Man Loses $560,000 in Bitcoin Scam From Fake Elon Musk Account (entrepreneur.com) 221
It all started when a 42-year-old German man named Sebastian saw a mysterious tweet that he thought was from Elon Musk, reports Entrepreneur:
"Musk tweeted 'Dojo 4 Doge' and I wondered what it meant," the man recounted. "There was a link to a new event below, so I clicked on it and saw that it was giving away bitcoins!"
Like many onlookers, Sebastian clicked on the link and came to a web page that seemed legitimate. There he found a countdown timer and a quiz, supposedly run by the Tesla team. The dynamic consisted of sending from 0.1 bitcoins (with an approximate value of 6,000 dollars) to 20 bitcoins (about 1.2 million dollars), with the promise of doubling the amount at the end... At the time of the fraud, his 10 bitcoins were worth about $560,000 (about 11.5 million Mexican pesos).
After double checking the verification logo next to Elon Musk's name, he decided to participate. "'Take the maximum,' I thought. This is definitely real, so I sent 10 bitcoins," said Sebastian...Sebastian's 10 bitcoins are the largest recorded amount ever lost in a single such transaction, said Whale Alert, an Amsterdam-based blockchain analytics company.
According to analysts, during the first quarter of 2021, the scam gangs have made more than $18 million in this way. This amount exceeds the $16 million dollars that they obtained during all of 2020. Regarding the number of victims, in 2020, some 10,500 people fell for this type of fraud. However, so far in 2021, there have already been 5,600 victims (and counting).
Like many onlookers, Sebastian clicked on the link and came to a web page that seemed legitimate. There he found a countdown timer and a quiz, supposedly run by the Tesla team. The dynamic consisted of sending from 0.1 bitcoins (with an approximate value of 6,000 dollars) to 20 bitcoins (about 1.2 million dollars), with the promise of doubling the amount at the end... At the time of the fraud, his 10 bitcoins were worth about $560,000 (about 11.5 million Mexican pesos).
After double checking the verification logo next to Elon Musk's name, he decided to participate. "'Take the maximum,' I thought. This is definitely real, so I sent 10 bitcoins," said Sebastian...Sebastian's 10 bitcoins are the largest recorded amount ever lost in a single such transaction, said Whale Alert, an Amsterdam-based blockchain analytics company.
According to analysts, during the first quarter of 2021, the scam gangs have made more than $18 million in this way. This amount exceeds the $16 million dollars that they obtained during all of 2020. Regarding the number of victims, in 2020, some 10,500 people fell for this type of fraud. However, so far in 2021, there have already been 5,600 victims (and counting).
Why do people fall for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
Re:Why do people fall for this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even most people on Slashdot never RTFA, and now don't even read the summary, and some barely read the full headline. The average person is not going to bother clicking on the profile link to see if it's actually the real person, or do any other background research.
Re:Why do people fall for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
For replying to a post or picking up some interesting but unimportant "fact" - sure, yes.
But for sending half a million? You have to be a special kind of gullable to do that without a slightly more serious check then "looks legit".
Re:Why do people fall for this? (Score:4, Insightful)
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As much as I want to share that joke - non-dumb people did that as well because there is nothing in principle wrong with a high-risk investment if you can afford to lose the money.
Re:Why do people fall for this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Why do people fall for this? (Score:2)
What's the difference between a volatile stock and a perpetual pump-and-dump?
Do you know what perpetual means?
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With bitcoin you are buying into a dream and of course people are going to hype it as some amazing investment because they have bitcoin themselves and they want to sell it when it peaks. And naturally this leads to bubble after bubble after bubble. It's a pump and dump.
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Literally, investment [merriam-webster.com]:
the outlay of money usually for income or profit
So yeah, if someone lays out money for profit, that's an investment. Since people have made money on Bitcoin, you can't even argue that it's a fake or scam or whatever. That not everyone who invests makes a positive return is the nature of investments.
It may not be a good, smart or whatever investment in your view. And I would agree with you. But you cannot seriously argue that it doesn't qualify to be described by that word.
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As much as I want to share that joke - non-dumb people did that as well because there is nothing in principle wrong with a high-risk investment if you can afford to lose the money.
Presumably, The vaporware coins are not a risky investment at all.
This is just the age-old grift, or confidence play, that humans have been falling for for a long long time. It's based on other people getting your greed to overwhelm your intelligence. And since a lot of humans are quite greedy, if hit upon at the wrong moment, they can be exceptionally stupid.
But it's not all bad for the poor guy, there are people in Nigeria who are working with a very wealthy person's estate, and need someone in Germ
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Depends on how much money are they pouring.
If I spend $200 on Bitcoin and it falls, well, I lost $200. No biggie. High risk requires small investments.
Those who sell their house, car, clothes on their backs on this, yeah, those are stupid.
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As the guy you're responding to said, it's all about being able to afford the downside risk. If the downside risk is everything you own, then you're an idiot to take the chance. If all you're going to suffer is some embarrassment, who really cares (besides you)?
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As the guy you're responding to said, it's all about being able to afford the downside risk. If the downside risk is everything you own, then you're an idiot to take the chance. If all you're going to suffer is some embarrassment, who really cares (besides you)?
If you can without any thought throw away over half a million dollars on something that no reasoning person would ever consider as a smart investment, an email that shows up out of the blue with as much gravitas as the Nigerian Prince scam, well - something tells me that in short order, you'll have a net worth of around zero.
What kind of intelligent person would think that he - the random guy - would be getting selected to become wealthy beyond his dreams by getting in on the latest #coin?
I get emails lik
Re: Why do people fall for this? (Score:2)
I'm sorry you missed out on previous bull runs and are now butt hurt you didn't get in in time. That must be frustrating for you.
Pretty much everyone putting money into Bitcoin expects a bubble pop. But unlike you, they understand what a bubble is.
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For replying to a post or picking up some interesting but unimportant "fact" - sure, yes.
But for sending half a million? You have to be a special kind of gullable to do that without a slightly more serious check then "looks legit".
While that is plausible to you and me, and we both would have invested time and effort proportional to that amount of money, this requires a working rational mind and a sense of proportion. People like this person in the story have neither.
Re:Why do people fall for this? (Score:5, Interesting)
For replying to a post or picking up some interesting but unimportant "fact" - sure, yes.
But for sending half a million? You have to be a special kind of gullable to do that without a slightly more serious check then "looks legit".
While that is plausible to you and me, and we both would have invested time and effort proportional to that amount of money, this requires a working rational mind and a sense of proportion. People like this person in the story have neither.
He's probably rational, might be smart most of the time.
But greed can overwhelm everything else on occasion.
True Parable time:
I work in a University setting, very few dumb people here.
A co-worker's daughter married a guy who was an "investment counselor". The co worker introduced him to many of us. This guy was awesome! 25-50 percent return o our investments. A few of the initial people investing with him got great returns and praised the guy to the heavens.
They hit on me, and it was pretty obvious the guy was running a Ponzi scheme. So I begged off, with the typical admonitions how foolish I was being.
But several co-workers invested everything they had in this financial genius' outfit.
Despite all being of high intelligence, their greed gland overwhelmed them.
And when the guy was caught as they always are, they lost everything.
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First off, why didn't you want your smart friends and co-workers about the obvious links scheme?
I think you meant "warned" Oh I did. I warned and argued and begged them not to destroy their retirement. But they all claimed that "So and so got a check for half again what he invested", and I was told I was missing out and a couple of them even called me stupid.
Second, they lost their money the moment they gave it to him, any returns the think they got were on paper, and had nothing to back up the claims in their statements.
It depends. The Ponzi scheme works by having a few initial investors get big returns, so that the grifter has people he can point ot to show that the scheme is legit. The big return comes from other people's money after new investors get involved.
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For that amount of money, I would personally take a plane to Elon Musk and ask him myself if he's behind that :)
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And social media platforms don't do enough to remove this information before it does harm. So unsurprisingly social media is full of scams, woo, quackery, hate groups etc. where misinformation is the oxygen that keeps them alive.
I don't know about what normal people do, but I have a lady who manages most of my investments, and I've done quite well by her. She has an office in a financial institution, and never do they deal with social media.
Re:Why do people fall for this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because humans sometimes make stupid mistakes in tiredness, a rush, brief lapses of judgement, etc. It's just that sometimes some stupid mistakes happen to be more consequential than others.
All evening yesterday I kept telling myself, don't let yourself get distracted and forget about your dough, you need time to bake it - and then remembered it right before I needed to go to sleep that I'd totally forgotten. Thankfully, that mistake didn't cost me $560B.
I try not to judge others by their mistakes, unless they've shown a habit of making the same mistake repeatedly. I'm not perfect, and don't expect others to be either.
Re:Why do people fall for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because humans sometimes make stupid mistakes in tiredness, a rush, brief lapses of judgement, etc. It's just that sometimes some stupid mistakes happen to be more consequential than others.
If you are halfway competent at living, then no, not with half a million. Unless you have a lot more to spare.
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Because humans sometimes make stupid mistakes in tiredness, a rush, brief lapses of judgement, etc. It's just that sometimes some stupid mistakes happen to be more consequential than others.
This is true. There's an old saying, "There but for the grace of god, go I"
This is complicated by greed, which people have in differing degrees.
And it's one case where being cynical and skeptical can be a big help.
Certainly a good guideline is knowing that most investment schemes that arrive out of the blue are probably scams.
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Fear, greed and the usual '' a fool and his money''
we know the rest.
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Apparently, there are about 10% or so of the population that "want to believe". In these people, the desire to believe things is much stronger than the rational impulse to actually understand what is going on. These people fall for everything and anything and some of them get defrauded multiple times and learn absolutely nothing from that experience. In a very real sense, they have never managed to qualify as adult, and if there was any meaningful test you had to pas to be regarded as an adult, these people
Re: Why do people fall for this? (Score:3)
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Why?
The law of averages. It's that simple. At the bottom end of the bell curve of intelligence, you are going to find Stupid who is dumb enough to believe anything they read or hear. Con artist tactics might gain another few percent on that, but the majority who fall for this, are simply Stupid.
In other words, Stupid should be about as expected in the human race as Smart, Sexy, Funny, or Tall. I really don't know why humans keep standing in bewilderment when they run across it, questioning its very existenc
They're bitcoin investors (Score:2)
They decided to buy into bitcoin. As we all know, the phone numbers of people who fall for one scam are very valuable, because they are likely to fall for another.
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Exceedingly weak FP. Why modded "Insightful"?
Because people are stupid in general and Bitcoin is stupid in particular. Or "generally stupid" and "particularly stupid", if you prefer. Oh yeah. Because people want heroes and some people are even stupid enough to think Elon Musk is a hero. Also this victim sounds like an outstanding fool. All the elements in place for major damage, but I guess that's contingent on how cunning the scammer is in "investing" his ill-gotten gains from this relatively individualize
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Well, either the guy has enough money that he can afford to lose $565 million, or he's a member of the Elon Musk Is Never Ever Wrong cult. Seriously, there's too much Elon Musk worship.
Re: Why do people fall for this? (Score:2)
Re: Why do people fall for this? (Score:2)
The "victim" in this story is a German national, the U.S. Political and educational system has nothing to do with it.
It's a simple case of greed, with a health dose of over-confidence in his ability to detect fraud/scams.
It made no sense that Elon Musk would give away millions of dollars in bitcoin to complete strangers based on answers to a quiz, but the victim out so much trust in the verification tag next to the sender's name that he decided W/o in Musk must be behind this, it must be legitimate, and he
Re: Why do people fall for this? (Score:3)
Nonsense. There are plenty of other countries that have teachers unions and pay their teachers more than the US does and get better results from their students.
Private school vouchers are a back door way to fund religious schools with public money, and Jefferson had a thing or two to say about that.
Re: Why do people fall for this? (Score:3)
Youâ(TM)ve stated a couple falsehoods. First is that union membership is mandatory. Thatâ(TM)s certainly not the case in any of the places Iâ(TM)ve worked. Second is that unions cause poor and expensive education results - not true, as many countries have stronger unions, less expensive education, and better outcomes.
I personally blame American anti-intellectualism and celebration of ignorance. In some countries teachers are truly respected and well-compensated. A majority of students aspire
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Because democrazy spreads stupidity, devalues culture and education, turning you into a slave (democrazy is rooted in slavery).
You think it's the government's fault that people are stupid?
Who do we blame for you, in particular?
About 11.5 million Mexican pesos (Score:3)
How many rubles is that? What about rupees? Can we convert that to Doge? Where the hell did this fact come from?
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2,465,289.22 Romanian Lei. :)
You're welcome
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How many rubles is that? What about rupees? Can we convert that to Doge? Where the hell did this fact come from?
This article was translated from our Spanish edition using AI technologies. Errors may exist due to this process.
A fool and his money are soon parted (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'd like to see how far an open bitcoin ponzi setup could run.
Like you send in X amount, and it gets sent to the oldest entry in the queue, and you get placed in the queue to get your money back +1/10/100% depending on which queue you select. The whole queue would be publicly visible, so you couldn't effectively use it to launder money.
Site would keep no money, everything coming in would go out ASAP, it would be ad supported or something. and very clear that at some point, the ride will end, site will fail,
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Get a lawyer on board to check how to set this up in a legal way (because these schemes are actually outlawed in most countries, but there might be ways if you do it properly and openly) and I'd be interested enough to participate and contribute what I can in coding and server setup.
I've always wanted to know how many people you can get to press the button that says "by pressing this button you self-select as an idiot".
You can easily finance this with a tiny transaction fee. The blockchain already has those
Re: A fool and his money are soon parted (Score:2)
Millions of people play the lottery every day. That's your audiance.
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Two important differences.
First, I'm not the one who collects the stupidity tax in that case.
Two, you could argue that a few coins vs. a tiny chance at millions can be a rational choice if those few coins are something you don't notice missing and you get some non-financial benefit like a thrill.
Re:A fool and his money are soon parted (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like you're describing Bitcoin itself ;)
Re: A fool and his money are soon parted (Score:2)
ROFL
+ Insightful
Re: A fool and his money are soon parted (Score:2)
Except no one is giving their Bitcoin away. Just the opposite. People are hoarding Bitcoin like it's canned food after a nuclear attack.
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why not try sending a small amount first and checking if it is actually sent back doubled?
It's presented as a one-time deal with the timer ticking. If they are convinced they only have one try, they rationalize that they have to go big or they'll miss out.
It's a transparent scam to anyone who's given it a minute of thought, but with the timer ticking down, they are preoccupied with how much they can scrape together, and forget to consider if this is real.
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This thing has been going on for a while. From time to time, videos promoting these scams pop up in my YT recommendations.
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From time to time, videos promoting these scams pop up in my YT recommendations.
Interesting. Never for me. In fact, nobody is ever trying to sell me anything in my recommendations unless you count game promo videos or often critical movie reviews as trying to sell me something....
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$560K? That's bitchange. (Score:2)
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Today, a fool and his money will always end up getting involved with Bitcoin.
Re:A fool and his money are soon parted (Score:4, Insightful)
More likely a legitimate user with a verified account got it hijacked, where the evildooer changed the profile name and picture to match Musk's, then started replying to Musk's tweets.
I think the real concerns here are that Twitter doesn't enforce multi-factor authentication for verified account, and that verified accounts are able to make significant profile changes without having to be re-verified.
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This is exactly what happens. If you click on the fake accounts and search their posting history excluding recent posts, you'll found that by all accounts they appear to be perfectly legit users... whose accounts got compromised and are now being used to push scams.
It staggers me that Twitter has been so terrible at fixing the problem. I mean, Slashdot is also terrible at stopping spammers and trolls, but Slashdot isn't a massive social media platform with 187 million daily users, so at least they have the
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That, but the real problem is people relying on Twitter's "verified" status for any serious business.
I don't believe it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don't believe it (Score:4, Informative)
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Perhaps they accumulated their half a million in another scam, like the GameStock stock manipulations earlier this year - if you got stupid lucky and bought and got out at the right time, you made plenty of money. This reminds me of people who play poker, get lucky and runt their $50 into $500, then lose thousands trying to repeat the return.
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Some people obsess about money. Present them with a potential windfall, and they get all glassy-eyed and twitchy at the thought of all the money they're going to make.
Sometimes it works for them. If you are preoccupied with making as much money as possible, some of the things you try are going to succeed. Other things blow up in your face, like this one.
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but how can one possess the skills
Possess what skills? He had 10 bitcoins. By all accounts he may have bought them for shits and giggles back when it was worth $10.
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You do not necessarily need any skill to accumulate half a million. You could have inherited the money. You could also have gotten really lucky with an investment, blind-chicken style. And you have have some specific talents, but sorely lack in general insight.
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You do not necessarily need any skill to accumulate half a million. You could have inherited the money. You could also have gotten really lucky with an investment, blind-chicken style. And you have have some specific talents, but sorely lack in general insight.
In his case he just bought bitcoin before it was worth anything. This also explains why he had half a million dollar in bitcoin ready to throw away.
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Government work.
Elon Musk's real Twitter account was hacked (Score:5, Informative)
Elon Musk's real Twitter account was hacked. Anyone checking to see if the scam was real could have gone back and looked at all Musk's old tweets.
With Musk's eccentric image, immense wealth and links to Bitcoin, he's possibly the one person in the world that might do something ridiculous like giving away Bitcoin.
One of the wildest stories of the year was the day some of the most-followed Twitter accounts on the planet posted cryptocurrency scams because of a massive unprecedented hack.
Elon Musk was the first hacked account most people noticed. “I’m feeling generous because of COVID-19,” a now-deleted 4:17PM ET tweet said. “I’ll double any BTC payment sent to my BTC address for the next hour. Good luck, and stay safe out there!” The tweet also included an address where people could send bitcoin.
https://www.theverge.com/22163... [theverge.com]
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because there is zero correlation between intelligence and having lots of money. that's a lie conservatives like to tell themselves.
Sounds legit (Score:3, Insightful)
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So is USD.
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That's why all of these scams and randomware gangs and so forth always demand payment in USD, not cryptocurrencies.
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** Ransomware. ... though I kind of like the concept of "randomware" ;)
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Re:Sounds legit (Score:4, Insightful)
And both terrified of the hypothetical threat poised by the other, when in reality both are each other's biggest recruiting drive. People become "antifa" when they're terrified of the rise of Naziism in the US, conflating Nazis in the alt-right with the whole movement and its (much milder on average) views on race and religion. People alt-right when they're terrified of the rise of revolutionary Marxism/Communism in the US, conflating Marxists/Communists in the far left with the whole movement and its (much milder on average) views towards leftist politics.
You Americans, left and right, need to share the country with each other. I strongly recommend pigeonholing as small a contingent as possible into the "these people are unacceptable" category and working harder to find "agree to disagree / put up with each other" solutions with the rest.
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Oi. I think it more apt that both antifa and the alt-right are scared shitless of the government, large organizations, and oddly, scientists. Because those entities are somewhat amorphous, they coerce themselves into thinking the are run by the other side.
Never trust an organization that gets its money from scaring its clientele. Fox News is a prime example, Evangelical churches and "ministries" are another. Christianity and Islam work the "your soul is going to Hell" scam. There were elements of scam in th
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Re: Sounds legit (Score:2)
Both working as agents of the Russian government.
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''Have I missed anything? ''
Yea kinda. The blockchain, and the manner of changing it into fiat. You can tumble, mix, exchange but realizing negotiable currency isn't a simple matter to hide.
Soon parted (Score:2)
troll? (Score:2)
Re: troll? (Score:2)
Re:troll? (Score:5, Informative)
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Is it really that hard for someone criticizing other people as stupid to RTFA?
In the first quarter of 2017, 10 BTC was about $10k, increasing parabolically to ~$130k by the end of the year.
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There are a lot of people with money that are stupid. Inheriting the money is one reason.
Bitcoin = marks (Score:2)
Scam artists look for marks, and bitcoin traders contain a higher than average percentage of marks. (as in sucker, not the currency)
real (Score:2)
This is definitely real
Said no smart person ever.
How this guy managed to get 10 bitcoins on what must have been his first day on the Internet is the real mystery behind the story.
Warning to others (Score:2)
Darwin at work. If you dumb enough to fall for another get-rich-scheme (doubling your money in a year definitely qualifies), you go extinct. In case your parents didn't teach you: "If it sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true". Sure, some people get rich winning a lottery, but playing a lottery is not a sane retirement plan.
Perhaps your cosmic purpose in life is to be a warning to others.
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Sure, some people get rich winning a lottery, but playing a lottery is not a sane retirement plan.
Indeed. Or rather, 10 Million people put money in, never getting anything, and one person gets half of what the others put in in payout. The only real way to get rich with a lottery is to run one, because there is an endless supply of people that cannot do basic math.
Well, Bitcoin "investors" are stupid (Score:2)
This story nicely illustrates that long-term observation.
An international world... (Score:5, Funny)
A German man lost 1.5million Mexican pesos to scam pretending to be American actually run by a Russian, says an expert from the Netherlands.
Why he do it ? GREED (Score:2)
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No, the probability of a scam was 100%. Nobody gives sound money (BTC) for free. You could get fiat currencies for free (e.g USD), but you should be well connected to access the QE program.
No idea why someone downvoted you. There were so many red flags in this situation that only a completely naive fool would think they weren't being ripped off.
Stupid (Score:2)
How can you honestly be that incredibly stupid - I mean really, really, really stupid ?
and you guys want to give everyone ubi? (Score:2)
I guess I'll invest in Nigerian scam futures.
twitter's blue checkmark is useless as it is now. (Score:2)
What is the point of a "verified" checkmark if you can change your display name without losing it? I know everyone has fun changing their names to something spooky in October, but security and information integrity is more important.
Ideally there should be a simple and timely procedure for changing the display name in a way that is also verified. Like, fill out a form with "new name" and "reason", and within 24 hours someone can verify that the new name is indeed an iteration of the old name, and matches t
this is total win (Score:2)
Bitcoin is a game token, these losers lost while others reaped the benefits of what bitcoin is best for.
Crime, scams, and tulip mania. These are where bitcoin shines.
Twitter cesspool (Score:2)
Those fake Musk accounts are all over Twitter. I've clicked on links, but sniffed the scam and realized it was a fake Musk before. If you're a bit drunk or something, this could happen easily. Don't drive^H^h^H^H^H Internet drunk.
You can report those accounts, and perhaps people do; but the reporting can't keep up with the fakery. Just yet another way Twitter is a cesspool, and I'm seriously considering deleting my account.