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I'm not sure why it's on HN, but it's real. It was originally happening in the public channel #dogecoin-market on Freenode but was then moved to the private ch
by socillion 13y ago
I'm not sure why it's on HN, but it's real.
It was originally happening in the public channel #dogecoin-market on Freenode but was then moved to the private channel #marketmakers, which seems to have spurred people to start sharing it everywhere since now it's private.
Wolong is the guy who brought the Dogecoin price to where it is now by investing a ton of money into it, and due to that and some charisma he's attracted a cult following. He's now using that cult following to have them do pump/dump ops for him (with their money).
Here's his manifesto: http://pastebin.com/RdRAULtT http://pastebin.com/RdRAULtT
It's entertaining, I'm waiting for someone to do a solid article on the story.
Bear in mind that cryptocurrencies are currently an unregulated wild west, where activities like these are both common and legal. Do not invest anything you are not prepared to lose.
edit: just for further corroboration, here's logs from a few days ago: http://pastebin.com/1NTTBCXM http://pastebin.com/1NTTBCXM
You can check the charts at http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/cryptsy/dogebtc http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/cryptsy/dogebtc and see how that was responsible for a drop to 212. From memory they were using about 36million dogecoins, which comes out to approximately 78btc or $65,000.
My pet theory is that wolong is just building trust at this point so he can eventually have his army of followers buy all his dogecoins at inflated prices, but who knows. No matter what happens, it's very entertaining to watch develop.
- aw3c2 13y ago> Do not invest anything you are not prepared to lose. Let me fix that for you: > Do not gamble anything you are not prepared to lose.
- gnur 13y agoInvesting always is a gamble.
- XorNot 13y agoGambling is when the game is purely driven by luck. Investing is when the instrument has measurable properties and explanations for why it will become more valuable - i.e. you invest in making your factory larger, so it can produce product more cheaply. Betting on completely unregulated currency markets (which have good reasons that they shouldn't have any value at all) is gambling, because you're entirely depending on irrationality. That said...quite a few businesses with that model.
- sliverstorm 13y agoInvesting has a luck component to it as well. The way I like to think of it is, it's gambling when your expected rate of return is negative or zero. It's investing when it is positive. This is why a gambler is gambling, but a casino is investing/running a business.
- Atroxide 13y agonicely put, never thought of it like that.
- DennisP 13y agoGood point, but an even better definition would take variance and risk of ruin into account. If you just look at expectation, then buying insurance would qualify as a gamble. I think most people would say it's more of a gamble to skip insurance. Betting all your money on one hand of blackjack is a gamble, even if you've been counting cards and know the odds are in your favor. A casino spreading its money over millions of small bets is investing.
- sliverstorm 13y agoThat's a good point, and I will have to incorporate it in my example in the future.
- cookingrobot 13y agoGambling and market speculation (and even theft) are related in that they're all 0 sum games. Every dollar you make is a dollar someone else wishes they hadn't lost. Investing is different in that when you win and earn a return, nobody feels that they lost.
- joosters 13y agoHow about all those people who sell shares and then see them shoot up in value? They certainly feel that they lost.
- 13y ago
- choult 13y agoYet gambling is rarely an investment...
- sliverstorm 13y agoThe distinction is fuzzy, but the difference is not imaginary.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- stevenj 13y agoTwo definitions of investing by notable people: 1. From The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham: "An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative." http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Practical/dp/0060555661 http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Invest... 2. From Mr. Buffett on the Stock Market: "The definition is simple but often forgotten: investing is laying out money now to get more money back in the future -- more money in real terms, after taking inflation into account." http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/11/22/269071 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/...
- shin_lao 13y agoThere's always a gamble percentage in a gamble, but you don't invest like you gamble. Or well, you can, but it won't get you very far. ;)
- jeremyjh 13y agoWhy are you sure this is legal (everywhere)? No it isn't regulated by the SEC, but that does not mean that it isn't fraud.
- socillion 13y agoRight now the prevailing attitude is that it's legal and nobody will get prosecuted for it. It's certainly possible for this to change, but premined altcoins (creators mine a % before making it public) and other alleged scams such as Quarkcoin (Max Keiser & Bill Still) have happened repeatedly. My statement was from the angle that if you get ripped off in a situation like this, there is no recourse for you, and not legal advice that you cannot get in trouble for participating in these activities.
- DennisP 13y agoI wouldn't expect premines to legally qualify as fraud, since by their nature they can't be done in secret. If someone releases a coin and you see it already has a long blockchain, you know it's premined and can make your investment decision accordingly.
- socillion 13y agoYou're right, that was a poor example.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago>Right now the prevailing attitude is that it's legal and nobody will get prosecuted for it. Probably because that's how it appears to go in regulated markets as well.
- dror 13y agoWhile historically pump and dump was focused on penny stock, I wander if doing it with altcoins violate some of the laws mentioned in http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2009/lr21053.htm http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2009/lr21053.htm
- 13y ago
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pbhjpbhj 13y agoThere was a Dogecoin thread on here the other day that reeked of trying to inflate the prices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7114813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7114813. There's so many people trying to pump these different coins that I can't see any efforts being too successful. Sounds from the pastebin content that they weren't really managing to coordinate even a small group?
- MysticFear 13y agoI'm pretty sure I saw hundreds of bitcoin threads on the frontpage, when it was going up in price as well.
- mcphilip 13y agoNot having skin in the game, this is fascinating to follow. It's like watching primitive HFT algorithm battles slowed down to meatspace actor speed. I think it's safe to say that there are some participants in crypto currencies making massive percentage gains using lessons learned on Wall Street. Which leads to an interesting thought: has someone figured out how to judge when an emerging crypto currency gains enough traction to start attracting sharks to the pond of early adopters?
- smtddr 13y ago>>I think it's safe to say that there are some participants in crypto currencies making massive percentage gains using lessons learned on Wall Street. Understatement of the year and it's only January. ;) That's pretty much everything of crypto coins right now, especially alt-coins(any coin that isn't bitcoin). The inexperienced people prone to fear-driven reaction are getting fleeced.
- mcphilip 13y ago>Understatement of the year and it's only January. ;) Yeah, an understatement for sure. I can only imagine what will be afoot in December... Wild guess: ransomware used to drive up the price of an alt-coin.
- shiftpgdn 13y agoIsn't this already happening with cryptolocker? I had read the cryptolocker wallet has received something like 23 million USD worth of bitcoin at $900/btc.
- Smegger 13y agoI wouldn't say all alt coins; primecoin litecoin and namecoin look pretty solid but they are all built differently and aren't simply clones with changed rates like all dogecoin coinyewest and company.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pyalot2 13y agoAll traded things are subject to market manipulation. It helps though if there's a bunch of real volume and a dozen or two active exchanges, that makes it harder to move the market. With Dogecoin however, barely any exchanges, and most of the circulation from their insanely steep on-ramp is in the hands of a handful of people... gonna be a lot of milking going on there.
- Alex3917 13y agoIt's funny how so many people are avoiding trading now because they're afraid of him. If you can't even handle some bored 13-year-old princeling, do you really think you're going to somehow do way better going up against Goldman Sachs in the real markets?
- davidw 13y ago"The only winning move is not to play" - index funds, and get back to creating wealth via a startup or something.
- maaku 13y ago> Bear in mind that cryptocurrencies are currently an unregulated wild west, where activities like these are both common and legal. Ah, no, it's not legal. Regulators just don't care (yet) to enforce the rules.
- adrianwaj 13y agomore logs: http://pastebin.com/cFfxW7xh http://pastebin.com/cFfxW7xh from the manifesto: "there are always trolls that add absolutely zero value to the community" -- you said it Wolong.
- cvos 13y agoOnce upon a time in a small village a man appeared who announced to all the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10. The villagers knew that the jungle held countless monkeys, easily caught. The man bought 2 thousand. As the supply diminished, they become difficult to catch, and villagers returned to their farms. The man announced that he would pay $20. The villagers renewed their efforts and caught 1,000 more monkeys. The supply quickly diminished, but before they returned to their farms the man increased his offer to $40 each. Monkeys became so rare that it was difficult to even see a monkey let alone catch it. But they caught 500. The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $100 each! However, since he had to go to the city on some business his assistant would now buy for the man. The man departed. Then the assistant told the villagers, “Look at all these monkeys the man has in that big cage. I will sell them to you at $50 each. When the man comes back you can sell the monkey’s back to him for $100.” The villagers gathered up all their saving to buy the monkeys. The assistant took their money. They never saw either the man or his assistant again.
- hayksaakian 13y agoWhat is the origin of this story?
- grugq 13y agoit is a variant of "the fiddle game", or "the glim dropper". They are standard conman tricks from back in the day. All work on the principle: "you can't con an honest man". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_confidence_tricks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_confidence_tricks
- kerkeslager 13y agoThis is basically a classic confidence trick, using people's greed and overconfidence. The con artist leads the marks to believe that they can outsmart the market, when in fact the marks are the ones being outsmarted. Ultimately, there are two kinds of people that these con artists make money off of, and both have this overconfidence that they can outsmart the market: 1. Collaborators: these are the people who think that they are in on Fontas or Wolong's plan, but aren't. Ultimately, some of these people will make money some of the time, but most will lose money. 2. Manic-or-panic day traders: these people fall prey to a these market manipulations because they are at the wrong place at the wrong time. If they're paying attention when the market spikes, they start buying high thinking it will rise further, and if they're paying attention when the market drops they sell low thinking it will fall further. It may actually be worse to be this kind of trader, because often the only person conning such people is themselves. Their emotional approach to investing causes them to fall prey to every market fluctuation, even ones that aren't caused by any manipulation. The kicker here is that I believe most day-traders fall into that second group. A lot of them are still making money on cryptocurrencies simply because cryptocurrencies have been growing so rapidly, leading them to believe that their strategies have worked, but the vast majority would make more by simply investing their money and sitting on it. My theory is backed up by how people tend to invest on wall street, which has been well-researched at this point. What I'm trying to say to anyone reading this is that if you're trading day-to-day, unless you have a very thoroughly proven mathematical model, you're likely in the second group. Don't let overconfidence and greed make you a mark. You aren't likely to outsmart the market. Besides, this market is doing pretty well anyway.