I noticed the Protos link was missing: https://protos.com/do-kwon-was-recorded-meeting-montenegrin-pm-says-former-minister/ . One line in there is particularly telling, regarding the one making the allegations: "Milović is currently running for mayor in Montenegro’s capital, Podgorica." Especially since everything else in the three most recent Protos articles on the Montenegro leader and Do Kwon involve he-said-she-said from opposing parties. Usually at least one party is full of sh** and I don't know enough about Montenegran politics to say further (i.e. which one is, or if both are, sh**-filled). Would be nice to get an assessment from someone who does not have a political (and, thus, as is almost always the case with politicians, a financial) incentive.
That said... Do Kwon /did/ go there. I doubt to check out the churches at the Bay of Kotor. And, yes, I did have to first search online to find out what the heck anyone would go to Montenegro for.
Speaking of places that never come up except when talking about financial fraud, and Wirecard, which also never comes up except when talking about financial fraud. Did you know the guy behind Wirefraud might apparently have been a representative of Grenada? "Although Austrians generally aren’t allowed dual citizenship, Marsalek held at least eight passports, including diplomatic cover from the tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/06/how-the-biggest-fraud-in-german-history-unravelled . Though his proof of being a representative might itself be a fraud: "At the time, Marsalek is described as an official representative of the government of Grenada, a small Caribbean island of around 100,000 people, in a letter that bears the letterhead of the Grenada government." "In a phone call, Steele, who is now the Minister Health in Grenada said the document leaked in the Hacking Team emails is fraudulent." https://www.vice.com/en/article/jan-marsalek-wirecard-bizarre-attempt-to-buy-hacking-team-spyware/ While much is known about Wirecard guy, again, I know nothing about the accuser of the fraudulent credentials, which is another politician from a county I know very little about.
Regarding Pump.fun "defrauding"... Eh, as much as anything is a fraud that indirectly suggests that memecoins are possibly good investments. The most disingenuous part of Pump.fun is where they call the person who clicks a button to start the form, fills out about three fields, uploads a picture, and then clicks another button to submit the form a "Developer." That is indeed a bit rich, much richer than Pump.fun makes the vast majority of people.
The first has this rather nice quote: "'Pump fun didn’t ruin memecoins, it just pulled back the curtain on how the sausage is made and made it very easy to make the aforementioned sausage,' pseudonymous crypto commentator Bunjil told their 56,900 X followers." And I think that's a good point. They've not really made memecoins an even less-effort and poorer-quality product. They've effectively democratized the tools that were always creating a low-effort and poor-quality product.
The second article points out you've got better odds and payout in playing roulette. (I swear I read somewhere that even the lottery beats Pump.fun, but I can't find where I read that, so it may have been removed after some fact-checking.) In that second article "At face value, the comparison isn’t favorable, but trading a stock and placing a bet are two different things. 'A token could also run far past $69,000 after graduation,' Adam told Cointelegraph. 'But that’s becoming increasingly rare. Hence the frustration.'"
But two things regarding skill vs random.
One: Clearly it's not random. Cleary a dogcoin called Doggolicious (DGGLCS) is a better investment, based on name alone, than one called ChickenAndWoofles (ChxAndWoof). (I'm Camp ChickenAndWoofles, personally.)
I am not just trying to be ridiculous. I am also trying to make a point. You could probably ask 100 people which name they like better. And it could be statistically relevant to the next 100 people. And if two identical memecoins are created, and if the only difference is the name, and there is a statistically-relevant-more-likable name, and presumably people would be more willing to spend money on something they liked than disliked, then being able to pick the more likable name would mean being able to pick the better performer, which would then mean picking Doggolicious vs ChickenAndWoofles is perhaps more skill, and thus not random.
But is "not random" enough?
It's never just a name that makes something take off. I may have made the grand effort of filling out three fields with identical text except where it regarded names, and attached an identical (non) image of a dog, and submitted. And they both might be doing precisely the same. Namely, they may both have been completely ignored by the world except for the usual sniper bots at creation, that buy and then sell immediately . This world ignorance make sense as these tokens in that scenario would have zero marketing or insider activity / wash trading / fake volume. Fake volume is arguably just another form of marketing, albeit a deceptive form. Sniping bots don't count as fake volume, as I believe they happen with every token cleation, and thus their activity is guaranteed meaningless volume. And I suspect at least some form of marketing is needed, as nobody is going to see the token names among the constant spam of token generation. Because if you can make it easy, particularly easy enough for a bot to create, you will get spam.
But the amount of money needed to spend on traditional marketing or fake-volume marketing to then lead to real volume is not something most people know. Nor the exact amount of real volume that then allows for a profitable entry and exit in trading. Nor what a profitable entry or exit might be.
In other words even if there is a non-random difference in two memecoins, doesn't matter if they both do absolutely nothing. And those memecoins that do more than nothing, need to do an amount of non-nothing that is almost certainly beyond the ken of the vast users of that site, or perhaps anyone.
Two: "[B]ut trading a stock and placing a bet are two different things." Different, but different in a relevant way? Even if memecoins were more like stocks than betting on a number to come up in a big, round, wooden random number generator, would that make it worthwhile to pick a few letters as opposed to a single number? An often pointed out statistic is the S&P beats most hedge funds. Those who manage "alpha," those stock traders who become almost household names and the topic of get-rich books, are they even more than outliers of statistical irrelevance? If they continue to generate alpha for long enough time to be statistically relevant, is it really just from picking stocks? Or is it from selling their reputation to get a larger portfolio that gets them more returns just in volume? Or maybe they get so big they can actually make macro effects and not just predict them? Or both?
The S&P beats holding cash. And I'm not saying it for some Pollyanna belief in American exceptionalism. Far from it. It is pure cynicism that the rich will almost certainly stay at the reigns of power and tighten them even more. And they use stocks to avoid being taxed. And stocks line the pockets of politicians. Yes there is American exceptionalism: in wealth/income divide.
Memecoins aren't really good for keeping the rich richer, not like stocks are. In general. Some individual ones can be, for individual periods of time, but you would need to know what the rich are doing at those times to make themselves richer, and that would require you access you do not have. And, as a basket/index, it fails dramatically.
Basically, Pump.fun (which is just an extension of memecoin, unless some news reveals more) is an extremely poor investment. Is that fraud?
I noticed the Protos link was missing: https://protos.com/do-kwon-was-recorded-meeting-montenegrin-pm-says-former-minister/ . One line in there is particularly telling, regarding the one making the allegations: "Milović is currently running for mayor in Montenegro’s capital, Podgorica." Especially since everything else in the three most recent Protos articles on the Montenegro leader and Do Kwon involve he-said-she-said from opposing parties. Usually at least one party is full of sh** and I don't know enough about Montenegran politics to say further (i.e. which one is, or if both are, sh**-filled). Would be nice to get an assessment from someone who does not have a political (and, thus, as is almost always the case with politicians, a financial) incentive.
That said... Do Kwon /did/ go there. I doubt to check out the churches at the Bay of Kotor. And, yes, I did have to first search online to find out what the heck anyone would go to Montenegro for.
Speaking of places that never come up except when talking about financial fraud, and Wirecard, which also never comes up except when talking about financial fraud. Did you know the guy behind Wirefraud might apparently have been a representative of Grenada? "Although Austrians generally aren’t allowed dual citizenship, Marsalek held at least eight passports, including diplomatic cover from the tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/06/how-the-biggest-fraud-in-german-history-unravelled . Though his proof of being a representative might itself be a fraud: "At the time, Marsalek is described as an official representative of the government of Grenada, a small Caribbean island of around 100,000 people, in a letter that bears the letterhead of the Grenada government." "In a phone call, Steele, who is now the Minister Health in Grenada said the document leaked in the Hacking Team emails is fraudulent." https://www.vice.com/en/article/jan-marsalek-wirecard-bizarre-attempt-to-buy-hacking-team-spyware/ While much is known about Wirecard guy, again, I know nothing about the accuser of the fraudulent credentials, which is another politician from a county I know very little about.
And since we're linking to Protos around here: https://protos.com/sun-grenada-his-excellency-justin-crypto-tron-diplomatic-immunity-switzerland/ But... https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/03/30/tron-founder-justin-sun-reportedly-lost-his-diplomatic-status/ Oh and since Ripple was mentioned in this Substack, this tweet from the Ripple CTO supposedly was in response to something that someone in the aforementioned tweeted. https://x.com/JoelKatz/status/1755393554736914921 . I say supposedly as I found out about the tweet from crypto "news" sites I trust so little I won't even link to them, and the x.com link is not showing that it is a reply to someone, and maybe I need to login to find out, but I also don't want to login to find out.
Regarding Pump.fun "defrauding"... Eh, as much as anything is a fraud that indirectly suggests that memecoins are possibly good investments. The most disingenuous part of Pump.fun is where they call the person who clicks a button to start the form, fills out about three fields, uploads a picture, and then clicks another button to submit the form a "Developer." That is indeed a bit rich, much richer than Pump.fun makes the vast majority of people.
There are two good articles on cointelegraph.com about the low odds of Pump.fun: https://cointelegraph.com/news/memecoins-pump-fun-99-percent-fail-launch and https://cointelegraph.com/news/memecoin-casino-bet-pump-odds .
The first has this rather nice quote: "'Pump fun didn’t ruin memecoins, it just pulled back the curtain on how the sausage is made and made it very easy to make the aforementioned sausage,' pseudonymous crypto commentator Bunjil told their 56,900 X followers." And I think that's a good point. They've not really made memecoins an even less-effort and poorer-quality product. They've effectively democratized the tools that were always creating a low-effort and poor-quality product.
The second article points out you've got better odds and payout in playing roulette. (I swear I read somewhere that even the lottery beats Pump.fun, but I can't find where I read that, so it may have been removed after some fact-checking.) In that second article "At face value, the comparison isn’t favorable, but trading a stock and placing a bet are two different things. 'A token could also run far past $69,000 after graduation,' Adam told Cointelegraph. 'But that’s becoming increasingly rare. Hence the frustration.'"
But two things regarding skill vs random.
One: Clearly it's not random. Cleary a dogcoin called Doggolicious (DGGLCS) is a better investment, based on name alone, than one called ChickenAndWoofles (ChxAndWoof). (I'm Camp ChickenAndWoofles, personally.)
I am not just trying to be ridiculous. I am also trying to make a point. You could probably ask 100 people which name they like better. And it could be statistically relevant to the next 100 people. And if two identical memecoins are created, and if the only difference is the name, and there is a statistically-relevant-more-likable name, and presumably people would be more willing to spend money on something they liked than disliked, then being able to pick the more likable name would mean being able to pick the better performer, which would then mean picking Doggolicious vs ChickenAndWoofles is perhaps more skill, and thus not random.
But is "not random" enough?
It's never just a name that makes something take off. I may have made the grand effort of filling out three fields with identical text except where it regarded names, and attached an identical (non) image of a dog, and submitted. And they both might be doing precisely the same. Namely, they may both have been completely ignored by the world except for the usual sniper bots at creation, that buy and then sell immediately . This world ignorance make sense as these tokens in that scenario would have zero marketing or insider activity / wash trading / fake volume. Fake volume is arguably just another form of marketing, albeit a deceptive form. Sniping bots don't count as fake volume, as I believe they happen with every token cleation, and thus their activity is guaranteed meaningless volume. And I suspect at least some form of marketing is needed, as nobody is going to see the token names among the constant spam of token generation. Because if you can make it easy, particularly easy enough for a bot to create, you will get spam.
But the amount of money needed to spend on traditional marketing or fake-volume marketing to then lead to real volume is not something most people know. Nor the exact amount of real volume that then allows for a profitable entry and exit in trading. Nor what a profitable entry or exit might be.
In other words even if there is a non-random difference in two memecoins, doesn't matter if they both do absolutely nothing. And those memecoins that do more than nothing, need to do an amount of non-nothing that is almost certainly beyond the ken of the vast users of that site, or perhaps anyone.
Two: "[B]ut trading a stock and placing a bet are two different things." Different, but different in a relevant way? Even if memecoins were more like stocks than betting on a number to come up in a big, round, wooden random number generator, would that make it worthwhile to pick a few letters as opposed to a single number? An often pointed out statistic is the S&P beats most hedge funds. Those who manage "alpha," those stock traders who become almost household names and the topic of get-rich books, are they even more than outliers of statistical irrelevance? If they continue to generate alpha for long enough time to be statistically relevant, is it really just from picking stocks? Or is it from selling their reputation to get a larger portfolio that gets them more returns just in volume? Or maybe they get so big they can actually make macro effects and not just predict them? Or both?
The S&P beats holding cash. And I'm not saying it for some Pollyanna belief in American exceptionalism. Far from it. It is pure cynicism that the rich will almost certainly stay at the reigns of power and tighten them even more. And they use stocks to avoid being taxed. And stocks line the pockets of politicians. Yes there is American exceptionalism: in wealth/income divide.
Memecoins aren't really good for keeping the rich richer, not like stocks are. In general. Some individual ones can be, for individual periods of time, but you would need to know what the rich are doing at those times to make themselves richer, and that would require you access you do not have. And, as a basket/index, it fails dramatically.
Basically, Pump.fun (which is just an extension of memecoin, unless some news reveals more) is an extremely poor investment. Is that fraud?