HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ applesapl

edit: updated his wallet: https://etherscan.io/address/0x1065d87094f8A2498D4beeD80915e... (20k)

old wallet https://etherscan.io/address/0x1e8a23B17e0248F9155B7BdA70e75... ($120k)

I have never seen anything like this. It makes even Walter White's fictitious drug empire seem like a amateur hour by comparison in terms of net profit and just the massive scale of this operation. Even hollywood cannot create a better crime than this.

90% of the victim wallets in these scams are Coinbase wallets. I do not know why lawmakers and attorney generals are not taking this more seriously given that Coinbase is an American company and Americans are being defrauded to the tune of millions of dollars a week. Crypto crime is bigger than drug crime given that crypto is worth $2 trillion. It should be taken as seriosly as such.

⬐ mike_d

Just moved to a new wallet: https://etherscan.io/address/0xe10f547EceC6439eEDb848aB70a8d...

⬐ jollybean

People are being defrauded of magic numbers, not money.

It only just so happens that a lot of people with time and money on their hands want to trade magic numbers, which they deem to be worth money, but as long as they just a kind of fiction, then why we care?

Why should the US government spend valuable time, effort and energy hunting down the scammers among the hyper speculators taking incredible risks with their money with no benefit to anyone?

⬐ applesapl

I don't think that would hold in any court of law, clearly the FBI treats ransomware ransoms as money.

⬐ jollybean

Forcing universities and hospitals to play in the gambler's game with real money is bad, yes.

It's further reason to view crypto as a net negative and to just ban it entirely.

⬐ reginold

Another interesting aspect is it appears to be using a hacked YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RallyArgentinooficial/videos

This channel RallyArgentinooficial at least appears valid, with rally videos going back 3+ years ago with thousands of views.

⬐ applesapl

This is an ongoing problem.

there is a market for stolen accounts

accs-market .com

But I don't know where the fake concurrent live viewers come from, shows 5-20k online.

⬐ reginold

Well at least a few of the viewers are from HN :o)

⬐ applesapl

new address https://etherscan.io/address/0x292a727025726A5eb28de4B5FecbB...

this guy is pro. not your typical scammer. changes addresses often.

⬐ reginold

(appears you pasted the same address twice)

⬐ skim_milk

Wow, I would have just assumed that all the money in the wallets were laundered to give the impression of credibility, but it sounds like you're saying the quarter million dollars in those wallets are likely all from real people? And with 6000 live youtube viewers as well, probably not all bots!? And their website is down even with Cloudflare DDOS protection, meaning their website is probably being overloaded by legitimate traffic??

I've stumbled across variants of "play video of smart people talking about complex topic with link to unrelated scam to get people to build trust and click through" but I never knew how successful they were until now with crypto transactions being open and such.

⬐ applesapl

It's all real..it's insane. I don't think the media, policy makers understand the scope of the problem. Literally anyone with a crypto acocunt and who watches youtube is at risk. We're talking millions of people. In the span of two weeks youtube scammers earned as much as the colonel pipeline hack, but no media coverage, no fbi invovement.

⬐ skim_milk

I wonder if it would be useful to keep track of known-scam crypto addresses for the purpose of informing policy makers. Say there was a website where you could upload evidence of crypto scams and, say, get points for the effort of uncovering it once verified and compare your total score to other users on the website. That would be a fun project and go a long way towards showing policy makers how prevalent crypto scams are

⬐ spoonjim

FBI and media doesn't really care if some crypto speculators lose their shirts. The Colonial hack shut down real world infrastructure which is got everyone interested.

⬐ cma

Isn't this ultimately positive, for spreading negative experiences with crypto, which could free up electricity for cancer research (protein folding or something)?

⬐ reginold

Is there a discussion about the risk of walled gardens to be had somewhere here? Something about seeing the Coinbase logo, link to AltcoinDailyio Twitter, all these "implied" links to credible sources. Something about the "credibility" of all these walled gardens means you can exploit the informal links between them.

(It's late so may not be thinking this through clearly. )

⬐ cyansmoker

There is a live ticker box at the bottom of their web page. I wonder if these are actual transactions. If so, it's quite intense to watch folks lose their coin in real time.

⬐ cyansmoker

And Yes, I understand that for each "in" transaction, an "out" counterpart is displayed so I'm obviously only wondering about the "in" ones.

⬐ reginold

The transactions in the live ticker are fake. You can see the real wallets/transactions referenced elsewhere in this thread.

⬐ cyansmoker

Thanks. Wonder why they keep jumping wallets. Are they getting blocked as they go?

⬐ reginold

Speculation: they likely jump wallets so in case a victim gets curious and checks the address they won't notice that there are never "double" transactions sent back.

Open to other ideas! Looks like they switch every hour or so.

In terms of "blocked as they go", afaik there's no way to "block" a wallet, so that's not the reason.

⬐ cyansmoker

Good point @reginold I am not familiar with Ether but if it's a cold wallet, you are right. If Ether is like Bitcoin and addresses can be derivations, would using these be enough to conceal the overall lack of return transactions?

⬐ AccordionGuy

The “live” ticker box transactions are randomly generated; see the source code:

http://coin-ether.net/scripts/table.js

⬐ DangitBobby

I don't understand. Can someone explain the actual scam happening here? How does he make money off of people thinking Etherium/Bitcoin will skyrocket in value?

⬐ reginold

1. The "live" video is old footage from the 2020 Coinbase Speaker series

2. All the graphics about the "ETH Giveaway" framing the video are added by the scammer

3. The victim visits the website mentioned in the graphics or description, sends ETH to the address with hopes of doubling it, and loses their money

4. You can see the addresses used by the scammer elsewhere in this thread. You can see ETH being sent to the address, presumably by victims expecting to double their money.

5. The YouTube channel belongs to RallyArgentinooficial, which appears to have been a legitimate account that was hacked, as it has 3+ years of car rally videos (https://www.youtube.com/c/RallyArgentinooficial/videos)

⬐ fbrncci

Are those interviews pulled from actual past interviews? Or are these deepfakes?

⬐ reginold

The original interview is from the Coinbase Speaker Series from 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shEeqqPqF50

(at least that's what's streaming now, it's a 50 minute interview I assume they're looping it.)

In a bizarre twist, I'm watching this interview because I haven't seen it before. So I'm adding a +1 to the 15,000 of streaming users, which adds validity to the scam. Closing now.

⬐ RNCTX

I fail to see how this represents a theft, if the rubes in question sent their bits to the scammer as requested.

⬐ 5551212

they got me. Wow...

⬐ 5551212

Wow. They got me.....WTF.

⬐ kingforaday

I've seen this recently for ADA as well. Seems to be a pretty common scam unfortunately. Anything where you need to actually "send" money to receive something should send alarm bells off in people's minds, but the dumb masses continue to fall for it and so it will prevail, just like extended car warranties.

If you are using a DNS filter service it should protect you against newly registered domain names and would prevent you from accessing this domain (coin-ether[.]com); beautiful site too by the way.

⬐ reginold

Unless I'm mistaken, they appear to have updated the website in the livestream to https://coin-ether/./net from .com