My Big Coin founder is – you guessed it – a $6m crypto-fraudster A crook who created a business called My Big Coin to cheat victims out of more than $6 million has been found guilty by a jury. Randall Crater, 51, of East Hampton, New York was this week convicted [PDF] of four counts of wire fraud and three counts of money laundering. He is due to be sentenced on October 27 by a US federal …
>Lying is fraud
No it isn't (*)
(Such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projections of future performance or result expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.)
Yes, if the allegations in that particular case are true, that would be insider trading.
Whenever a coin is listed on a large exchange like Coinbase, its value goes up - at least initially.
Speaking generally: Let's say a CB staffer quietly tips you off that a token is about to be listed. You buy thousands of those tokens from other exchanges, or perhaps mine a load yourself. Then it's listed on CB and the price shoots up as demand kicks in. When it's gone high enough for you, sell the tokens, and bag a profit.
That would be pants-on-head insider trading.
C.
I think the question was in the context of, crypto is all worthless numbers, so how do you violate securities law by trading tips on them? Would it be insider trading to leak info on which beanie babies are next up to be discontinued? (I don’t know the answer to that.)
Personally I think that the downside of these prosecutions is that the Feds are giving crypto currencies more respect (treating them as securities) than they really deserve.
It really isn't. Crypto scams are worthless, yes, so watch out for those. Actual crypto, no.
If you go on Coinbase or Robinhood or WeBull or FTX or whatever, and you spend $1,000 on Ethereum, the price of ETH goes up 10%, and you sell, you just made $100 cash (minus any applicable tax). If the price goes down 10% and you sell, you just set fire to $100.
So yes, real money at play here. $1.5m of it in the alleged Coinbase case.
C.
To sell or buy is one's own decision. Never understand people that buy trusting it will deliver profits, then complain *and* sell at a loss: that's just the best way to burn through your money.
If you want to ride the waves, buy with care, no more than you're willing to lose. Does not matter if it's crypto, stocks, whisky, real estate or any other hype of the day. Don't sell at a loss or only when you want to use the money otherwise and take gains to at least cover the costs, so you only play with free money. It's that simple.
Any other way to do it is just gambling or plain stupid.
The laws around what kind of information means you shouldn't trade and what things are covered are long and complex, and as a bonus, every country does it differently. However, whether you consider cryptocurrencies to have worth or not, there are people who buy and sell them with real money, thus there is a market and the possibility of insider trading. The defendants' lawyers can argue that cryptocurrency isn't included in the laws on trading if that's the case, but prosecutors usually check that before they file charges. I should note that securities aren't the only thing where there are prohibitions on insider trading. Commodities are covered by other such laws in many places.
Ironically perfectly legal as long as you don't have any actual information
If you owned a major garden vermin named news network you could announce that Facebook was being shutdown for child porn and Zuckerberg had been arrested, while shorting the stock and it would be fine
There were people in a former president's press office shorting stocks before his tweets went out
An old boss of mine fiddled the company out of some considerable wonga. Some of the money was spent on plastic surgery for his wife and a swimming pool was involved too. As I understand it as she wasn't directly involved in the theft they couldn't kick her out of the house so (if she hadn't divorced him while he was locked up) he could in theory have returned from the clink to spend the rest of his life with some silicon tits by a nice pool. So in theory crime can be made to pay.
Obviously shifting the wonga offshore (or NI limited company) means you can easily hide it - but then they can in theory follow you later and grab it back. But I was intrigued by the idea that he could have legally spent the rest of his life enjoying some of his ill gotten gains.
So, other than claiming covid support for companies you own and then crashing and folding them before you have to pay it back any other ways people know of keeping hold of stuff - as a purely intellectual exercise of course.
The authorities will take his house unless he can come up with other, legally acquired, assets to cover the money he stole (plus interest and fines). His former company would likely sue for damages as well.
I very much doubt he will have many assets left after all that, so those fake tits and their owner will most likely be housed elsewhere with a new squeeze by the time of his release.
I believe that real estate can be seized, even if not all of the cost was ill-gotten. Possibly there's some formula where he can either repay in cash the cost of the pool, or they offset the difference between whatever they raise from auctioning the house and the cost of the pool from whatever other restitution needs to be done. His wife's 'assets' would not really be recoverable, and they are in any case more a service than an asset (in the sense that the cost of two bags of silicone is probably a few cents, the actual cost is mostly in the installation!).
Generally speaking, if you spend ill-gotten gains on services/consumables (eg hookers and coke), amounts stolen can be recovered by seizing and selling off your assets. I guess if someone used money from a certain account to buy bitcoin, it could be identified at the point the money entered the fiat-to-crypto exchange and the ID of the bitcoin wallet containing the dosh could be found out, but I'm not sure any restitution could be made without the wallet owner's cooperation. Possibly the wallet could be flagged/monitored for future transactions?
Possibly, given the accuracy of modern GPS, the best bet would be convert as much as possible into gold, jewels or plain old cash, and bury them in the middle of nowhere (possibly a national park where you know it won't be developed, and the location can be noted to within a couple of meters). But then, getting gold, jewels and cash back into the system later is absolutely not trivial (and you might find 20 years down the line when you leave prison that cash has been banned)
Every time I read about crypto currency I get more baffled.
Why would I (or anyone else) want to part with real money for an IOU, whether paper or "digital", from someone I don't know, can't find, and have no means of trusting? All I can do with the crypto is swap it for other crypto or hope it's still got some value when I want to change it back to usable currency.
The only use I can see is for nefarious purposes - and even then I'm not so sure. I'd hazard a guess that all the cryptos are under quite close inspection by law enforcement authorities & tax agencies. Surely as soon a swap of real money is made some red flags are set? Especially if our friend blockchain is involved.
Think of it like digital gold. Yes, the metal has industrial uses but, even at the current rate of use and without recycling, there's enough gold for over a century of industrial applications held in its refined form. Both gold and cryptocurrencies (in broad terms) require work to produce, with increasing amounts of work to extract each additional piece and a hard upper limit on what can be extracted.
Essentially, you're buying ownership of a specific amount of work, at a rate determined by how much others are willing to pay. For gold, your ownership is based upon your physical ownership. For cryptocurrency, it's based upon mathematics that combines your private key with the number of that particular coin, written on a ledger that takes an amount of work to subvert that is hopefully more expensive to do than the value of the subversion. In both cases, while both the respective underlying physical and mathematical security are fundamentally secure, the way in which you secure the item or the keys is a potential weak point.
Both are valuable because humans make funny decisions when it comes to limited resources and the value of something is determined when there's just one more person that wants something in a greater quantity than can be supplied.
The usefulness is that it cannot be taken off you without your consent (failures of security aside) but can also readily be sent without restriction or specifically directed interference. If this seems exclusively nefarious then that suggests you believe that all governments and financial institutions you will ever be subject to will always act in your best interests. There are people who don't hold this view.
As popular as your argument seems to be, you could use that to argue against basically every investment. Every time you turn cash into a paper commodity, you're getting "an IOU". If you buy a share of stock, you're getting a statement from a company that you own something, and that will become worthless if the company becomes bankrupt. If you buy a bond, it's basically the same except you're expecting money returned instead of owning something to resell. If you put it in a bank, you're getting a promise that it should be there possibly with interest when you come back. If you buy an option or other derivative, it's even more complex with more people involved. If you trade it for an international currency, you're trusting the government of that country not to crash it. If you buy gold, you're trusting that people will still want gold when you want to sell it (and with gold your chances are high, but other valuable commodities have become a lot cheaper and wouldn't have done so well). In each case, you've chosen to give some cash to someone else in the hopes of having more cash later, and you are trusting the processes that implement the security not to wipe out your investment.
You may well argue at this point that all those things are better than cryptocurrency, and in many ways you'd be absolutely right. However, the way you characterized cryptocurrency applies to a lot of other things, and I'm guessing you have put your cash into several of them already. If you want a reason not to like cryptocurrencies, there are hundreds to choose from. That wasn't it.
Everything I read about blockchain and cryptocurrency in the news just reaffirms the conclusion that it's a planet-burning ponzi scheme.
That's why you need to do your own research. Blockchain is such a hot buzzword that people are going after Blockchains that use Proof-of-Work just because "that is what Bitcoin uses", instead of going after Blockchains that use Proof-of-Stake which is what Binance uses. It's akin to people buying American SUVs a decade ago despite Japanese cars having the same performance, speed and size with much better fuel mileage.
No it's not. I've ignored crypto since the start, other than to laugh at fools losing their shirt. At no point will that bite me in the ass.
If on the other hand I'd got into crypto say 12 months ago I'd have lost a metric fuckton of money in the recent crash.
Mr Crater, a wonderful example of nominative determinism, has been somewhat innovative here I think, and pointed the way towards a much more efficient model for cryptocurrency. Instead of wasting vast amounts of energy on mining, blockchains, crypto exchanges and all that jazz, he has simply ignored all those steps and gone straight to the stage where the currency founder pockets all the money.
He should be applauded for having solved the problem of doing crypto without all the ecological damage of massive electricity consumption.
My rich sister's dog just died. It was a rescue dog, she only had it a year or two, it never liked her. She liked it, she spent £15,000 on it in vet bills. Eye cancer, all sorts of cancer, all sorts of other things too - more disease than dog.
If I had cancer she'd wish me well, maybe, but she wouldn't send me a present. The last present she bought me 2004 was a charity donkey in Africa I've never met. I hope it never gets cancer.
I can't convey to her how much £15,000 is for, you know, ordinary people, because she'll reply, "I support 36 different charities."
It costs less than £50 for a vet to put a dog down humanely.
A peace activist pal with MS said to me, "I can no longer keep my chickens, can you take care of them for me?"
"Sure, my uncle and grandpa were poachers, I don't mind killing them for you."
Misread the room. She meant take care of them, as in care for them, raise them up and send them to college. Kind of lost a friend with that.
£15,000 effing pounds on a random dog - you can take out a professional hit on a human for £2000 - don't ask me how I know.
@Foxglove
You have £2k spare to kill me? I could chip in £20 for that. Can't afford Dignitas, I doubt you even know killers but I could put you in touch.
I could borrow £2k to kill you. What's more, we could sell this to Amazon Prime Video. You are Ryan Gosling, I'm Billy Bob Thorton. I just like him.
My eyes are bad, my mouse needs new batteries, my cat needs treats. I have cigarettes and no lighter. I have no mouth and I must scream.
How about a fist to fist?
"I wondered who had been crashing the market lately. You should be ashamed of yourself!"
I had inflation explained to me by my Dutch ex. She told me to buy a stolen bike at Junkie Bridge, but to pay no more than 15 guilders for it or everyone would hate me for bumping up the going rate. I paid 30 guilders - £10. She was a tad annoyed. "Well, it is a mountain bike I suppose. We don't have mountains."
I'd asked her how I could tell a junkie selling a stolen bike from any other Dutch cyclist. "They are junkies, they look like you." Cruel, but I did ride the crest of heroin chic in the art scene so fair dos.
What if a junkie steals my bike? "Then get the tram to junkie bridge and buy it back before they sell it."
I had a bike in each city I worked in so I could get off the train and commute. Took twenty minutes to identify it out of the pile of thousands of other bikes. A neighbour welded purple steel antlers to their bike, very identifiable but hardly safe.
"And the coins couldn't be readily transferred or used for anything: victims were just handing over their money."
So, this was only a good old scan, not even a crypto, with the word only used as marketing to lure the idiots.
And hosted in Vegas, capital of gambling.
And it worked ! Amazing !
Human stupidity is indeed, as Einstein guessed correctly, truly infinite.
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