In this particular case I doubt it provided much negative press for the scheme (AFAIK, it remained very niche) and the runners probably tried to memoryhole it as soon as possible. The only real gain was probably the run-up to the event where Snowden's name could be attached to it.
I guess the question is how someone might be delusional enough to believe that.
And a high risk / very high reward ratio.
If he pulls this off, he will get a lot of money.
If not, he will lay low for a while and come back with a new scheme.
Basically, no real negative for the guy, as he would have made a ton of money in his previous scam.
Desperation may be the alternative explanation.
Wow, so elegant.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/sunil-tulsiani-speak...
is freely available. Tulsiani's reputation must be known to everyone involved in this organization, which certainly smells like a scam. What did Snowden hope to accomplish by first playing along, and then bringing this old case up again?
"Are you Edward Snowden or in a societal position comparable to that of Edward Snowden? No? Then society probably isn't quite dysfunctional enough for you yet to justify going to these algorithmic extremes."
I’d love to have electronically anonymous cash on my person that I could spend at will at any establishment, and transport across state boundaries
Unfortunately you need verifiable artificial scarcity which creates a bubble
And to protect said electronic cash which has a barrier to entry
That's inaccurate.
Most fiat currencies today are characterized with the same elements as those of ponzi schemes, its slower over time, but nevertheless it is the same elements with the central bank printing money from nothing.
Crypto can be suborned into any existing ponzi scheme easily by allowing exchanges of these fiat assets and leverage from any of those fiat systems.
Those crypto systems which have ballooned as a result of that would then accurately and appropriately be considered ponzi schemes, even though its just a small leg of the entire ponzi scheme.
There is no effective way for an individual to tell inflows and outflows from the system, and any financial banker is aware of frauds that can create the illusion of price action through the use of leverage, and collusive wash-sale contracts (similar to options). That is how gold and metals commodities are largely suppressed.
Without visibility, those frauds don't come to light, but visibility is a tradeoff when it comes to privacy, especially in 0 trust environments.
Edit: If you are going to downvote, at least do the courtesy of explaining why. If you do not, it simply looks like some brainless person using a bot is trying to censor people, and any intelligent reader will see that for what it actually is. Put another way, use your words, or look like a shill.
Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
> Crypto can be suborned into any existing ponzi scheme easily by allowing exchanges of these fiat assets and leverage from any of those fiat systems.
>Those crypto systems which have ballooned as a result of that would then accurately and appropriately be considered ponzi schemes, even though its just a small leg of the entire ponzi scheme.
This can happen to literally anything else that isn't prohibited from being traded using fiat currency.
>There is no effective way for an individual to tell inflows and outflows from the system, and any financial banker is aware of frauds that can create the illusion of price action through the use of leverage, and collusive wash-sale contracts (similar to options). That is how gold and metals commodities are largely suppressed.
I assume you're talking about the price in non-crypto currency that was paid for the crypto? if so yes, you can't really tell the inflows and outflows, but that is also true for everything that can also be traded outside centralized exchanges(including stocks), and commodities are even worse given most of them will be traded outside any exchange for industrial use and with even less transparency. I don't see the argument against crypto here inherently.
Yes, crypto can be used for scamming, this is a post discussing exactly one of those cases, but that's no different from anything else. It has a real tangible value in a world where you can be effectively cut off from global financial processing if 3-4 US companies -that got quite opinionated after the patriot act- decide they don't want to do business with you. Until payment processors aren't held to the standards of common carriers, crypto is imperative.
There can be no economic perpetuum mobile in the real economy on earth because humans need food which is produced by growing plants which capture sunlight.
Gold will be there long after humans have gone extinct. That violates the concept of a store of value. It means that gold doesn't store any value. It means humans delegate the storage of value to each other by utilizing gold and in that respect it is identical to fiat.
The property that fiat and gold have in common is the lack of holding costs that anything including the human body has in the real economy.
How anyone could believe a digital token of value, a keypair, and voluntary usage of energy to participate in a decentralized network could possibly be a major contributing factor in climate change, while shipping barges and oil rigs are in full operation, is beyond me. A part of me wish I was capable of such levels of delusion.
Crypto has a lot of flaws but climate change is not one of them. I guess I need to just deal with these lemmings parroting whatever the authorities have on the agenda to psychologically take out opponents, but never thought I would see them successfully wage war on mathematics like this.