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I thought it was harmless(ish) fun, but David Gerard put out a post stating that Yegge used Gas Town to push out a crypto project that rug pulled his supporters

I thought it was harmless(ish) fun, but David Gerard put out a post stating that Yegge used Gas Town to push out a crypto project that rug pulled his supporters, while he personally walked away with something between $50K to $100K from memory. I suppose that has little to do with the technical merits of the work, but it's such a bad look, and it makes everyone boosting this stuff seem exactly as dysregulated/unwise as they've appeared to many engineers for a while. I met Sean Goedecke for lunch a few weeks ago, who uses LLMs a bunch, and is clearly a serious adult, but half the folks being shoved in front of everyone are behaving totally manic and people are cheering them on. Absolutely blows my mind to watch. https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/01/22/steve-yegges-gas-town-vibe-coding-goes-crypto-scam/ https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/01/22/steve-yegges-gas-town-vib...

skybrian 8mo ago
That was very weird. In the post where he was arguably "shilling," he seems to have signposted pretty well that it was dumb, but he will take the money they offered: > $GAS is not equity and does not give you any ownership interest in Gas Town or my work. This post is for informational purposes only and is not a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any token. Crypto markets are volatile and speculative — do not risk money you can’t afford to lose. ... > Note: The next few sections are about online gambling in all its forms, where “investing” is the buy-and-hold long-form “acceptable” form of gambling because it’s tied to world GDP growth. Cryptocurrencies are subject to wild swings and spikes, and the currency tied to Gas Town is on a wild swing up. But it’s still gambling, and this stuff is only for people who are into that… which is not me, and should probably not be you either. In the next post he said he wasn't going to shill it any more, and then the price collapsed and people sent him death threats on Twitter. It probably would have collapsed anyway. Perhaps there was supposedly some implicit bargain that he shouldn't take the money if he wasn't going to shill? Well, there's certainly no rule saying you have to do that. I think he's not very much to blame for taking the money from degenerate gamblers, and the cryptocurrency idiots are mostly to blame for their own mistakes.
- dpatterbee 8mo ago
  I'm fairly certain those disclaimers were added after he got some pushback from the original post.
  - skybrian 8mo ago
    One of them clearly was (marked "Edit: "). I don't know about the others.
- cannonpr 8mo ago
  “Degenerate gamblers” is the kind of stigma that stops people and their families getting help for addiction. Even if you believe it’s a moral failing, the families deserve better.
  - skybrian 8mo ago
    Very true. Although, I wonder how much of that sort of thing was going on in this case? Did people actually bet money they couldn't afford to lose on this crazy scheme?
  - draw_down 8mo ago
    [dead]
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - PKop 8mo ago
    No harsh belittling is what makes them quit, not accommodating their nonsense and excusing it. There should be a stigma with destructive behavior. The flaw is this decades-long trend of talking about stigmas and refusing to condemn bad behaviors.
    - cannonpr 8mo ago
      I’m afraid we tried that for quite a few centuries, with very little effect. Infact most major world religions had phases with heavy punishment, condemnation, belittling, and you are going to hell stuff over gambling. Yet here we are.

skybrian 8mo ago

That was very weird. In the post where he was arguably "shilling," he seems to have signposted pretty well that it was dumb, but he will take the money they offered: > $GAS is not equity and does not give you any ownership interest in Gas Town or my work. This post is for informational purposes only and is not a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any token. Crypto markets are volatile and speculative — do not risk money you can’t afford to lose. ... > Note: The next few sections are about online gambling in all its forms, where “investing” is the buy-and-hold long-form “acceptable” form of gambling because it’s tied to world GDP growth. Cryptocurrencies are subject to wild swings and spikes, and the currency tied to Gas Town is on a wild swing up. But it’s still gambling, and this stuff is only for people who are into that… which is not me, and should probably not be you either. In the next post he said he wasn't going to shill it any more, and then the price collapsed and people sent him death threats on Twitter. It probably would have collapsed anyway. Perhaps there was supposedly some implicit bargain that he shouldn't take the money if he wasn't going to shill? Well, there's certainly no rule saying you have to do that. I think he's not very much to blame for taking the money from degenerate gamblers, and the cryptocurrency idiots are mostly to blame for their own mistakes.

dpatterbee 8mo ago
I'm fairly certain those disclaimers were added after he got some pushback from the original post.
- skybrian 8mo ago
  One of them clearly was (marked "Edit: "). I don't know about the others.
cannonpr 8mo ago
“Degenerate gamblers” is the kind of stigma that stops people and their families getting help for addiction. Even if you believe it’s a moral failing, the families deserve better.
- skybrian 8mo ago
  Very true. Although, I wonder how much of that sort of thing was going on in this case? Did people actually bet money they couldn't afford to lose on this crazy scheme?
- draw_down 8mo ago
  [dead]
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- PKop 8mo ago
  No harsh belittling is what makes them quit, not accommodating their nonsense and excusing it. There should be a stigma with destructive behavior. The flaw is this decades-long trend of talking about stigmas and refusing to condemn bad behaviors.
  - cannonpr 8mo ago
    I’m afraid we tried that for quite a few centuries, with very little effect. Infact most major world religions had phases with heavy punishment, condemnation, belittling, and you are going to hell stuff over gambling. Yet here we are.