Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A consequence of cucumbers

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

In my day, never was longer.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

He really is that stupid.

Let’s finish the job.

Republicans don’t trust women.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

Let there be snark.

T R E 4 5 O N

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night #Bitcon Open Thread: So Simple, Even A Child Can Understand…

Late Night #Bitcon Open Thread: So Simple, Even A Child Can Understand…

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… how to use it to gull the rubes:


At least the kid has the excuse of youth, not to mention she’s only gonna ruin a handful of her associates…

Reader Interactions

84Comments

  2. 2.

    NotMax

    Heh. Paramount+ (boy, did they miss a bet in not naming it Paramount Peak) is pulling out all the stops across media to push its original series, Infinite. Must have been barraged by about three score ads or static promos for it just over the past week.

    Reviews have been blisteringly scathing about what an utter piece of steaming streaming ca-ca it is. (Not a service to which I subscribe, so no chance of my encountering it. YMMV)

  4. 4.

    Omnes Omnibus

    How did you come up with a plan that hinges entirely on the US government being unwilling to intervene the affairs of a Latin American state.

    Did you think this through at all.

    I just wanted to see that again.

  5. 5.

    dmsilev

    From the Reddit thread,

    I don’t know a lot about cryptocurrency, but I know she’s relying on new membership to help pay for earlier members. That way, even when her investments are down, she’s still able to make a profit for club members.

    I appreciate your suggestion about the burden this is creating for me, but this is my family, and it’s my responsibility as a parent to figure this out as a family.

    (Emphasis added)
    ‘It’s on a computer’ doesn’t make it any less of a pyramid scheme.

  6. 6.

    Ken

    The mother claiming the only reason the pastor wants to shut it down is because he’s jealous of the girl is a nice touch

    I also think it’s important to find out if the kid’s ever actually bought any crypto, or is just telling her marks that she did – which is pretty much what Madoff did.

  8. 8.

    Chetan Murthy

    @dmsilev: Sure, I got dour opinions about all cryptocurrencies.  But setting those aside, that parent’s description is *literally* that of a Ponzi scheme.  Literally.  The mind boggles.  Somebody call the FBI fer crissake.

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    @Chetan Murthy: Yeah, exactly. Here, ‘crypto’ is just a buzzword being used to attract the victims. Twenty years ago, it would have been ‘web’ or ‘Internet’.  Some other buzzword fad will eventually emerge. Doesn’t change the essence of the scam.

  14. 14.

    Mai Naem mobile

    ‘Mother’s Ministry’, five kids and a daughter named Hadley makes me think this is a LDS family. Also they’re kind of known for MLMs – Nuskin, Mellaluca, Young Life, DoTerra etc.

  15. 15.

    James E Powell

    My failure to understand cryptocurrency continues despite several attempts to explain it.

    What I don’t get here is that the lady says her daughter has been doing well. Apparently “doing well” doesn’t mean that she is making money on the investments.

  16. 16.

    The Moar You Know

    The daughter is a criminal and is committing a felony right now.  The mother is an accomplice.  The “investors” are morons.  No matter how this turns out I’ll be fine with it.

  17. 17.

    Chetan Murthy

    @James E Powell: The parent is a moron.  crypto is unrelated to the fact that the kid is paying early investors with funds from later investors.  Straight-up pyramid scheme.

  20. 20.

    Kent

    First, why would anyone invest in bitcoin by handing their cash to a 13 year old instead of just going online and buying their own bitcoin?  My youngest daughter is 15 and I would never trust her to do that.

    Second, wake me up when you can take out a 30-year mortgage in El Salvador that is denominated in bitcoin.  Until then it isn’t a real currency no matter how many banana republic presidents insist otherwise.

  21. 21.

    KrakenJack

    I will plug “Lying for Money” by Dan Davies here. A great overview of the main types of fraud up to the most socially pernicious. He’s also clear about the economic trade-offs in preventing fraud.

  22. 22.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Kent: What Avik forgets, is that the US doesn’t need to interfere in the internals of El Salvador.  All they have to do, is interdict every connection between BTC and the international banking system (which the US controls).  Done and dusted.

  23. 23.

    Chetan Murthy

    @KrakenJack:

    Dan Davies

    Speaking of, this is always excellent: https://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/08/daniel-daviess-one-minute-mba.html

    D-SQUARED DIGEST — FOR BIGGER PIES AND SHORTER HOURS AND AGAINST MORE OR LESS EVERYTHING ELSE http://blog.danieldavies.com: “(1) Avoiding Projects Pursued By Morons 101 http://blog.danieldavies.com/2004_05_23_d-squareddigest_archive.html…

    …The secret to every analysis I’ve ever done… has been, more or less, my expensive business school education….

    • Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance. I was first made aware of this during an accounting class…. (We also learned in accounting class that the difference between “making a definite single false claim with provable intent to deceive” and “creating a very false impression and allowing it to remain without correcting it” is not one that you should rely upon to keep you out of jail. Even if your motives are noble.)…

    As thy say, “read the whole thing”.

  25. 25.

    Martin

    Crazy financial scheme sucks in people at church. Gotta think that’s never happened before.

  27. 27.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Omnes Omnibus: Your point is well-taken: unlike gold, BTC … has no other uses, than as a medium of exchange.  Gold, silver, fiat money, they all have other uses than for transacting.  Not BTC.

  28. 28.

    ian

    She would be unable to pay back the thousands of dollars she owes….

    Good thing this is the pastor asking, and not the creditors.  This lady should count her lucky stars someone tried to stop the ball rolling before it spiraled even further out of control.

    As to the club creating legal headaches for her, well yeah, its *your* child.

  29. 29.

    Omnes Omnibus

    There is a part of me that wants to connect the discussion in the Versailles thread with this one.

  31. 31.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Martin:

    I don’t know why Democrats aren’t going after Republicans harder.

    The news came about four hours ago. What do you want them to have done ?

  32. 32.

    Delk

    I can’t remember the last time I handled cash. Well over a year. I noticed the cash only hot dog stand down the street has a sign announcing that they now take credit/debit cards.

  36. 36.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Martin: Well, that just not necessarily so.  Lots of states have limits on parental liability.  Often around $10-15k.  Plus, there is a whole assumption of the risk thing here.  They gave their money to a teen to invest.  Come on, man.

  37. 37.

    Martin

    @KrakenJack: Reminds me of the analysis of why email schemes are usually poorly written, with typos, etc. It’s deliberate. If you make the scheme too believable you attract critical thinkers who will eventually figure it out before you get money out of them, but will waste a lot of time. If the marks don’t pick up on the typos and poor writing, odds are they won’t figure it out later.

  38. 38.

    MisterForkbeard

    Just checking back in. My cat Thule went peacefully earlier today at the vet – it was very clearly her time. Also, she clawed the vet when he was trying to give her sedatives – he said it was the first time in 10 years a cat had gotten the drop on him.

    I was (and am) very sad, but I’m also weirdly proud of my little cat. 18 years old, terribly sick and STILL nailed the vet. Way to go, kittle.

  42. 42.

    mrmoshpotato

    @dmsilev: So grown adults gave money to a 15-year-old for something that wasn’t a bake sale or a run/walk-a-thon?

    Am I understanding this correctly?

  47. 47.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kent: Well in that case, I take back everything I said!

    ETA – I didn’t see any reference to her being 13 either. ?

  49. 49.

    HumboldtBlue

    How did youse manage to delete Kent?

    I bet he likes rock flute too, don’t you, Kent?

  58. 58.

    Comrade Colette

    I don’t for one minute believe the story in Penthouse the Reddit post is true – it hits too many hot buttons to be real. I absolutely believe that something like this has already happened in more than one church, private evangelical school, or machine shop break room in East Bumfuck, Nowhere.

    Also, even though pastors are not a thing in LDS, I’ve heard members use that word to translate what they mean to outsiders.

  60. 60.

    Kent

    @HumboldtBlue:

    How did youse manage to delete Kent?

    I bet he likes rock flute too, don’t you, Kent?

    I deleted myself.   I realized that I said something wrong (that the girl was 13) and I didn’t have anything intelligent to replace it with while the edit clock was ticking so I just wrote “deleted”

  63. 63.

    Another Scott

    Puerto Rico power outage blamed on explosion

    https://p.dw.com/p/3ujj4

    There was also a DDOS attack on the power company the same day…

    Not good. The good people of PR can’t seem to catch a break.

    :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  65. 65.

    Mary G

    A pocket of an extremely endangered species has been found in Oregon:

    The entire GOP caucus joined the Democrats in this expulsion of a right wing legislator who was complicit with a violent attack on the State Capitol building. https://t.co/7BgA9jxvaH— Seth Cotlar (@SethCotlar) June 11, 2021

  70. 70.

    jl

    I though Avik Roy stuck with flacking for big corporate health care interests. So, he’s a cryptocurrency and foreign affairs expert too? When did that happen?

    But maybe Roy has a point. IIRC the US only occupied or overthrew the governments of Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras. Other than those little oopsies, we never intervened.

    Edit: leaving out all the islands, otherwise the list would be way too long.

  73. 73.

    something fabulous

    @MisterForkbeard: Oh so much loss lately. So sorry to hear, and as you have already heard from so many of us, hoping you can find comfort in helping her not to linger too long. (And kudos to her fierce spirit! Probably helped her to live out such full 9 lives.)

  75. 75.

    yellowdog

    @Martin: The kid is unable to enter into a valid contract. How did she BUY the stuff without an adults cooperation? And the contracts with the parishioners are also legally worthless.

  77. 77.

    ColoradoGuy

    Yellowdog has a good point. Minors can’t sign legally binding contracts. If BTC was involved at all (which seems doubtful), any transactions to and from the minor were illegal, and if an adult was co-signing for the minor, I doubt that would be legal either. And taking money from new “investors” to pay off the original “investors” is a straight-up Ponzi scheme and a serious violation of Federal law. The parents are on the hook for this, whether they like it or not.

  79. 79.

    NorthLeft12

    I was going to say that Mr. Roy is not very aware of the history of the US, particularly with respect to its relations with Latin American, South American, Southeast Asian, Asian, Middle East, African, and European countries.
    Hell, let’s throw in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand too.

    You guys cannot help involving yourselves in everyone else’s business. It’s in your DNA.

  80. 80.

    Chris T.

    @NotMax:

    there’s a pyramid on the back of the one dollar bill

    I’ve been told
    Someone in the know can be sure that his luck is as
    Good as gold
    Money in the bank and you don’t even pay for it
    If you fold
    A dollar in the shape of the pyramid that’s printed on the back

  82. 82.

    captnkurt

    @Chris T.:

    I’ve consulted all the sages
    I could find in yellow pages
    But there aren’t many of them
    And the Mayan panoramas
    On my pyramid pajamas
    Haven’t helped my little problem

    Ha, thanks for the flashback to Alan Parsons Project.

  83. 83.

    tokyokie

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    ‘Mother’s Ministry’, five kids and a daughter named Hadley makes me think this is a LDS family. Also they’re kind of known for MLMs – Nuskin, Mellaluca, Young Life, DoTerra etc.

    Except the LDS Church doesn’t have pastors.

  84. 84.

    Jinchi

    @The Moar You Know: The daughter is a criminal and is committing a felony right now.

    The parent would be smart to get a lawyer who could extract the girl from this scheme as fast as possible. At 15 she should have a lot less legal exposure and, in all likelihood, is not at the top of the pyramid, but rather one of the rubes desperately trying to bring in new ones to cover her losses.

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