this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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How do you know a crypto scheme is a scam?
You already know, the answer is "yes". It's always "yes".
The only question is, can you hold the tiger's tail just long enough to make a mint and still let go in time that you aren't the last one holding it.
I get the impression that most of the people who are swindled by crypto nowadays are aware of the scam and jump into it thinking they're going to make money by finding a greater fool to dump their participation the scheme on for a profit.
Such people are really trying to be scammers in the scam.
That explains them invariably rushing to defend whatever scam token they're holding whenever it gets criticized in social media: if outsider are generally made to suspect the true nature of the scam and hence become unwilling to jump in, these wannabe scammers aren't going to find a greater fool to take those tokens out of their hands and give them a nice profit.
Of course as @ameancow@lemmy.world pointed out, these scams are done from the very start for maximum profitability of those starting the scam, not for the profit of the first ones to buy into it, so often those wannabe scammers end up being the greater fools of that scam themselves.
I used to work in Tech back in the late 90s, during the first bubble and up to the Tech Crash. I also worked in both Investment Finance and Tech Startups much more recently.
I can't even begin to describe just how angry, disgusted and dissapointed this unholly intersection between Tech and Hyperspeculative-Finance of the XXI century makes me.
The whole spirit in pretty much the entire domain of Tech back in the 90s was completely different from this neverending bottomless swamp of crap we have in the supposedly innovative parts of Tech.
Ever since the sleazy slimeballs who saw from the first Tech bubble that there were massive opportunities to use Tech-mumbu-jumbo to extract money from suckers started (immediatly after the Crash) trying to pump the Net bubble back up (they even called it Web 2.0) that the old spirit of innovation for the sake of improving things of the old days in Tech was crushed and replaced by the most scammy, fraudulent, naked greed imaginable.
After my time in Finance (which, curiously, also involved a Crash in the Industry I was working in) I started describing Tech Startups as "The Even Wilder Wild West of Speculative Finance".
Yeah it’s such a degeneracy…..
When I worked in investments, it was all about finding the best statistical model to balance returns against risk. It was fascinating how complex the models could be, and even included currency hedging to reduce the risk of exchange rates. And most importantly to also minimize trades to control costs and tax impact. This was before lightning trading: plenty of the funds were monthly trading. Those were the good old days when a better algorithm could shave points enough to stand out but everyone was on similar footing
A-ha! We've found the cause of the market crashes.
Joking aside, I was around for the dotcom bubble burst and the 2008 crash. Both were caused by wild speculation and we seemed to have learned nothing from them. I have little doubt we're headed for another recession and it will again, be driven by speculation. We also have a problem with private equity (I call them "vulture equity") which likes to capitalize on businesses which are struggling . They swoop in, buy up the company in a leveraged buyout, and then start extracting as much value from the company as possible. Usually this is in the real estate that the company owns. Once all of the value is extracted, the company is spun back off, saddled with the debt used to buy the company in the first place, and then it flounders until it ultimately collapses. This was the fate of companies like Sears or Red Lobster. Once a vulture equity company engages in a leveraged buyout of a company, that company is doomed.
Yeah, well, Asset Owners and the Speculators who caused the 2008 Crash got saved by Governments all around the World with public money and that was done by taking money away from those whose income comes from their Work (notice how salaries keep getting less and less able to cover living costs all the while asset prices keep beating records).
What I learned from the 2008 Crash - being right smack in the middle of the Industry which made it happen and spending the subsequent years observing what Governments were doing to "recover" from it and trying to figure out "how did this happen" - was that politicians don't work for most people, they work for a handful of people, and when push comes to shove they'll sacrifice the rest to make sure those few keep on accumulating riches.
The fishy speculation that played around the line separating Legal from Fraud has in the aftermath of the 2008 Crash fully became Fraud and more, once the industry figured out that politicians from the main parties had their backs, which is why we find ourselves were we are now. This was especially so in places like the US and UK were power is a duopoly which just alternates between two groups of politicians who all frequent the same social circles and send their children to the same private schools.
It's a big group and we ain't in it.
Fuck. Yup. I was working in industrial automation in the late 90s, and then transitioned to network engineering at a global scale. Around 2000, the entire vibe seemed to shift. I walked out just before 9/11 and am so glad to be in an entirely different industry now.
That’s a big part of knowing when to get out. They don’t. ….. or maybe they do: I don’t know if that scam is still finding enough suckers.
That’s the big question: do you recognize the scam in time to take advantage of it, and have the awareness to get out in time when there are still suckers?
I know a few people who made money on crypto in the early stages this way: recognize the scam but take advantage.
It was probably possible to take similar advantage of the Trump bribe laundering crypto scam, even without the benefit of the insider trading and market manipulation
I very briefly considered it but don’t trust my awareness to get out in time, plus participating in the scam would eat me up.
Ya, one of the best pieces of advice I got was, "never gamble money you can't afford to lose". This is what keeps me out of trying to chase that tiger. Sure, it could be possible to make some money by jumping on one of these scams early and trying to ride sell the bump. But, it's also likely that be the sucker losing out in the end. I'd rather not waste my money that way.
Unfortunately for them that ship has sailed. It's not hard to get in on a scam like this of you do it early enough, i probably would have done it if i had enough money when this started (don't judge, much, money is important when you don't have it) and i probably would have gotten out like a bandit. Now though, it's mostly targeting them.
Nobody is going to judge a cute and awkward baby trans girl needing cash on my watch. That’s for sure.
C-cute!? (~\\~)
Very cute and very pretty
Scam or not some of them are very useful to pay for some not so legal things
Investing in currency is already dumb, in cryptocurrency? Doubly so