the end, but I reserve the right to not extend my empathy to those who consistently chose mindless hate over actual solutions. At some point, there must be consequences for siding with these evil fucks over and over and over again. Let these consequences be a very negative public perception of the views they hold, which is very much deserved at this point.

Also, I am absolutely better than Trump and his supporters: I'm not a child rapist and I don't support those who are. And even suggesting that calling out pedophilia is equivalent to practicing it is very messed up.

> Far from "harming my cause", vindictiveness wins elections.

If it does, it's a pyrrhic victory. You'll complete the destruction of everything the Democrats claim to defend.

> Weakness toward the fascist idiots currently tearing this world appart only made them stronger, and worsened the situation.

Has Donald Trump corrupted you, turning you into your own kind of fascist? That kind of strong(=being vindictive)/weak binary thinking is very Trumpian.

> but I reserve the right to not extend my empathy to those who consistently chose mindless hate over actual solutions.

FYI, that's what one kind of mindless hate looks like to the hater. Especially since you're being very broad with it (e.g. including "his idotic voter base").

> Also, I am absolutely better than Trump and his supporters: I'm not a child rapist and I don't support those who are.

I don't think so: the vast majority of Trump's supporters are also not child rapists and don't support those who are.

I'd suggest you give politics a rest, unless you want to turn into what you seem to despise.

> If it does, it's a pyrrhic victory. You'll complete the destruction of everything the Democrats claim to defend.

You mean feckless neoliberalism? That would be great. In all seriousness, aggressively calling out actual fascist tendencies in the opposition is healthy behavior. Letting it flourish on the other hand...

> Has Donald Trump corrupted you, turning you into your own kind of fascist?

You do not know what fascism is. Educate yourself.

> FYI, that's what one kind of mindless hate looks like to the hater.

Good try. "You hating racism makes you the real racist". FFS.

> I don't think so: the vast majority of Trump's supporters are also not child rapists and don't support those who are.

Really? I have yet to meet a single republican that re-examined their support of Trump in light of the overwhelming evidence to his pedophilia. I can only conclude that they're all fine with it.

Overall, good attempt at the classic "anti-fascism is the same as fascism". We're done talking.

>> If it does, it's a pyrrhic victory. You'll complete the destruction of everything the Democrats claim to defend.

> You mean feckless neoliberalism?

No, empathy. And a country were people more-or-less get along, even if they disagree, instead of one of hateful factions engaged in bitter battle for power and dominance.

>> Has Donald Trump corrupted you, turning you into your own kind of fascist?

> You do not know what fascism is. Educate yourself.

Read more carefully. I said your own kind of fascist, as in drawing parallels to bad behavior that you understand, in an attempt to get to see it in a different light.

>> FYI, that's what one kind of mindless hate looks like to the hater.

> Good try. "You hating racism makes you the real racist". FFS.

"FFS," read more carefully. Do you think racism is the only kind of hate?

> Trump in light of the overwhelming evidence to his pedophilia.

Please share the New York Times article with that bombshell, so succinctly stated. I must've missed that one.

> Overall, good attempt at the classic "anti-fascism is the same as fascism". We're done talking.

Actually it wasn't an attempt at that at all.

But you're right, we're done talking. You seem to seem to be retreating into an angry defensiveness of your Trump-like tendencies, and resorting to pretty blatant distortions to [checks notes] resist the idea of having empathy for others.

No one will tell me who this is about. The title doesn't say. But I bet it was Biden!

Help, I'm being heavily down voted by the Biden team!

And, the IP address shows the down votes are all coming from Hunter Biden's laptop.

Being upset that meme coins underwent a boom and bust is like getting angry at fire for being hot.

Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm in a blind trust.

The problem with this statement is the part of the title that it completely ignores. More precisely, the first part.

The difference here is that this is the president doing this rug pull.

Using his power to make billions is not exactly enshrined in the constitution.

This is who he is. This is who they voted for. The electorate voted for Congressional representation that does not hold him accountable.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

> The difference here is that this is the president doing this rug pull.

Cryptocurrency has always been a scam of no real utility for honest actors (compared to alternatives).

> Using his power to make billions is not exactly enshrined in the constitution.

Not exactly. Trump is dishonest and greedy, and doesn't care about a lot of appearances that prior presidents cared a lot about. In this case, he's not "using his power to make billions," he's actually not refraining from making billions because he has power.

I'm pretty sure Obama and Biden could have made money from a meme-coin, if they were so inclined. But if they even thought about it at all, they would have rejected the idea because it would look bad, hurt the office, etc. Trump doesn't care about those things.

Again, completely irrelevant.

It's very obvious that the anger is about POTUS using his office for rug-pulls, not that rug-pulls are happening in the first place

Por que no los dos?

I can be angry about memecoin rug-pulls as a general scam, and I can be angry that the sitting US president is running shady scams.

Surely you're taking the piss and can recognize that what's unique about this story is the fact that a sitting US president pushed the meme coins? They made Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm into a blind trust, but Trump is raking in money off his crypto pushes, shady dealings, and business holdings.

Edit: Carter put his farm into a blind trust, he didn't sell it.

That’s what we’re upset about ay?

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