An ex-colleague of mine worked for OneCoin (another crypto scam originating from Bulgaria) when their offices got raided a few years ago. Now he’s an engineering manager at Nexo.
I honestly think a lot of the employees of these companies don’t know about the underlying fraud. The cryptocurrency world is full of rationalizations and illogical beliefs that make a lot of these businesses sound legitimate to the underinformed.
That said, I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with cryptocurrency obsessed hires and peers in the workplace. This got especially bad in 2022 when people’s portfolios were up and they all believed they were on the verge of retiring wealthy. There’s something about buying into the crypto dream that makes people think they’ve found a cheat code to financial freedom while the rest of us are stupidly working our jobs.
I’ve watched the same exact pattern play out with coworkers who bought into MLM schemes or self-help guru courses. These fantasies about breaking free from the world through “secret” financial instruments will always be attractive to some subset of people.
Human psychology allows for these traps and while people eventually realize what are traps new ones emerge and the cycle continues. Too bad this whole phenomena takes away any benefit crypto could have brought
Shady. Willing to be paid in strange currencies deposited in overseas banks. Likely to have tax troubles one day. Knows how to buy a plane ticket using cash. Strong opinions on Krugerrand valuation. Owns a motorcycle without an odometer. Bought a house with a series of 9,999$ travelers checks. More likely to install a Kim Dotcom-type panic room than run for public office.
> Willing to be paid in strange currencies deposited in overseas banks.
I'd need a more concrete definition for 'strange currencies', but discriminatory behaviour shouldn't be applied to anyone that has an account overseas, especially in the age of global banking & cross-border payments.
> Likely to have tax troubles one day.
On the one hand, this will definitely happen: Internationally-acquired income often subsequently leads to poor tax handling, especially if the individual involved is unfamiliar with the intricacies of filing taxes for such sources of income.
However, it is also a consequence of overlapping jurisdictions & law enforcement, with unified, clear & unambiguous definitions being the exception rather than the norm.
> Knows how to buy a plane ticket using cash.
Why is using cash a problematic behaviour now? Just because I still use cash doesn't mean that I should be classified as 'shady'.
> Strong opinions on Krugerrand valuation.
Tried to search this & only found references to the gold coin with the same name. As similarly stated beforehand, why is being a goldbug now 'shady'?
> Owns a motorcycle without an odometer.
...I can see why: An odometer, coupled with the motorcycle's purchase histories, is a good way of finding out the roads that a person used to travel on with some reliability.
> Bought a house with a series of 9,999$ travelers checks.
Same as the plane ticket: The large denomination will raise eyebrows, but it shouldn't be used as a marker for discrimination.
> More likely to install a Kim Dotcom-type panic room than run for public office.
...This is similar to the odometer-less motorcycle: The individual wanting to install a panic room is likely someone that's thinking about worst case scenarios, & planning with that in mind.
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All of the listed "shady" traits stem from a core: Paranoia, specifically paranoia of a malicious State. More generally, it's the fear that the State will use the information it gathered about a person for unwarranted surveillance & eventually prosecution over the slightest infractions.
In earnest: Why is paranoia suddenly a "shady" thing?
A bike without an odometer is "true mileage unknown" (TMU) which makes selling/insuring/valuing it somewhat difficult. On a custom chopper that is normal. Many choppers don't even have speedometers. But on a normal bike missing such instruments is seen as a red flag that the bike is stolen and/or made from stolen parts.
odometer value is easily modified, even with digital ones. Even then, it is often not accurate at all, especially on motorcycles, due to the fact that it is usually driven by a cable attached to the front wheel (just disconnect the cable and number never goes up).
Maybe in the 1980s. On a modern bike it is integrated into the transmission, usually on the drive sprocket. And then the signal is used in slightly different ways, with the odometer being accurate and the speedometer generally reading a few % higher than the actual speed. Some bikes may also use it for electronic engine/emission controls too.
Not all bikes. 2023 DRZ 400sm still has a cable (they haven't modified the design in years). Most scooters/motorbikes are cables too.
Even still, it is easily hacked on almost any vehicle (Tesla is a great example of a connected car making it much harder) and there is plenty of YT all about it...
The same reason your cell phone fell out of your pocket in the driveway before the trip. So that it never happened.
I think this is easier with bikes because there's more repair culture and more off-roading. Off-road bikes generally have all non-essentials stripped and left in a box, blinkers, odometer, fancy fenders...
A famous short seller, I think it was Chanos but I can't remember, once said in an interview that they follow where the management of past frauds go as a signal to determine future frauds.
Just like every ponzi scheme, the trick is to get out in time. I wonder how many people worked for Madoff but left before it all fell apart. How many of them are now working in other financial jobs? or Lehman bros.
Fun fact, one of the biggest benificiaries of madoff's scheme is believed to be madoff's victim/investor Jeffry Picower.
Picower may have figured out it was a Ponzi and agreed to "invest" in the scheme when Madoff became desperate for liquidity. But there was plausible deniability as he was just a guy who bought in at times and sold off at others.
So maybe the actual trick is people like Picower, who identify these schemes and then leverage the scheme to their advantage while all along looking like another victim and never once speaking about their suspicions or getting involved in the mechanics. Which brings me to think perhaps the Picowers in SBF's scheme were some of his investors who figured out it was a scheme but believed they could cash out before it toppled.
Scheme no, but it was a company that fell apart quickly. Employees would be better served to get out and secure a new job the day before a crash rather than the day after.
All of them are liars by definition. We know they are all insolvent.
Crypto doesn’t create any value, like with an investment in a regular business. So that must mean any profit is just money from the latest “unfortunates” that were foolish or desperate enough to buy in.
> Crypto doesn’t create any value, like with an investment in a regular business.
Generally, I agree that a lot of "cryptocoin" usages are basically fraudulent and scams. Some of them are nothing more than "bragging rights" aka "look at me, I'm rich enough to waste 100 bucks on an NFT by the 45th" or that time when Twitter allowed one to display an NFT as a profile picture.
There is one legitimate usage for cryptocurrencies however: anonymity. The amount of traceability that banks, secret services and police have into our lives simply by mapping our transaction activity is insane. Unfortunately, Bitcoin has way too much of an energy consumption and too high latency for mainstream usage outside of drug deliveries via dark web marketplaces, and the alternatives are way too volatile even compared to Bitcoin.
Anonimity is a fantasy that makes no sense if you think for a few seconds about it. There is always another person, a company or bank at the other end.
The key issue isn’t anonimity but policy and politics. No technology can be above any law by definition.
Bitcoiners were also generally skeptical of this. BTC and crypto often gets lumped together but many of those who prefer Bitcoin have been skeptical about stuff like this from the beginning.
Lightning Network also has some interesting capabilities & seems like it might actually evolve into something with real utility. Block is investing pretty significantly into that.
The minority of Bitcoin enthusiasts in the crypto space might turn out to be at least somewhat right. Assuming western governments don’t ban proof of work, at least.
Bitcoin has failed as electronic cash (its intended purpose). Bitcoin has failed as a store of value. Bitcoin has failed as inflation hedge.
The project is 13 years old at this point and has failed to provide any meaningful use, has failed in terms of mainstream appeal and isn't nowhere near revolutionary. All of this while being an environmental disaster, burning through electricity and producing e-waste like there's no ecological emergency.
That farce needs to stop and the sooner the better.
But it’s incredibly fascinating to see how much the Bitcoin fans can ignore all of the fraud and the collapse of crypto markets, instead focusing on hypothetically perfect retroactive market timing.
So much of the Bitcoin propaganda is different versions of “Well if you had bought Bitcoin on <specific date in the past> then you’d be up right now!”
“Bitcoin fans” != “crypto fans”. Much higher % of Bitcoin fans were skeptical of yield products from the beginning, prefer to hold their own coins, and are generally distrustful of the crypto market in general. It’s far from a monolithic group of people.
But yes that last part is right, people are always saying stuff like that and it’s a terrible argument if you can even call it that.
Yield products aren't the problem, they're a symptom.
The problem is wanting to buy something that has no value and hoping to sell it to someone else who in turn is also hoping to sell it to someone else even higher.
Bitcoin, NFT, yield products, etc, they're all manifestations of the same thing.
It's probably one of the less shady ones out there (i.e. it wasn't "invented" by a twitch streamer, hyped up and sold to their audience then abandoned) but I think a few people are maybe a little bit too hopeful and optimistic about it.
I'm just saying Bitcoin is up 15% off of lows from 15,760. All of the bad news about it and people are clearly still buying it/most likely dollar cost averaging into it.
or, more thinly traded markets are easier for remaining participants (e.g. Binance, Tether) to manipulate :) I'm not saying that is the case, but it's an alternate hypothesis.
Wow, how is this behavior tolerated/allowed? Aren't you basically cyber-bullying at this point? Do I need to like... report you to a moderator or something? Would really not want to waste their precious time but like... how else can I get you to stop/leave me alone?
I was trying to prove (in a conversation how crypto isn't trustworthy) that some people commonly believe 1. the government isn't perfect in terms of being trustworthy (especially when it comes to money) and 2. neither can Wall Street.
> Majority here at HN seems to lack any intellectual curiosity on this topic though and are just rabidly opposed to anything crypto related.
Ahh yes, the time honored "HN is so mean to crypto" complaint. The moment someone can show me realistic benefits to crypto that aren't total scams, happy to change my opinion.
I mean, just look at the BTC community. Yes, they are generally the most conservative, but they are also are the most cultishly wedded to proof-of-work, which is so blatantly an eventual dead end for broad adoption that it's hard to take it seriously.
Alternatives to PoW are centralization (i.e. Linden Dollars or national currencies) and proof-of-stake (Ethereum).
With centralization, there is the problem of trust. The issuer can just dilute the currency supply, go bankrupt, get bribed, or shut down.
With proof-of-stake, the tokens themselves are used to distribute trust. But during an interruption of service or a network split, if the two subnets diverge, there is no objective way to decide the most legitimate state of the tokens. Choosing the wrong one might end in losing your stake.
It might keep working with long-term trusted peers and reliable networks. But if those peers become centralized enough, they can then be bribed.
Proof-of-work provides an objective and unforgeable measure of legitimacy: work i.e. resources burned.
In absence of a legitimacy measure, the network is vulnerable to Sybil attacks.
> Majority here at HN seems to lack any intellectual curiosity on this topic though and are just rabidly opposed to anything crypto related. Ironic given how many tech start ups basically just operate as pump and dump schemes that create little to no real value either.
Agreed. It's doubly ironic as Coinbase probably wouldn't exist but for Y Combinator.
Many here are pointing out that Coinbase is build on top of scams and doomed to fail once those collapse. I think IPO'ing it was a great dump on the public enriching the founders and investors at the cost of vulnerable and misinformed. It's probably not a scam legally though. Just profiteering from the naive.
I would add Airbnb to the list.. Terrible company generating significant part of its revenue from misrepresentation scams and protecting dishonest hosts by design. The tide is turning on that one as well though as people are catching up to the practices.
> A report by public broadcaster Bulgarian National Television earlier in the day claimed that the investigation was also looking into breaches of international sanctions imposed on Russia.
There are a lot of Russians which use Bulgaria as an EU base.
The infamous BTC-e exchange was also in Bulgaria and operated by Russians, and engaged in wide-scale money laundering.
> Mileva said that the people under investigation were Bulgarian nationals and the company, which she repeatedly described as a “cryptobank”, was operating primarily from Bulgaria.
However there are lots of very pro-Russia Bulgarians (hard to explain after everything that has happened, but still..), so your point generally stands.
> However there are lots of very pro-Russia Bulgarians (hard to explain after everything that has happened, but still..),
Here is an excerpt from wiki which explains why some in Bulgaria are still "pro-russia":
"The Western European Enlightenment in the 18th century influenced the initiation of a national awakening of Bulgaria.[63] It restored national consciousness and provided an ideological basis for the liberation struggle, resulting in the 1876 April Uprising. Up to 30,000 Bulgarians were killed as Ottoman authorities put down the rebellion. The massacres prompted the Great Powers to take action.[73] They convened the Constantinople Conference in 1876, but their decisions were rejected by the Ottomans. This allowed the Russian Empire to seek a military solution without risking confrontation with other Great Powers, as had happened in the Crimean War.[73] In 1877, Russia declared war on the Ottomans and defeated them with the help of Bulgarian rebels, particularly during the crucial Battle of Shipka Pass which secured Russian control over the main road to Constantinople"
It's an irrational love-hate relationship which is essential to the history of the modern Bulgarian state and creates the internal political divisions between "rusophiles" and "rusophobes". As a young nation (in modern terms) that has never been through the Enlightenment, we don't have our own political and intellectual traditions, and much of politics is perceived as orbiting around a superpower, be it Russia, continental Europe, or the USA.
Your answer is only part of the truth. Though Russia had lots of welwishers in Bulgaria, the heavy indoctrination happened during the communist rule 1945-1989. Many people whose best years were during this period are still alive and many are disappointed by the failures of the post 1989 governments. The topic is complex and filled in with lots of propaganda, so I won't get into disputes, just giving additional context.
Agreed 100%. You'll find that sentiments towards Russia vary greatly depending on how old people are. Pro-Russia attitudes are aging out. I'm OK with that.
Now we've got a generation of youth coming to power who get their world view from social media and thus see reality objectively.
"view from social media and thus see reality objectively."
It all seemed fair until this fragment. Nothing about social media is objectively true. The advantage of social media (hopefully) is that's you're exposed to people from a variety of cultures so that you can choose who's subjective truths to believe in. It's better than powerful single voices influencing the ignorant using mass media though.
Maybe not clear from my comment, but I'd say that many of the new generations are also disappointed by the post-communist governments, so you can't blame it all on the retirees.
The thing is though, right after liberation, the Russians started shitting the bed by sending incompetent fools (did Tsarist Russia even have anything else?) to Bulgaria to rule. Then they sponsored multiple coups against the first Prince of Bulgaria who they thought was a German puppet based on his origins, without even bothering to ask him. Then they sabotaged Bulgaria's unification and defence against Serbia efforts by abandoning the army. Then after a successful (in ousting the prince, but not in anything else because again, the people running it were as incompetent as it could be) coup, he was asked to return but he thought the only way he could would be with Russia's acceptance, which the Russia didn't give. Then Russia, for some weird reason only their incompetence can explain, refused to recognise the regency council looking for a new head of state (which first went to them expecting them to nominate a Russian prince).
I could go on, but basically Russia's goodwill was spent in the first few decades of them incompetently and arrogantly bumbling around and making it extremely hard for the young optimistic nation which was really looking towards Russia as the big helpful brother and desperately needed help to survive.
Today you can also add 50 years of imposed socialism, which had its ups and downs (massive industrial, education, sport advancements) but was imposed and kept with tanks, and Russia's aggressive and imperialist foreign policy which directly results in tens of thousands of deaths. Why the fuck would anyone still think Russia is the good guys? This can only come out of blatant misunderstanding of history.
The thing about history is that it's never about a single event...
While Russia may have had some influence in the events at the end of the 19th century, they are also responsible for Bulgaria's abrupt transition from monarchy to a soviet country in the 1940s. Bulgaria was a soviet country until 1990… which is a very long time of persistent atrocities and brainwashing.
The “Russian occupation” of the hearts and minds of boomers who are still alive today is difficult to shake.
> The “Russian occupation” of the hearts and minds of boomers who are still alive today is difficult to shake.
Which isn't to say that most "non-brainwashed" millennials and Gen-Z'ers are at all trying to be objective about that historical period. For them it's only prison camps, state surveillance and shortages and queues. Nothing like an accelerated industrialisation and modernisation in a few decades, transitioning from a backwards agrarian rural society to a well-educated population and reaching western-like levels of human development in the 1980s.
The whole business is full of one-way bets where you either escape with the money or go bankrupt/get arrested. I think they may have assumed that law enforcement in Bulgaria was not sophisticated enough to be interested in them.
> I think they may have assumed that law enforcement in Bulgaria was not sophisticated enough to be interested in them.
It's not. This was an international op or with foreign intelligence tips/pressure to act. BG law enforcement was at best oblivious, at worst -- on payroll.
I've noticed a recent spate of crackdowns on "hustlers" in the Eastern European space. See the recent takedown of Andrew Tate in Romania, for example, and now this.
Seeing Croatia make it into Schengen despite joining the EU 6 years later is quite embarrassing. There are large numbers of people in Romania and Bulgaria who are genuinely distressed that their countries are home to these unsavoury types and would like to put an end to it.
I've recently tried sending money using different cryptos - Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDC - this was the slowest, most expensive, and overly complicated funds transfer I've ever done! During the same week, I transferred money via Wise and Revolut - from one currency to another, etc. Of course, that latter beats any crypto! Not to mention that with regular wires you're charged a fixed fee - even if you send millions, the cost is the same, unlike with crypto, which ended up being a huge percentage trying different means to minimize the cost. To be honest, the only wonderful thing crypto offers is the ability to sign stuff with your wallet right in the browser - nothing else in the crypto world makes any sense! Everything else is just an elaborate pyramid or daylight robbery scheme and nothing more!
The crypto business seems to be a bit on a "Winter is coming, and it will last for years" -phase in EU.
An European Parliament vice-president and law-maker who was the most prominent lobbyist for more lax money-loundry regulation for cryptocurrencies is currently under detention - for money loundering and corruption.
And yes I think cryptocurrencies will prevail in some form sooner or later, it's just not so good publicity that some of the most vocal proponents are caught red-handed with bags full of half a million euros.
You're mistaking insurgency for terrorism. This is referring to Russia terrorizing the civilian population of Ukraine by systematically attacking purely civilian targets.
We're not only talking about infrastructure. We're also talking about wholesale killing of civilians. And, if someone else does it, does that change what it is? Terrorism does not have an ambiguous definition.
You should check America's own data on the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq! And this is not even mentioning the estimated half a million children who died due to the embargo before the war, which Madeleine Albright said was worth it in an interview!
True, but it is a hypocrisy to bash Russia and be silent about the ongoing assaults on civilians that America keeps doing to this very day - how many civilians did Obama kill in Yemen, he even bragged about it saying, "I'm very good at killing." If we let one country go away with this, then it sets a dangerous precedent for others to use as an excuse! America continues to assassinate people in sovereign countries and feels entitled to do so. Even its involvement in Syria, which Turkiye followed shortly, was a violation of international law. And nobody says anything about Turkiye for killing Kurds in Syria!
And there's no such thing as terrorism during a war! Did America terrorize civilians in Serbia during the bombing - it surely did! Did it declare war on Serbia? Certainly not!
If there's civilian terror, there's terrorism. What are you talking about. If you bomb bread lines, if your concept of siege is to pressure defenders by maximizing civilian casualties, you're a terrorist. If you use genocidal rhetoric, that doesn't help your case either.
You can deflect by talking about other countries all you want. That does not matter to the victims.
Which war didn't terrorize civilians? Let's not use Ukrainian PR campaigns as facts. If Russia wanted to maximize civilians damage, that's the easiest thing to do by following the playbook of America in Iraq! On the contrary, Russia is doing a ten-fold effort to accomplish its goals by minimizing civilian casualties - and that's why Ukraine is putting military targets in populated areas.
> Btw, if anyone wants to finance terrorism by using a crypto exchange, let be clear: that's a very bad idea. Have your own wallet and use at least some privacy coins ...
Or just buy your own bank...
The disposable bank industry is thriving around the world, and is completely circumventing all of that nonsense AML theatre in its entirety.
The draconian banking reporting regulation only impact individuals, but nearly none business accounts, and close to nothing is aimed at banking institutions themselves.
You literally need more papers to open a bank account in some EU countries, than to buy a fully fledged tier 1 bank, with a central bank account, and direct access to FX exchanges, clearing, securities brokerages etc.
> She said that investigators had proof that a Nexo client, who used the company’s platform to transfer cryptocurrencies, was a person officially designated as financing terrorism, but gave no further details.
All crypto is some form of crime, money laundering, evading sanctions, funding terrorism, or just a ponzi scheme, it's just different sides of the same thing.
I wish this space would totally collapse. Maybe if Tether (which is totally insolvent) collapses the whole space just dies.
That would make the world a better place.
Yes, it's true: the dollar or any other currency can be used for nefarious purposes as well, but that's why we have so much financial regulations and oversight (which should be better). And most of all, the upsides of regular currency (if you can call crypto a currency at all) is that it's the foundation of our societies.
I just want to see all crypto die in a fire. The profound negative impact crypto has had on our world with zero benefits makes me so sad.
It's not fair to say that cryptocurrency has had "zero benefits" as it's clearly being used more and more for legitimate purposes such as zero fee international money transfers and providing a more cost-effective option for merchants compared to credit cards. It is important to consider the potential benefits and drawbacks of any technology or innovation before making blanket statements about its overall impact.
> It's not fair to say that cryptocurrency has had "zero benefits"
"Zero" is not fair only because the total sum effect has definitely been negative. Ignoring all the ponzis, frauds, scams and rugpulls, you can't discount the massive amounts of wasted energy.
> as it's clearly being used more and more for legitimate purposes such as zero fee international money transfers and providing a more cost-effective option for merchants compared to credit cards.
All of the major cryptocurrencies are pretty terrible at zero-fee money transfers, given the fact that none of them have zero fees and have laughable bandwidth. And that's not even considering on/offramp fees for turning crypto into usable money. There's very little proof to actual adoption in ecommerce, since most merchants "accepting crypto" actually accept money, there's just a middleman that does the conversion.
Bitcoin will never gain mass adoption as a currency, that leaves it as a "value store" - and the only people buying bitcoin are suckers buying bitcoin from others in the hope that they can in turn sell it to a bigger sucker down the line.
The overwhelming majority of holders of Bitcoin disagree with you.
It's a garbage currency - fees are too high, transfers too slow. It's a garbage technology that encourages wanton energy wastage. Its only "value" is as an investment.
Bitcoin isn’t a ponzi scheme. no crypto is really a ponzi scheme, but a lot of them have similar characteristics. basically they’re fine while people are continuously investing in them, but once people lose interest they drop off a cliff. but then you could say that about any volatile investment
> but then you could say that about any volatile investment
Or even about modern fiat currencies. Just look at the Turkish Lira (~343% vs EUR / 5y), Argentinian Peso (~758% vs EUR / 5y) or a dozen other currencies that lost insane amounts of value over the last years [1], mostly because of political misgovernance and resulting economic devastation.
Any investment is supposed to have a return that exceeds inflation or some other reasonable index, eventually in the eyes of some kind of reasonable investor.
If it doesn't meet that criteria then it is more likely a social phenomenon interchangeable with scam instead of a valid investment, i.e. a pump and dump OTC stock is an investment being involved in a scam if it has acquired actual rights or business that have a small probability of paying off significantly better than inflation that's not easy to disprove with basic research. It is a pure scam if the underlying company is only on paper or generally incapable of actually doing anything it claims because it was created or is pumped with just enough cash to continue to operate purely for the purpose of having a stock but is incapable of ever making a real profit.
Some coins may be different than what I described as a scam, but if you accept that only holding value remains as a probable use of BTC then any suggestion of it as a valid investment or holder of value is a scam.
> it's okay for the US to boss the rest of the world around about who they can and cannot do business with.
Not the parent, but given the alternatives of which I'm aware, I'm ok with this. It's going to be someone, the US is the least worst afaik. And this is still the case even though I disagree with a lot of stuff the US government and it's voters choose to do.
Just be honest that crypto was about evading regulations and then about getting rich quick.
There are systemic issues and I’m no friend of the USA but crypto isn’t in anyway addressing the gripes about the current state of the world.
Most importantly: the idea that technology is going to fix things is ludicrous and it shows that people don’t understand the power of politics, governments and legislations.
if that same government is also funding wars through cats paws in other countries and oppressing their own people, you should be concerned. There are plenty of governments, especially authoritarian governments like in Iran, that I don't think should ever acquire nuclear weapons for any reason.
It's more like any dictator/autocrat who wants to stay in power by threatening the world will work on it. That isn't good for the world. Your statement is not a value judgement or even interested in first or second order effects of such a decision, so is essentially useless in evaluating whether something is good or bad.
I can see a pattern emerging in his career.