And bitcoin transactions can be relayed from any IP address, or used without the internet and broadcasted later, so we wouldn’t be able to know if transactions were originating there
Privacy feature undermining our ability to confirm our pre-existing biased, how quaint
The Open Money Initiative [0] has done qualitative research to help pin this down- from what I remember of talks they've given, the answer to real usage in Venezuela is somewhere in between. Crypto has certainly been helpful for capital flight, since smuggling eg gold outside the country is quite a bit more difficult to get through customs than a private key seed.
I recall seeing a thread sometime ago where someone claimed to be a Venezuelan who was using Bitcoin. I can't find it, but my recollection of the discussion was that
a) people in Venezuela are using anything they can get their hands on as hard currency, and
b) Bitcoin was one of those things, but it was negligible usage at best.
IIRC from listening, there are indeed some people who mine and those who use it as a store of value. And some people use it for remittance or as a portable non-hyperinflational asset. But in general, people are not really aware and dismiss it as a scam (it's understandable; even their own president tried to crypto scam them with the Petro).
I sure they have their ways. With online digital currency trading (online games) I know crypto is generally the preferred method of payment. There probably exist unique ways to liquidate it into USD or Bolivars
>"In this case, every 24 hours, they guaranteed me a doubling of my bitcoin, and said that if I would just send them some bitcoin I could start seeing returns."
I got scammed once, in the early days of the crypto craze. I was selling a video card on Reddit, and the person sent me a forged btc escrow email. I was naive enough not to pay attention while in a rush, and promptly shipped the card. Days later, he messages me throwing it in my face how stupid I was, even posted images of the card in his computer.
Probably thinking I was too stupid to follow up, I began the manhunt. He used a lot of very similar aliases on Reddit, and the identical email around the internet tied to publicly displayed IP addresses while scamming others. Tracerouting those IPs all zeroed in on the same exact town. He also foolishly used a real mailing address(his friends). The images he posted showed the serial number of the card I had on file. During this time, he continued to berate and taunt me from all of his aliases, even asking me tech support questions on how to fix the undervolting mod I had done to the card. I remained silent.
My favorite quote. "being a scammer dosen't make someone a bad person, it just makes them smart for being able to outwit other people into handing over free money. Thanks for all your help I really appreciate it. Fuck you, and have a nice day. Next time you shouldn't throw your money around like it's a boomerang causes it's not gonna come flying back to you every time something dosen't go your way. i know my morals and taking money from people who have nothing better to do with it than throw it around like it's nothing on the internet dosen't seem like a crime to me."
At this point I was ready to board a plane and confront this punk.
Instead I compiled all of the information I could find on this dude, and created a 20 page document of evidence. That's when I contacted the police in his local hometown. It was met with a luke warm response, so I contacted the local news station and explained everything to a reporter. A day or so went by and I was contacted by a local officer that was friends of the reporter.
Fast forward a few days, the officer had visited the homes of both this kid, and his friend. The kid emails me crying, WHY DID YOU SEND THE COPS, why would you do this to me? Shortly after that I begin getting emails from his 'father', on how it's my fault that I didn't verify his age, and I'm forcing his child without permission to trade money for a video card, and contributing to video game addiction. How it's not their responsibility to pay for people selling "stuffs to child" without parent's knowing. "Are you still trying to finish trade with children?". On and on. So I press full charges with the police.
End of the story, Mom gets involved, apologizes, and sends me the full amount in Paypal + shipping and fees. Best part is I actually got WAY more than the value of the card, because I had set the original MSRP as a starting point. Done.
I wish you guys could read the entire email saga, and all of my documentation. But hopefully that's enough to get the gist :)
No idea, I contemplated trying to contact others who he had scammed, but I just wanted to be done with it. That little shit wasted way too much of my time. It was less about the money, and more of the point of not letting him win for being such a little arrogant asshole about it.
I used to run an IRC channel; it kept getting hacked. Every few days. None of the folks in my channel could stop it, nor could the IRC admins. I had no idea why this person was doing this or why he only seemed to attack us.
Someone knew someone at IBM security, he somehow got us the guys phone number and called it. It turned out our hacker was a 16-year-old. We talked to his father for a bit, and never heard from him again.
This same thing happened to me except with two (2) Electric Forest tickets. Found the guy in Grand Rapids, Michigan; sent the police his way and was later sent 3 checks that equaled the amount I sent him for the tickets.
Reminds me of a scam in a game called Ultima Online I saw where someone would pretend to be an NPC and say 'I shall double thy gold if ye trust me' and if you gave him 5 gold pieces he would give back 10. After a bunch of transactions someone would inevitably attempt to give him 100,000 gold and then he would stop working ha
The doubling gold is also famous in Runescape, but they don't pretend to be an NPC, just someone doubling gold for free. I usually did it once with a low amount and then stopped so I always came out on top.
Years ago when one Bitcoin was worth less than $20, individuals would run doubling games on shared Google spreadsheets.
The operator would publish a Bitcoin address and the spreadsheet. Participants would send whatever amount of Bitcoin they wanted to this address. The operator would add deposits to the spreadsheet in the order received.
Starting from the top of the list, as soon as the total deposited was enough to double the first deposit, the operator would send double the amount to that participant.
Then when total deposits grew enough to double the second deposit, it was paid out. This continued until there weren't enough new deposits to double the next in line.
Could be illegal, but it's definitely not a scam because everyone could see from the beginning that the pyramid must eventually collapse. Many of these games were actually called "Ponzi" in the name of the spreadsheet.
Some of these games ran a surprisingly long time, months in some cases.
And in the games I played, the anonymous operator never pulled an exit scam. They profited naturally when deposits eventually dried up and the remainder was their reward.
I wondered why this was in any way newsworthy when I found out it was a whole $50...then I read that this dude was the 'marketing director of a btc firm' and it all made sense. This is garbage PR bullshit.
43 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadIt's highly probable - food or anything needed for daily life
- Venezuelans using Bitcoin mining as a way to arbitrage their subsidized below-market electricity rates into money.
- People suggesting Venezuela as a hypothetical case for a flight to cryptocurrencies in a place undergoing hyperinflation.
- Bitcoin boosters confusing the two (perhaps deliberately) and claiming on thin evidence that Bitcoin use is widespread in Venezuela.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't found anything to indicate that real use of Bitcoin is widespread in Venezuela.
And bitcoin transactions can be relayed from any IP address, or used without the internet and broadcasted later, so we wouldn’t be able to know if transactions were originating there
Privacy feature undermining our ability to confirm our pre-existing biased, how quaint
[0] - https://www.openmoneyinitiative.org/
https://twitter.com/LorePach/status/1159459121722097666?s=19
a) people in Venezuela are using anything they can get their hands on as hard currency, and
b) Bitcoin was one of those things, but it was negligible usage at best.
IIRC from listening, there are indeed some people who mine and those who use it as a store of value. And some people use it for remittance or as a portable non-hyperinflational asset. But in general, people are not really aware and dismiss it as a scam (it's understandable; even their own president tried to crypto scam them with the Petro).
Flashbacks of ISK doubling in Jita
*ISK
and i send double ISK no scam
More than likely, it was money he received by scamming some other victim.
Probably thinking I was too stupid to follow up, I began the manhunt. He used a lot of very similar aliases on Reddit, and the identical email around the internet tied to publicly displayed IP addresses while scamming others. Tracerouting those IPs all zeroed in on the same exact town. He also foolishly used a real mailing address(his friends). The images he posted showed the serial number of the card I had on file. During this time, he continued to berate and taunt me from all of his aliases, even asking me tech support questions on how to fix the undervolting mod I had done to the card. I remained silent.
My favorite quote. "being a scammer dosen't make someone a bad person, it just makes them smart for being able to outwit other people into handing over free money. Thanks for all your help I really appreciate it. Fuck you, and have a nice day. Next time you shouldn't throw your money around like it's a boomerang causes it's not gonna come flying back to you every time something dosen't go your way. i know my morals and taking money from people who have nothing better to do with it than throw it around like it's nothing on the internet dosen't seem like a crime to me."
At this point I was ready to board a plane and confront this punk.
Instead I compiled all of the information I could find on this dude, and created a 20 page document of evidence. That's when I contacted the police in his local hometown. It was met with a luke warm response, so I contacted the local news station and explained everything to a reporter. A day or so went by and I was contacted by a local officer that was friends of the reporter.
Fast forward a few days, the officer had visited the homes of both this kid, and his friend. The kid emails me crying, WHY DID YOU SEND THE COPS, why would you do this to me? Shortly after that I begin getting emails from his 'father', on how it's my fault that I didn't verify his age, and I'm forcing his child without permission to trade money for a video card, and contributing to video game addiction. How it's not their responsibility to pay for people selling "stuffs to child" without parent's knowing. "Are you still trying to finish trade with children?". On and on. So I press full charges with the police.
End of the story, Mom gets involved, apologizes, and sends me the full amount in Paypal + shipping and fees. Best part is I actually got WAY more than the value of the card, because I had set the original MSRP as a starting point. Done.
I wish you guys could read the entire email saga, and all of my documentation. But hopefully that's enough to get the gist :)
If overcast was using Gmail this would take like 30 seconds to upload using PrettyFWD, or less than 5 min using FWD:Everyone.
I used to run an IRC channel; it kept getting hacked. Every few days. None of the folks in my channel could stop it, nor could the IRC admins. I had no idea why this person was doing this or why he only seemed to attack us.
Someone knew someone at IBM security, he somehow got us the guys phone number and called it. It turned out our hacker was a 16-year-old. We talked to his father for a bit, and never heard from him again.
So--did they comment on it, or not?
The operator would publish a Bitcoin address and the spreadsheet. Participants would send whatever amount of Bitcoin they wanted to this address. The operator would add deposits to the spreadsheet in the order received.
Starting from the top of the list, as soon as the total deposited was enough to double the first deposit, the operator would send double the amount to that participant.
Then when total deposits grew enough to double the second deposit, it was paid out. This continued until there weren't enough new deposits to double the next in line.
Could be illegal, but it's definitely not a scam because everyone could see from the beginning that the pyramid must eventually collapse. Many of these games were actually called "Ponzi" in the name of the spreadsheet.
Some of these games ran a surprisingly long time, months in some cases.
And in the games I played, the anonymous operator never pulled an exit scam. They profited naturally when deposits eventually dried up and the remainder was their reward.