"Successful" seems a rather generous description. If an apartment building is built on quicksand and collapses overnight, are the people who bought apartments the ones to blame?
Let's not pretend that people who put money into such crypto "investments" don't know exactly what is going on. The goal is always to pull money out before the inevitable collapse and leave some other sucker holding the bag. And if you get too greedy and don't manage to do it in time just cry fraud and turn to the government for help. After hundreds of such high profile incidents this is still regularly happening today (see the "Hawk Tuah coin" for example). I have no sympathy for anyone involved in these scams, whether perpetrator or victim.
There were plenty of unwitting, first-time crypto investors in the case of HAWK. The reason that influencers like Ms. Welsh are of such great value to crypto scammers is that they introduce or legitimize crypto investment to new unexperienced and unwitting investors.
These folks are scammers, the people who fall for the scams are victims.
I specifically remember that time and anyone that believed 20% APY could go on forever was either stupid or fooling themselves. And when you said this you were attacked so I’ve never had a bit of sympathy for them.
how is what do did different from what marketers did?
I think building something interesting, but not marketing it to investors, should be legal/ok, but the moment you start telling the story of this product being a safe 20% return investment is when you need to get in trouble.
It had a death loop which got triggered by market pressure on a stablecoin leading to a run on the native token which actually made it converge to zero: can't get much more unsuccessful than that.
i actually disagree with this philosophy. If you are a small business and you co market or collaborate with another and have no idea about their ethics should you see legal action for them being illicit in any way? How would a youtuber be able to audit and actually get enough information to determine a massive company wasn't above board.
They are YouTubers not auditors, even auditors have a hard time figuring out if companies are legit or not (Wirecard). Why would a YouTuber or influencer be able to do that task as a side thing when getting advertising deals?
Maybe they should take advertising deals from reputable companies? And skip the scam coins? And here’s a hint, they are all scam coins. Promoting a crypto project is just a bad idea.
FTX was considered to be a very reputable company, Bernie Maddoff was a reputable money manager, Enron had quite the reputation, Boeing, VW, Theranos, SVB, etc...
Easy to say that you should only do business with reputable entities until you try and figure out who that is.
In this specific case it was obvious that Luna was based on dubious economics. It didn’t require auditor skills. Barely high school economics. If YouTubers are not blamed for promoting scams without appropriate disclaimers, the crypto industry will grow the wrong way. Making the promoters responsible for this would help legitimate projects.
I understand your point, but I still don't think "I couldn't tell whether this was bullshit or not but I got paid a lot to say it" should be a viable defence. Everything with a healthy dose of nuance in the real world though of course.
(Actually kidding. South Korea is going through too much shit right now to care about Do Kwon. But if times were simpler, there definitely would have been much rejoicing. We don't trust our own court much, when it comes to white-collar crimes.)
I hope he enjoys his long, long stay in America's prison system.
Unfortunately, South Korean legal system is very lenient on financial crimes, and everybody suspects Kwon will get a slap on the wrist if he's sent to Korea.
The fact that Kwon himself was fighting to be extradited to Korea should tell you something.
After rewatching The Omen II, where part of the Thorn Industries corporate strategy is that famine is a growth sector, I do wonder if - given climate change - Putin’s goal in invading Ukraine (“the breadbasket of Europe”) is to corner the market for food.
Oil is going to be in decline due to renewables. He needs another string to his bow.
Why would SK let someone else handle the case? I would think the SK government would prefer to be the ones to take credit for ending his reign. Unless his continued existence is too embarrassing for how long he was operating?
I also am cynically wondering if he is hoping he can purchase a pardon.
Why is it that the founders of these global companies seem to be extradited to the US so often, but almost never to other countries?
Let' say you make a huge pirate site (like Kim Dotcom's Megaupload), serving copyright-infringing content from many different countries around the world. Why is the US more entitled to having you in their prisons than, let's say, Czechia, Ecuador or Malaysia?
Is it just imperialism, or is there a more sensible explanation for it?
When it comes to international crime, nations may only have a fraction the resources for their justice systems and will explicitly defer to the US because not only will the US often prosecute more aggressively, the Department of Justice has the money to outlast wealthy defendants' delay tactics.
For example, UK's Ministry of Justice has 1/6th the financial resources of the US's Department of Justice.
One notable example of this is with child pornography prosecutions. Many countries do not have a dedicated child pornography specialist units capable of digital forensics and analysis where the US does. So various international ministries and departments of justice will team up with the US, feeding info back to Virginia and even permanently stationing personnel there to act as liaisons, during very complex child pornography investigations.
Additionally, many countries will threaten extradition to the US to gain plea deals.
Finally, you may have missed the final paragraph:
>The former finance officer of Terraform Labs, Hon Chang-joon, was extradited to South Korea in February, after serving four months in prison in Montenegro over fraud charges.
Most extradition agreements are bidirectional, so it’s really a question of why Czechia, Ecuador or Malaysia aren’t asking courts to extradite someone as much.
My understanding is that these agreements basically require the other country to put the case to court (as long as the act was illegal in both places).
But a solid question of how to handle multiple requestors but there’s only one body to go around.
Maybe because the other countries haven't created the same regulation regime for the things they have been picked up on? The US just puts together the cases and the other countries comply?
