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1leggeddog t1_j0pdgpg wrote

Aaaaand nobody is shocked.

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garuspl t1_j0pknpl wrote

When all you consume is social media, then there's nothing else to base your decisions on. I read that children look for info on tiktok instead of Googling...

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chobobot t1_j0pmy6f wrote

It's like getting vegan recipes from a lion.

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danfirst t1_j0pnsm3 wrote

If by children you mean people in their mid 20s, then yes, I read that too. Crazy to me that you'll take the advice of some influencer trying to farm clicks and referrals for your finance options.

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Effective_Motor_4398 t1_j0po0k3 wrote

If securities charges are any thing like what the big boys pay, this should work out nicely for these guys.

In finance crime really does pay.

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StatsTooLow t1_j0po24d wrote

Sooo the same thing that companies do normally. It's almost like the stock market is a scam.

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kingp43x t1_j0pp6wq wrote

Is wagamaga here a social media influencer? with 10 million karma from bot posting to this and the science sub

0

AutoX_Advice t1_j0pq8rp wrote

Same story different day, different platform.

Then again if you listened to Jim Cramer about crypto and FTX I'd say Jim is an influencer too.

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AutoX_Advice t1_j0pt8fl wrote

I'm not sure. He does say what he is invested in. I stopped watching him years ago cause it because a circus with his buy buy buy, sell sell sell etc and this is not what you want in a money manager with influence imo. For me it just became an entertainment show masked in grandioso financial expertise on a financial channel that didn't care about real people's money...aka 2008 and derivatives.

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Mccobsta t1_j0pucjs wrote

What do you mean influencers are tossers it can't be IT'S IMPOSSIBLE

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matthewtheninja t1_j0pw1ge wrote

These types of crimes will result in hefty fines (and likely jail time), but also the perpetrators will be required to “disgorge” any profits they made from the scheme and any property purchased with the proceeds can be confiscated.

It most likely will not end well for these guys.

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pantsonheaditor t1_j0pxif6 wrote

wait wait, its not illegal if you do it on discord , or was that minecraft ? /s

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meatsmoothie82 t1_j0pxyg9 wrote

No love for Cramer here- but he wasn’t buying low volume shit penny stocks- then waiting and telling his 100k followers to buy to send the price higher then selling his shares to them.

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DubyaWolf t1_j0q0ew2 wrote

It’s Boiler Room with better technology

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adevland t1_j0q3vg8 wrote

> In 2020, actor Steven Seagal agreed to pay more than $300,000 as part of a similar settlement with the SEC, which also banned him from promoting investments for three years.

If you really take your financial advice from Steven Seagull then you kinda deserve to be bankrupt.

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damnwhale t1_j0q4mhi wrote

The difference is jim cramer is somewhat qualified despite being so consistently wrong, to give financial advice. He actually studied finance at Harvard and worked at Goldman Sachs and other hedge funds.

Hes not some tool on tiktok who has literally zero business giving any advice to anyone.

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filthmrchristian t1_j0q4z0y wrote

If you’re stupid enough to ‘follow’ influencers you deserve to lose money. Grow up.

0

[deleted] t1_j0q5fwu wrote

Funny how the stock short sellers do exactly the same things or worse and no one says a word?

2

derpderpdonkeypunch t1_j0q6866 wrote

Twitter, and the financial subset of Twitter referred to as "fintwit", is an invaluable resource for fast news alerts that affect the stock market. Unless, ya know, you've got the money for a Bloomberg Terminal.

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[deleted] t1_j0q6fqo wrote

Funny when stock short sellers do it it is not a problem?

0

iprocrastina t1_j0q6vej wrote

Protip: If someone on social media or TV is telling you to invest in something, it's already too late to get in. Likewise, by the time any development that could affect stock price hits the news, it's already been factored in by the market.

Protip #2: No one will ever tell you about a legit opportunity because the more people who know the less money they'll make.

Protip #3: If you invest in something you know is a pump n' dump and you're not the guy running the pump n' dump, you're the sucker who's getting fleeced.

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skralogy t1_j0q6ycb wrote

Well now that social media has become a majority of actual media probably somewhat sympathetic.

Hell people have been taking stock tips from Jim Cramer for years and he is mainstream.

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Bewildered-Guest t1_j0q7f80 wrote

John Steward had a pleasant conversation with Jim Cramer shortly after the financial World collapsed. Check it out.

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happyscrappy t1_j0q9quh wrote

He's not my favorite guy. But he's not paid by the securities themselves to deceive.

You're allowed to be wrong. You're not allowed to paid to be involved in a scheme to deceive.

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iOSAT t1_j0qa7df wrote

Unfortunately good investment advice would make for a terrible daily television show. Informing people how to establish 10% annual returns over 30+ years on a diversified portfolio, isn’t as exciting as telling people about THE HOT NEW DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY THAT COULD CHANGE [industry] FOREVER.

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The_Law_of_Pizza t1_j0qakj2 wrote

I generally agree - these "victims" are greedy assholes who think that they are about to pull one over on somebody else by knowing this secret insider pump information.

They thought they were going to make somebody else be a bagholder, but were instead the rubes holding the bags. I don't have a lot of sympathy for that.

On the other hand, this is becoming endemic across social media, and is starting to be a serious sociological issue.

Look at the subreddit "MMAT," which was a gaggle of ignorant dumbasses focused on trying to create a short squeeze, but they didn't understand what they were investing in, and now own worthless private, untradable shares of a defunct oil field.

BBBY (the subreddit for Bed Bath and Beyond short squeeze investors) and GME or Superstonk (for Gamestop short squeeze investors) are basically headed down the same path - there just isn't a hard conversion event forcing those groups to fail immediately like with MMAT. But inevitably both companies will see a long, slow slide into obscurity and/or bankruptcy and we're going to have a ton of dumbasses shrieking that they lost all their savings.

At the end of the day, these pump and dumps, or these short squeeze conspiracies - it's all the same crazy nonsense mixed with greedy rubes who think that they're the ones who know some secret, and that they're going to pull off some hijinks to eat somebody else's lunch.

Normally, nobody would have to care that a bunch of mouth breathers lost their shirts by gambling on some dumb investment scheme.

But these are becoming so prevalent now that the general public is starting to lose its sense of normal. People are beginning to not be able to see these conspiracy cults and/or scams for what they are.

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Unlimitles t1_j0qc5wv wrote

Ha ha hahahahaha!!!!

I noticed this and just stopped following them.

They are just money grubbing opportunists who just want to siphon money out of people.

1

SvenTropics t1_j0qczdl wrote

Yeah that's what I was thinking. If a public figure telling you to buy something so they can pump it up and then dump it is a crime, how the hell is he okay? Is it the "entertainment" disclaimer that makes it all ok?

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CondiMesmer t1_j0qdj9l wrote

How about going after TSM who literally changed their name to TSM FTX

All they did is say "we're changing our name back guys" after all the shit went down to save face. Not even an apology.

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SquizzOC t1_j0qed4q wrote

The majority of my education came from different social media influencers when it comes to day trading, which I’m doing exceptionally well on.

This group in particular however I did find when I first started trading and it cost me a bit of money, but it was obvious what they were doing after losing money on 3 or 4 trades they called out, however I trusted some of their call outs after they made me a lot more money.

That brought me to following guys that actually talked about charting, patterns, supply and demand zones, fibs, etc….

While it may seem ridiculous to trust these guys, there were a ton of others making money on their plays but having more self control and getting out of the play before they dumped their shares.

−2

Blitzares t1_j0qemzi wrote

It's not true "social media influencers". They are a group that ran a trading discord room called Atlas Trading, arguably the largest trading group out there. Many of them amassed huge Twitter followings during covid penny stock mania.

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Blitzares t1_j0qeyks wrote

If anyone wants details let me know, I was apart of the trading room these guys ran for a long time.

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Seagull84 t1_j0qhhwr wrote

So the real problem is the victims who don't know what they're doing and look up to these influencers?

Don't let these influencers get away with it by blaming the people they KNOW they have influence over and manipulate.

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Jacuzzi9 t1_j0qibrl wrote

Now charge the r/superstonk mods

−3

zombietampons t1_j0qt75f wrote

duh. why is this news... oh wait, glued to your phones. nvm move alone nothing to see here. Well unless you were in on the pump. Kudos.

0

EN1009 t1_j0qul07 wrote

Social media has become one big scam

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megatron199775 t1_j0qve8i wrote

Thats why you find smaller groups that know what they are doing and arent wasting time on twitter with their advice. Of course learning to do it for yourself helps immensely.

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Lady8oy2474 t1_j0qvmdj wrote

If you take financial advice from anyone other than a qualified financial advisor then you deserve to lose your money

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mavrc t1_j0qwa50 wrote

"I don't mean to be heartless, but how sympathetic am I expected to be for someone who takes stock-investment advice from some loudmouth on television?" - WSJ reader, 1982

Ok, that was probably a little snarkier than intended, but still: media's media. And there are rules for how you can talk about stocks on media, especially things you have a financial interest in.

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MayOrMayNotBePie t1_j0qxe3q wrote

That’s what they get for getting their investing advice from people on social media.

0

Certain-Reflection73 t1_j0qyed2 wrote

What's the difference between these people, and Jim Cramer? Makes me wonder if he's just not directly profiting from screwing over people.

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mlennox81 t1_j0r3yib wrote

Advisors? Those morons should just spend all of their time studying financial reports of companies and combine that with knowledge of previous history of the stock market and studying economics… wait shit that worked for Warren Buffet.

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Writer10 t1_j0r44fa wrote

Giving investment advice without regulatory licensing and/or appropriate disclaimers is illegal. The majority of these dumbasses jumped into a promotional get-rich-quick snake oil scheme without realizing what they were doing was a massive regulatory violation. That’s why, about a year ago, they started including phrases like, “I’m not telling you what to do,” or “I’m not guaranteeing anything…” with their crypto hype. They got busted and here we are.

Dumbshits.

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nDQ9UeOr t1_j0r5l09 wrote

There’s a difference between giving bad or wrong advice, and using your social media following to pump up the price on a shit stock you already own so that you can dump it 15 minutes later, pop the bubble you had them create, and get rich of their losses.

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fuckeh t1_j0r97b8 wrote

They’re trying to be ahead of the curve. I heard about bitcoin years before most people did because early Reddit was all about it. Wish I bought some back then.

Thing is today everyone is trying to buy into the next big thing. And now people start currencies just to pump and dump them.

I haven’t trusted crypto for years personally. I remember someone bought some huge chunk of bitcoin in like 2013 or something and to me that was just fishy. It was the type of purchase a bank or a billionaire would make and to me that just meant someone took control of it.

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turtle4499 t1_j0rdr24 wrote

He can and does own stocks he picks he also discloses this. Further he isn't literally buying the stock, going on tv talking about the stock and then selling his stock. There is a clear cut difference between discussing companies and your opinions on them and pump and dump. The difference is intent. These people intended to manipulate the asset price and sell their assets after the price rose.

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Moist_Border_8301 t1_j0rj5f0 wrote

Does anyone think they will go after the YouTubers like Logan Paul or Ice Poseidon?

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TeaKingMac t1_j0rktr1 wrote

Only Elon is allowed to do that

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Smellytangerina t1_j0rl1eb wrote

Hasn’t Musk just been blatantly manipulating stocks for years?

0

TeaKingMac t1_j0rlfy1 wrote

>If someone on social media or TV is telling you to invest in something, it's already too late to get in.

Yeah, i got sucked into buying dogecoin back when it was at 0.32 by some acquaintances who bought it when it was fractions of a cent. Now it's at 0.07.

Wish I'd had 10 grand to put into bitcoin when it was 2k, and I was telling everyone I knew to buy.

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TeaKingMac t1_j0rltzu wrote

Lately lots of /r/<technologyhelp> posts are easily googleable questions, and people think it's easier to ask reddit directly, than Google the answer (which likely has a top result that's a reddit post from the last time somebody asked)

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shortseller99 t1_j0rnweq wrote

Yep. It’s pretty crazy these guys weren’t sued by the SEC over a year and a half ago. Pretty sad. I remember thinking in mid 2020 “these guys will be in jail for securities fraud soon”. I was a little ambitious on the “soon” but rest panned out.

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Mattjolearyny t1_j0rognc wrote

As long as the word “influencer” keeps going downhill I’m ok with it

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Willbilly1221 t1_j0rordb wrote

What? You dont say! Shocking! Cant believe it. What is the world coming to? (Insert sarcasm here) 🙄

1

shortseller99 t1_j0rp2si wrote

May play a role but the SEC has been useless for decades my friend. They missed Madoff with all the evidence right in front of them, they let over the counter derivatives go wild in the years leading up to 2008, they’ve let tesla and Elon musk make a mockery of financial markets with blatant fraud (dating even pre trump), they’ve lot Chinese companies be publicly traded despite their awful track record of fraud and different auditing and accounting standards and it goes on. They’ve always been a joke.

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GlibThePoet t1_j0rqkep wrote

Tom Brady, Shaqueil O’Neil, the Shark Tank guy … the list needs to expand.

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TeaKingMac t1_j0rr8mo wrote

He's not a joke. He's a tool of the establishment.

Cramer promotes whatever Brian Roberts and his fiends want to sell. The people who watch Cramer buy that stock, the price goes up, and the primary holders sell.

That's why he's so consistently wrong.

1

SvenTropics t1_j0rs307 wrote

Well, make no mistake, the "new money" people were scamming a community of gullible people online. Them going to prison and losing everything is good.

I mean basically what they were doing was taking small volume stocks, scrounging up a whole bunch of activity from these random people online to buy up a ton of it after they already took on a healthy position and then quietly sold it.

1

happyscrappy t1_j0rt8cx wrote

If you have proof he is paid to flog particular securities then contact the SEC and get the ball rolling.

Or perhaps just admit he's not paid to recommend anything by anyone. He's just throwing out dumb ideas to fill an hour (is it an hour? I can't stand the guy) every weekday.

1

xabhax t1_j0rwmra wrote

Warren buffet did say anyone can get rich, but no one wants to get rich slowly

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padoinky t1_j0s1rsp wrote

Ya think? Story old as time… but for each new generation of “know it all’s”, these schemes would die off….

1

Abject_Dinner2893 t1_j0s4jyb wrote

Headline news.. social media mislead people in a stock scheme..!!

1

PotentiallyNotSatan t1_j0s5uko wrote

Runescape should be mandatory education. Can't fall for the money doubling scam twice lmao

1

Poppadoppaday t1_j0s6ut2 wrote

I think BBBY and possibly AMC will implode sooner rather than later. They both have horrible financials. DWAC is looking dicey as well. GME probably has a couple of years, maybe more if they're smart enough to dilute again before share price gets too low.

I think the current meme stock bubble will pop, but when it happens will depend on whether too many GME people jump ship next time they dilute. Eventually people will forget about the current crop of busted stock conspiracies and the cycle will start again

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Poppadoppaday t1_j0s7v1k wrote

Yup, the barrier to sane investing has never been lower. But buying target date index funds from Schwab or whatever isn't exciting. Market returns won't make you rich anytime soon.

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g78776 t1_j0saxx7 wrote

Sad that they have a huge amount of them to go after. Fish in a barrel level almost.

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snksleepy t1_j0sh7rq wrote

Logan Paul should be in jail. Nuff said.

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Surfing_magic_carpet t1_j0t6rhe wrote

TL:DR I was on one of those kinds of discords once. It was a well crafted, but obvious scam.

I'd been in one of those kinds of discords before, but spotted the scam immediately. You had to buy a tier from a set of options, and basically the top tiers got all the information of which coin to buy, when to buy it, and when to dump it. The lower the tier you bought the further away you were from being first to know. They'd hype things up in a way that didn't give away the scam such as "Here's why this is a good coin worth investing in. Here's why we're going to put our money in on this one." And so on. Plus, anything about the scam was an instant ban. So it looked legit to anyone who didn't know what a pump n dump is.

But the giveaway was when they'd tell you where in the timeline your tier was going to be told what to do. If you looked at it for more than a couple seconds you'd realize people at the top got a lot of time to put their money in and get a bunch of coins. Then the lower tiers would be told what to invest in, so they'd pour their money in and as the coin would peak, the top tier would sell off their entire volume at the new highest price. The lowest tiers got stuck holding the bag as the price would start to plummet.

And they knew they could keep cycling through newbies who were probably only good for a couple of these rounds before leaving the discord. So there was some emphasis on always promoting to bring in new victims. Anyone who figured out what was happening either left or got banned for trying to let the cat out of the bag. Plus, if you had the money to drop on one of the higher tiers, I'm sure it was a pretty sweet deal to be able to dupe other people. Even then, I'm sure that a) some of the middle tiers took a long time to recoup that initial buy in, and b) it was literally handing the guy(s) running it easier money than the pump n dump part. After all, they didn't need to you actually buy the coins at that point. They already robbed you.

I can only imagine how good these guys were at hyping up their audience if they're in this much trouble. I'm sure it was all carefully orchestrated, too.

Sorry this was long, but I think it's worth sharing how these things looked for those who missed it. The one I was in happened years ago so I don't have great details, but suffice to say, these schemes were pretty easy to get wrapped up in for a lot of people. It sounded legit and seemed like a great way to be on the bottom floor of a new emerging coin. Especially if you were someone who got caught up in the frenzy of cryptocurrencies before all the exposes about how some coins literally existed for these purposes.

Crypto could have been revolutionary if it didn't get crowded with investors who didn't care about the technology or the bad actors who saw it as get rich quick. It got turned into an environmental disaster, too, because the algorithm never got refined to require less energy. If people had treated it with more respect we could have had something that offered fast payments at low costs, both environmentally and monetarily.

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jasongw t1_j0tazvo wrote

I mean, that's basically just social media influence in a nutshell. Stocks, cryptos, NFT's, makeup, essential oils--it really doesn't make any difference what they're hocking, they're all just saying what their followers need to hear in order to part of with a few shekels.

1

[deleted] t1_j0tg20i wrote

I like how the celebrities get slaps on the wrist while other offenders get prison sentences.

Also, if you are dumb enough to follow an “influencer” for your investments you deserve to get screwed.

But glad these criminals are facing charges. Can we charge all influencers in general for promoting stupid shit?

1

Kat-Shaw t1_j0tluso wrote

"B-but I put 'Not Financial Advice' on my post!"

1

-thrw_awy- t1_j0ty6la wrote

This is great, why did you sit back and watch people get fleeced?

1

AutoX_Advice t1_j0umu5c wrote

We continue to repeat it.... I figure the more complex any investment is the easier of a seller to hide costs and risks. This was the case for 2008 and the case of crypto/blockchain. Nothing like old fashion CDs and stock dividends that are simple mechanics to basic users to understand.

BTW I'm not saving CDs are a great investment strategy just I've someone thinks that.

1

AlleKeskitason t1_j0uwwxz wrote

Don't diss Steven, I am absolutely convinced that he knows the world of finance at least as well as he knows how to charm girls or escape a chokehold with clean underwear.

0

Aarschotdachaubucha t1_j0v58er wrote

A bunch of the meme runs last year were in Discord and Telegram channels that proliferated in splinter subreddits. PLBY was one of the main runs I remember because the WSB mod tied to it was also the subreddit mod for PLBY.

1

SlowMotionPanic t1_j0v7hg3 wrote

Yeah, watching Kevin blathering and lying before Congress about FTX to downplay his own involvement was infuriating.

He was defending a self-proclaimed fraudster. He was blaming Binance and insisting that FTX would’ve made it without their interference. This, at a time when there is serious talk about clawing back payments old FTX leadership made to people like Kevin while the ship sunk.

The current (disaster-leadership in a good way) CEO has hinted this is still on the table. So that grifter Kevin has every reason to play ball and back SBF’s bullshit still.

What a piece of human garbage.

1

SlowMotionPanic t1_j0v7y3t wrote

It gets so much worse than that. Think you can trust your financial advisor? Think again! It depends entirely on the product they may be pushing. A fiduciary can act as a non-fiduciary to benefit themselves exclusively in some cases.

For example, some insurance agents are required to act as a fiduciary for some products. But not others. So they can pivot and trick people who, for good reason, think the agent is still required to act in the customer’s own best financial interest.

Our system is setup such that the working class is easily stolen from entirely for the benefit of the wealthy. By design. And they use us against each other to accomplish the pilfering.

1

Patzercake t1_j0vvort wrote

There's a huge difference between crypto pumps and stock pumps. Stocks are backed by real companies that have to report their financial statements and follow regulations. Investors at least have the option to verify the information they hear about a stock by checking the documents publicly released every quarter. Crypto is all smoke and mirrors. There's no technology, no company, no assets, no regulations, and, for schemes like the one in the article, the coin is made with the explicit intent to rug pull. The unregulated nature of crypto is its greatest feature, it makes it the best tool for fraud that has ever existed.

1