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Ask HN: Why shouldn't I take advantage of the Crypto/NFT craze?

30 points by boxmonster ↗ HN
I've been pretty skeptical until I had a recent epiphany brought on by a16z's enthusiasm for the market.

There have been rising standards of living around the world so that many people can afford a smart phone that connects to the internet. Many of these people are unsophisticated internet users. Add to that large number the large number of younger teens in the Western world who can now have smart phones and always on internet access. This is a huge number of people who are susceptible to clever marketing about web3 being the next version of the web, so they better get in on it.

Why should I care if the teenage son of a wealthy banker in Switzerland wants to blow his Dad's money speculating on NFT's? How about the sons and daughter of wealthy Arabs in the oil countries? Surely it doesn't matter if I, as a member of the Silicon Valley elite, take them for a ride and teach them a valuable lesson while profiting handsomely?

I'm searching for my moral compass, but I'm kind of losing my interest in finding it as I think about all the money to be made from the great numbers of wealthy kids who won't be made homeless by the tricks of Silcon Valley. I'd be doing my part to balance out wealth inequality, so I'd actually be performing a useful service for society.

47 comments

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allears
You sound just as clueless as your intended victims. If scamming is your thing, why stop with NFTs? The internet is chock full of gullible folks. Don't be limited by worrying about whether the suckers can afford to be fleeced. That's for chumps and small-timers. A little googling and some creative thinking will let you find lots of gold mines out there.
boxmonster
These kids buying NFT's seem like perfect marks and it's completely legal. It's almost a victimless crime if they can't get their third motorbike because they lost some money on a bored ape.
minimaxir
Don’t assume it’s just rich kids buying into NFTs. Some normal people get caught up in the hype and legit believe it’s an investment vehicle.
YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo
This is it. You are basically asking why shouldn't I scam people. I guess the question is more of your on morality than anything else.
bellyfullofbac
I've read about the Indian "this is IRS, you need to buy gift cards to pay us" telephone scammers, and they justify what they do by saying Westerners are filthy rich anyway, and they got rich by abusing the poorer nations, so what the scammer is doing is justified Robin Hood-ing.

So yeah, that Swiss banker and Arab kid in OP's story is just his justification so he can sleep at night...

Edit to add: OP, so what if you manage to fool^W scam not a rich Swiss or Arab, but a poor person who got fooled into thinking she can better her life by buying NFTs? Seems like your post already has an answer for that, you'll think "Well, I'm here to teach them a lesson, they should've been smarter about things, they need to educate themselves [and I'm part of the expensive lesson].". Rereading your post I think you'll do it anyway, you got that arrogance stemming from insecurity (get on that FOMO train!) already there...

tinus_hn
There is a big difference between a worthless product and a scam.
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codingdave
I'm not so sure there is, not if we are talking about a moral compass. Sure, we can make a dividing line between what is legal vs. illegal. But being legal doesn't make it ethical, so the difference between a worthless product and a scam feels fairly subtle to me.
tinus_hn
Well, if you don’t think there is a big difference between legal and illegal things we might have to agree to disagree.
smt88
This is a moral "transgression" that I honestly can't bring myself to care about. It's not any different than trying to make money on the stock market, knowing that nearly 100% of stock-pickers and day traders will lose money in the long-run.

So I don't care to try to convince you of anything, but I would suggest that there are thousands of people thinking the way you are, and it's still possible to lose all your money due to a shock -- even if you think you're the shark and other people are the fish.

> as I think about all the money to be made from the great numbers of wealthy kids who won't be made homeless by the tricks of Silcon Valley

I was wondering if this were true, and (as far as I can tell) it's not far off[1].

1. https://cheddar.com/media/crypto-investor-white-male-survey-...

boxmonster
Have you ever seen The Music Man? Scamming small town rubes is a long American tradition, but in this case Silicon Valley has gone global with the music. I'm an honest person that doesn't like getting cheated so I can't run a scam, so my question is more a thought experiment. On the other hand, I dislike degenerate gamblers, so maybe I can persuade myself they deserve it. Sure, I could lose, but I'm pretty sure I'd be playing with the house.
jazzyjackson
Most likely outcome: shell out thousands in gas fees to mint NFTs, no one buys. the scammer becomes the scammed and the house always wins.

(The house in this case is the ETH chain and those miners/validators pocketing the fees)

(Does eth burn the fees now? Thought I read something like that but it didn’t make sense, what is the incentive to run full nodes if not pocketing the fees?)

Rastonbury
If you are good at marketing, you can promise x10 gains from the special exclusive NFT you minted, trading your NFTs between yourself boosting the price and fool people who have no idea what market liquidity or bid/offer is, create self-interested evangelists through private discord groups who defend your NFT against anyone who calls it out, market manipulation has never been easier
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thesuperbigfrog
>> I'd be doing my part to balance out wealth inequality, so I'd actually be performing a useful service for society.

Not unless you are giving what you take to the poor, Robin Hood.

boxmonster
I certainly would. Silicon Valley has a homeless problem because we don't care for mentally ill and addicted people. I'd do something about that from my inflows from rich Indian and Saudi Arabian kids.
maxbond
If this is something you are passionate about, skip the intermediate step. Figure out a way to get involved with this cause. Look into something like Americorps, you can probably find a job where you can be providing services to these people.
duxup
Someone had a post that there aren’t that many wallets buying NFTs.

It’s not at all clear to me that we know who they all are.

Accordingly I’m not sure you can be sure of any given scenario anyway.

Beyond that I wonder why you think you can “take advantage “? Assuming you can would seem to make you the perfect mark…

boxmonster
I think I might have an edge because I'm part of the part of the technocracy, although not a major part. I'm a programmer who could write smart contracts and such. I'd have to look into it further to see if I'm right. People like Marc Andreeson have expectations about making big money. Why shouldn't I get in on that?
philomath_mn
There is no simple path from smart contract development to outsized profits. Tons of brilliant people have been working on these problems for years and I am confident that the vast majority haven't found their millions yet.

Sure there are some crazy high valued NFTs, but 99.99+% are worthless. Seeing bored apes and thinking you can do the same is like seeing a lottery winner on the news and planning to follow in their footsteps.

rainonmoon
Your technical ability is basically irrelevant at this point if you're actually chasing the kind of Web3 money people talk about. You'd be better served by leveraging your networks into pump and dump schemes and developing well-branded NFT airdrops. The market is not for coders, it's for hypemen. Whatever organisational/evangelistic abilities you have right now are what actually matter.
skinnymuch
I don’t think coding has anything to do with the NFT/web3 market right now if making money now is the goal. That’s not going to help you. Luck + marketing is what matters, no?

Go for it. It’s not as much of a scam as others are saying since there’s a good chance you’ll spend many hours and even lose money.

vanusa
Why should I care if the teenage son of a wealthy banker in Switzerland wants to blow his Dad's money speculating on NFT's? How about the sons and daughter of wealthy Arabs in the oil countries? Surely it doesn't matter if I, as a member of the Silicon Valley elite, take them for a ride and teach them a valuable lesson while profiting handsomely?

Just remember, when you're playing with this kind of a crowd, this late in the game -- it's all about being the last person holding the bag.

Do you know that the phrase means? And do you want to be that person?

I've been pretty skeptical until I had a recent epiphany brought on by a16z's enthusiasm for the market.

Which is utterly and transparently deranged, BTW. Either that, or very cynically and skillfully devised to promote businesses with the specific intent of fleecing down brave, optimistic people very much like yourself.

I'm not exaggerating here; just look a the opening paragraph of one of their recent pronouncements on this subject:

https://future.a16z.com/the-future-of-work-daos-crypto-netwo...

boxmonster
I've read those. It's kind of beautiful the way they paint the glorious future where every man and woman is in control of their own destiny. I remember similar promises in the dot com bubble. By the way, both Andreeson and I made a lot of money in that bubble and hung on to it by being smart about it (I have no affiliation, we were just both there) while others lost their shirts. I'm wondering why I'm sitting on the sidelines scoffing when I could get into the game. I'm not saying I'd be any good at playing, but you can't win if you don't play and like I said in another comment, I think I'd be playing with the house and that would give me an edge. I don't, I'm just thinking out loud in HN new that no one except a few will ever read.
vanusa
It's kind of beautiful the way they paint the glorious future where every man and woman is in control of their own destiny.

"When Sir Isaac Newton was asked about the continuance of the rising of South Sea stock... He answered 'that he could not calculate the madness of people'." He is also quoted as stating, "I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company

syntheweave
You're imagining it's as simple as doing the thing and walking out with bags. But it's actually just a market. Most participants in most markets struggle, regardless of their morals. It doesn't matter what news stories you read about stupid actors in a market: most are actively trying to make smart moves, and as in any chess match, it takes some special insight to get ahead. If you get chewed up and spit out, that would be the default result.

So yeah, go try it. "Don't spend more than you are willing to lose".

josephcsible
The fact that some people are dumber and richer than you doesn't make scamming them okay. How would it?
randomhodler84
Scamming implies theft. I don’t think the question is asking about fraud, theft, etc. This is a voluntary marketplace and all participants exchange of their own accord. Selling worthless jpegs to idiots isn’t unethical. They are free to… not buy them… it’s not healthcare.
vaidhy
Scamming does not imply theft. Some scams are thefts, but not all of them are. If you sell something you believe to be worthless, but convinced others that it is valuable, then it is not theft by definition. Both of you entered into an agreement and it is just upholding the contract.

Personally, I do not think I will be able to do it, but SV is built on this kind of wild hubris.

snowwrestler
The short answer is that it’s a moot question because you can’t. The whole way these things work is that the early folks take all the easy gains. You’re not early.
austhrow743
If you can time markets why haven’t you just hopped from one rapidly increasing stock to the next until money was no longer an issue well before now? Why is this all about morality rather than ability as if you’re a finance or sales god?
agapelojong
Crypto is a mindvirus. It requires obsessive attention. It changes you into a evangelist. At least it did for me, so I quit.
maxbond
Sure, I'll bite.

You're deliberately constructing the least empathetic victim to allow yourself to pretend this is victimless. The people you'd be scamming would be people like you. People with hopes and dreams. People confused about what the future holds and who have a lot of anxiety about it. The bit about balancing out wealth inequality is totally ludicrous. You can't beat the casino from inside the house. And if you're embarking on your life of amoral grift, why would you care about social justice? It seems like you're trying to have it both ways, morality doesn't matter, just grift, and the grift is good actually.

It looks to me like you're rationalizing something you know is dumb, and that's why you're asking us to talk you out of it. I don't know why you're doing that, but maybe that is a better question to ask yourself? I've had similar moments in life where I didn't know how to proceed, and I was just so desperate to do _something_, change _something_, that I tried to talk myself into taking a path I knew was the wrong choice.

As a practical matter, you're probably too late to be a robber baron in the NFT craze. You're having this epiphany because you're starting to hear the music, but by the time you've heard it, it's already slowing down. You may as well say, Ask HN, why shouldn't I give Bernie Madoff money and collect that sweet 10%/year? People will continue to mint money from NFTs, maybe for months, maybe for years, but they'll be people like Beeple and a16z, people who got in early and have sufficient inertia to keep moving, even as the sails go slack.

It may be instructive that the people who got in with Madoff early - had to give the money back. When you play dumb games the result is almost always that you win dumb prizes.

Hey, I hope things work out for you. You don't have to make a big decision tonight. You don't have to make a decision this week. Chew on it. Seek alternatives. I think it's great you made this post. Keep looking for evidence that you're wrong. Confirmation bias is subtle and we all struggle with it.

secondaryacct
You can take advantage of it ofc, but be careful not to be taken advantage of, like everything: do not buy coins, buy stocks of crypto companies, do not get employed by a crypto company but provide consultancy to them etc.

When it fails, you'll be happy to have less eggs in their basket.

zaptheimpaler
Lol "why shouldn't I rob clueless people?". This is the endpoint of the envy driven wealth inequality billionaires suck mindset. If no one deserves their riches, who cares if you rip them off? Just don't complain if you robbed at gunpoint when you get rich.
alexb_
This is analogous to asking "Why shouldn't I take advantage of the Tulip craze?"
drakonka
It seems like the only difference between you and the son of a wealthy banker in Switzerland wanting to blow his Dad's money speculating on NFTs would be that you'd likely be blowing your own money speculating on NFTs, making the teenage "unsophisticated internet user" actually seem like the smarter one in this situation...
capableweb
> Surely it doesn't matter if I, as a member of the Silicon Valley elite

> I'd be doing my part to balance out wealth inequality

> I'd actually be performing a useful service for society

Surely this is sarcasm or something else? How would transferring wealth from one part of the 1% to another part of the 1% benefit anyone else than the "Silicon Valley elite" you so proudly proclaim to belong to?

If you actually wanna re-balance the wealth of the world, you should steal from the rich and give to the poor, not steal from the rich and give to the other rich.

brador
NFTs are a way to avoid gift and inheritence taxes. No one is actually paying $500k for a digital image.

Kid lists it, Daddy buys it from his anonymous crypto wallet. Tada, gift tax avoided and daddys liabilities reduced.

GabrieleR
It makes me laugh a lot when you refer to the kids of a swiss banker as dumb unsophisticated user. if you take a look of a LinkedIn profile of a swiss Baker in Geneva or Zurich you will rapidly understand the profile of those people and that certainly influence profundity their children. Their values are rater uncommod and sophisticated. Growing up as the son of a mathematician probably puts you already ahead then average users.
yucky
There are plenty of NFT scams, but why not use the technology to create an actual use case? Or is that beyond your ability?
Crosseye_Jack
ISSUE 1:

> I, as a member of the Silicon Valley elite.

Not everyone even here on HN is a member of the "Silicon Valley elite". Would that make it jusified for someone outside of SV to fleece money from people in SV because "They have their cushy FAANG jobs to fall back on"? I hope your answer is no.

Think of it like this. Everyone everywhere are somewhere on a ladder, you, me, those rich kids spending daddies money, the homeless guy living in a doorway, everyone. You are looking up that ladder thinking "Dam, I want some of what that they have..." which everyone on the ladder does. But remember if your thoughts are about fleecing or scamming your way up a few runs of the ladder there will always be people below you on that ladder, looking up and now looking at you as a target.

ISSUE NUMBER THE SECOND:

Basically, you are never going to be able to scam just the wealthly people who "can afford to lose it". There will always be some "friendly fire", casualties of war so to speak.

The people floating around your target are in one way or another influenced by said targets wealth, populatity, charisma, whatever. They wil see the "shiney thing" influencer purchased and might well think "I want one of those, Rick Kid Jimmy is ure they will go up in value" and scrimp together money they really should be spending on something else and by into what Rich Kid Jimmy is into or atleast want to. Sure no everyone will be able to buy it at "day one" of your master plan even with raiding their life savings but OHHHH SHINEY THING that will increase in value!

But lets say no one floating around Rick Kid Jimmy buys in and you successfully rug pull, who do you think Rich Kid Jimmy will try to unload his now worthless shiney things on to? "Hey Dave, I know you were really interested in my Shiney Thing, And yeah its awesome and all, but I just brought another EVEN MORE SHINEY thing, As I know you, I'll let you have it for 50%". Rich Kid Jimmy will always be able to find new people to hover around him, burning a few won't matter too much to them, esp if they have that rich kid Jimmy mindset you seem to think they have.

Now all whats happened is 50% of your earnings have come from those you never intended to target, but inadvertently scammed anyway cause Rich Kid Jimmy wanted to recoup atleast some of their losses.

I Could write more and more about this, but I would be here all day and I have code to write/debug, so I will end it with this. At the end of the day you got to look at yourself and ask "can I sleep at night knowing what I'm doing will affect those who can't afford it?" Because even if you successfuly target Rich Kid Jimmy, their are always casualties of war that will get caught in the crossfire no matter how prefect of a plan you have.

If ther answer to that is YES, then hit me up, I have a bridge to sell.

cercatrova
Others are giving you answers from a moral perspective, but let me give one from a practical one, as I suspect you won't be amenable to the moral one.

The primary reason is because if you are not "in the know" so to speak, it won't be you who will take advantage of others, it will be you who will be taken advantage of. You think (and I mean you as in not just you personally but more broadly) you're the first one to think of minting NFTs by hiring artists on Upwork? No, that has been known since NFTs became popular. It takes quite a bit of money to mint, and the vast majority of creators won't ever see positive ROI. You think you're the only one who wants to cash in on coins to get rich quick? Well, that's what everyone wants to do, until the rug gets pulled.

People in crypto are not as stupid and gullible as you think. They are just as smart and have likely been pulling scams since before the crypto days. Take care not to fall victim to them yourself all the while thinking you'll be the one outscamming them.

dorkwood
What's your angle? How many social media followers do you have? I don't mean to sound rude, but this reads like you're falling for the same grift as everyone else.

There's a reason there's a whole lot of money sloshing around in the space. It's because regular people keep thinking they can get in on the action.

charlieyu1
NFT is there to stay. For every person that calls NFTs a scam, there are 4 or 5 artists who couldn’t make a living before who is willing to sell their art as NFTs.