Sunday, August 12, 2018

#19 Is Amazon Involved in a 2018 Bitcoin Marketing Scam?


Issue #19 - Monday, August 13, 2018
                     

Posted by Denny Hatch    

Is Amazon Involved in a 2018 Bitcoin Marketing Scam?

FAKE FOTO: There is no such thing as a bitcoin per se. It is virtual money,
existing only as digital blips in iClouds, servers, and virtual wallets.

I have been collecting bitcoin stories since May 31, 2013 when I saw it in The Wall Street Journal:

"The freewheeling world of virtual currencies is about to get less free. Just this week, prosecutors claimed to have exposed a $6 billion money-laundering ring that allegedly relied on them.
"'Virtual" currencies can be used just like dollars among people who agree to accept them. One big difference is that they aren't backed by a government. Instead, bitcoin enthusiasts say, the currency derives its value from its limited supply and the support of the people using it."
Since then, my private dossier on the Bitcoin totals 91 stories. I did not understand Bitcoins when this nutsy-fagan scheme of digital dough was first introduced. 

I still don’t.
12 Indicted Russian Conspirators Used Bitcoins
On July 13, 2018 Special Counsel Bob Mueller Indicted 12 Ruskie Gov't GRU cyber criminal hackers who tilted the 2016 election to Donald Trump. From the indictment:

45. [a.] The Conspirators conducted operations as Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks… used the same pool of bitcoin funds to purchase a virtual private network (“VPN”) account and to lease a server in Malaysia.
That Same Day I Received These Five Bitcoin Offers.











This Is a Classic Pump-'n'-Dump Scam. 
Here's How One of These Things Works: 
1. Find a cockamamie, cheap-o (penny) stock and buy a gazillion shares.

2. Spend a ton of money on a huge (below-the-radar) media campaign (Internet and direct mail, which are secret) to hype (“pump up”) the price of this stock.

3. Poor Greedy, Gullible Bastards (PGGBs) buy like crazy and send the price through the Redwood Forest treetops.

4. Sell ("dump") your low-cost load into the middle of this buying frenzy.

5. You get obscenely rich. PGGBs lose their collective arsses.



Okay, How Is Amazon Involved?


• A Poor Greedy, Gullible Bastard (PGGB) gets 5 bitcoin emails in one day. 

• PGGB does doo-doo diligence by reading through the first 4 emails replete with photos of handsome studs cavorting with bikini-clad dollies lolling on yachts, swilling Lafite Rothschild, surrounded by guarantees of "$13,000 in Exactly 24 hours."

• Still unsure, PGGB comes to the next-to-last email, reads it carefully and then clicks on the final slide in the series:



“HO-LEE SHEE-IT!” PGGB exclaims. “Amazon is behind this! I love Amazon. I spend a lot of money with Amazon! Bezos is the richest man in the world. He’s offering me a chance to get rich too!”

Takeaway to Consider
• If bitcoin is virtual currency, an Amazon ad amidst this promotional blitz bestows legitimacy, a virtual testimonial and tacit endorsement by Amazon and—by association—the high-profile Jeff Bezos himself.

• “Never invest in any idea you can't illustrate with a crayon.”
   —Peter Lynch, Fidelity’s Magellan Guru, Wizard, Legend


Further Reading for Your Amusement
 

The 15 Largest Fraud Scandals In History

Bitcoin is the greatest scam in history



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Word Count: 499

10 comments:

  1. Women don't sell or don't buy Bitcoins?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry to be late in replying. Was out of email reach through the week. No, Joody C. Women do not sell and do not buy bitcoins. I turned 83 on Wednesday and in those 83 years I have never met a woman so stupid or venal or idiotically self-destructive to fall for crap like that. Bitcoins are a guy thing.

      Delete
  2. Denny -

    "Ruskie"???

    Isn't that in the same vein as "Canuck,""Mick" and "Polack"?

    Surely you didn't want to dis all 144 million Russians, as well as the tens of millions of Americans descended from Russian immigrants?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Peter, for taking the time to comment. I just turned 83. Let’s get one thing straight. I grew up in World War II. I remember Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March and the Japanese army rape and murder of 250,000 Korean pre-pubescent teen-age girls (called “comfort women”). I remember the London Blitz where 32,000 civilians were killed, 87,000 seriously wounded and two million homes (60% of London) destroyed. I remember Eisenhower ordering his generals and all the local residents in the area to tour the death camps where 6 million Jews were starved, butchered and cremated in the name of making Germany great again. Old Blood-‘n’-Guts George Patton was so sickened he threw up and had to abandon the tour. I also remember Stalin’s murder of 20 million of his fellow countrymen. These are not nice folks. And the current generation in Moscow and St. Petersburg are not playing paddy-cake. Their cyber attack on our electoral system is the digital equivalent of Pearl Harbor and the London Blitz. They are actively out to take down the U.S., the EU as well gleefully facilitating Brexit. And their biggest cheerleader is the president of the United States. Sorry you were offended by “Ruskie.” I agree, it’s not politically correct. Neither is Putin and his oligarch club of thugs.

      Delete
  3. Denny, I don't understand Bitcoins either. Nor do I understand why you're working on your birthday. Have a happy one! Reg

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Reg. Give a shout when you're next in Philly and I'll buy you lunch. Cheers.

      Delete
  4. When I was in Jr. High School, one of my gym coaches told us: "The problem isn't the Russkies, it's the Chinks." Even in those non-PC days of the late 1960's, a bunch of kids in the class raised their eyebrows, and had a Chinese boy been there, he would have reported it to Mom and Dad. Lucky for Coach, nonwhite kids were few and far between in these parts at the time, and he finished his career without incident and is now happily retired and occasionally feted at reunions by his aging former jocks!

    ReplyDelete
  5. My thought as soon as Bitcoin hit the scene, and everybody who tried to explain to me how it works....couldn't: This is a scam.

    At least you can plant tulip bulbs and get pretty flowers. What do you do with a valueless, virtual Bitcoin after the crash?

    P.S. "Ruskies" - I don't think it's as mean an epithet as some of the others we only now refer to by the first letter in the word. Had a Russian girlfriend for years and found out Russians tend not to take the American view of Russians seriously. They just roll their eyes and say, "Yes, Americans blaming us again. Russians are the bad guys. What's new?"

    ReplyDelete
  6. Offline, Michael privately emailed me:
    “How do you know that is a legitimate Amazon paid ad? And how can you tell that Amazon was involved? Interesting but I don't see any smoking gun?”

    My reply to Michael: “Hey, Michael, thanks for writing. Click on the ad and you’ll see it’s genuine. Is Amazon involved? Hell yes. Any time an advertisement shows up on my iMac or iPad, the guy who’s ad it is is responsible. When an Amazon ad is out in cyberspace, Bezos’ people should be aware. If it is part of a scam, Amazon should track down the people whose screens it came on to and 1. Disown it and 2. Apologize profusely. I’m sick of creepy emarketers who are too lazy to take responsibility. Cheers.”

    Michael to DH: “Thanks for that. I will check that out more. The problem is any Tom, Dick or Harry can sign up as an affiliate and use the Amazon name to try and boost credibility. Yes, ultimately, it is Amazon responsibility. Take care and thanks for writing back.”

    ReplyDelete