Will Investors of Bitcoin become the Stock Investors of 1929 before the Great Depression?

[J0E]

Recently bitcoin surpassed silver:



....but could these Investors be setting up a trap for themselves just like the stock Investors of 1929?

Or will bitcoin continue to sail to the moon?

[asal]

Hundreds freed from ‘pig-butchering’ [crypto scam investing] compound after victim escapes

March 14, 2024
Over 600 workers who had been forced to take part in so-called ‘pig-butchering’ crypto scams in the Philippines were rescued by authorities on Thursday after one victim scaled the walls and fled, alerting the police.

Authorities freed 383 Filipinos, 202 Chinese, and 73 other foreign nationals from a compound in Bamban, a northern district in the Philippines.

According to Winston Casio, a spokesman for the Presidential Commission Against Organized Crime, the center trapped “good-looking men and women to lure [victims].” He says that freed victims are still ‘shaken’ by the ordeal.

Trapped individuals are forced to carry out romance scams all day that seduce victims into investing in bogus crypto platforms. In most cases, they are tortured and forced to work long hours with few or no breaks.

According to a BBC report, the escaped individual was a Vietnamese man in his 30s who had enrolled as a chef at the center, which it was claimed was an online gambling firm. However, he was subsequently held against his will and forced to conduct crypto scams that Casio claims were mainly directed towards Chinese nationals.

The man was able to escape after climbing over the center’s wall, crossing a river, and hiding out on a farm. He claimed others had tried to escape but were not successful. Casio said the man was found with electrocution scars, suggesting he was tortured.

Crypto and pig butchering go hand in hand

Police in Myanmar freed 1,200 slaves from a similar compound earlier this month. One pig butchering scam based there made $100 million in USDT over two years.

These scams are often orchestrated across Asia and rely on USDT to make their money. A recent report suggested close to $75 billion has been made from their exploits. However, a blockchain forensics expert has since raised concerns that the report may have inflated this figure by “a few orders of magnitude.”

Read more: Blockchain forensics expert has doubts over $75B ‘pig butchering’ report

Regardless, the United Nations (UN) reinforces that USDT is used by the criminal underworld in a ‘parallel banking system.’ According to the UN, hundreds of thousands of victims have been trafficked across the globe to work these scams. The FBI reported that pig butchering caused $3.3 billion worth of losses in the US, affecting at least 40,000 victims.

[asal]

1,200 slaves freed from Myanmar pig-butchering compound

March 1, 2024
Authorities in Myanmar have raided a compound and freed more than 1,000 slave laborers being forced to work in a series of so-called ‘pig-butchering’ scams, one of which has raked in an estimated $100 million in the past two years.

The KK Park compound in east Myanmar was raided in a joint operation led by China, Thailand, and Myanmar earlier this week and 1,200 workers were reportedly freed. A flight chartered from China left Myanmar on Thursday afternoon with 150 of these victims on board, according to Deutsche Welle (DW),

Earlier this week, Protos reported how one of the pig-butchering operations based at the compound has made around $100 million in USDT in the past two years. Many of the scams’ workers were trafficked from China, Southeast Asia, and Africa and were forced to scam crypto from victims in Europe, the US, and China.

DW interviewed the trafficked victims who claimed that weekly murders took place and that they were constantly surveilled and tortured. Victims reportedly ran these crypto scams for 17 hours a day with no rest and were told they would be sold or killed if they tried to leave.

Around 1,000 of the freed slaves are Chinese nationals, while the other 200 were mostly trafficked from African countries.



An anonymous source who negotiated the release of the victims told DW that Chinese nationals found to have traveled to the compound willingly “would be arrested, according to China’s current regulations.”

In addition, the other 200 reportedly face being stuck in Thailand’s human trafficking identification system, or handing themselves over to the police for breaching Thailand’s immigration laws.

Tether, pig-butchering, and Myanmar slaves

This week, a study released by Texas finance professor John Griffith estimated that pig-butchering scams have made somewhere in the region of $75 billion. In the report, Griffith concluded that Binance, Huobi, and OKX work as exit points for these criminal funds and that USDT is the crypto of choice for criminals.

The United Nations (UN) also claims organized crime uses a ‘parallel banking system’ that relies on Tether and USDT. The UN estimated that over 100,000 victims are being trafficked to work in Myanmar scam centers linked to these pig-butchering scams.

[Vivek_Golikeri]

I doubt we'll ever have another debacle as obscene as the Great Depression, because since then civilization has developed policy mechanisms and laws designed to be safeguards. However, the analogy with the cryptocurrency is very interesting and insightful. Cryptocurrency is basically a Ponzi scheme, and when the music stops some players will have no chairs.

There will not be a 1929 within the general economy, but a 1929 scenario with the cryptocurrency business is very possible.

[Mad Serb]

I doubt we'll ever have another debacle as obscene as the Great Depression, because since then civilization has developed policy mechanisms and laws designed to be safeguards.

And it also became more generous with bail outs, so I'm not holding my breath

[Seamajor]

32

I doubt we'll ever have another debacle as obscene as the Great Depression, because since then civilization has developed policy mechanisms and laws designed to be safeguards. However, the analogy with the cryptocurrency is very interesting and insightful. Cryptocurrency is basically a Ponzi scheme, and when the music stops some players will have no chairs.

There will not be a 1929 within the general economy, but a 1929 scenario with the cryptocurrency business is very possible.

I doubt it too, because the USA will simply print more money. We screwed ourselves when Pres. Nixon took Gold out of the scenario. Crypto continues to be sketchy. Gold, Silver, Copper Like a girlfriend that won’t cheat on ya.

[Vivek_Golikeri]

I doubt it too, because the USA will simply print more money. We screwed ourselves when Pres. Nixon took Gold out of the scenario. Crypto continues to be sketchy. Gold, Silver, Copper Like a girlfriend that won’t cheat on ya.

Agreed. But the trouble with that gold standard is that, like Einstein's speed limit being the speed of light, there is only so much paper currency you can issue that is covered by that gold. If the government still needs more money it has to find more gold.

[Seamajor]

There is still lots of gold to be mined. In Australia, Russia, Indonesia.

[GranpaP]

I doubt we'll ever have another debacle as obscene as the Great Depression, because since then civilization has developed policy mechanisms and laws designed to be safeguards....

There will not be a 1929 within the general economy...

There has been worse than 1929's Black Tuesday, 1987's Black Monday.

The highest single-day point loss in US market history happened in October 1987.
The economy did not nose-dive or go into a tailspin in '87 for a simple reason: nobody panicked.
The world's financiers and investors held their collective breaths,
and market recovery began within a few days.

The great depression started in the spring 1930 when declining investor confidence resulted in a bank run.
Panic and mayhem. Bank run in 1931 as well.
The actual market crash occurred in late October 1929 (important stock market crashes always happen in the fall).

The stock market is gambling opportunity for the wealthy who substitute a casino roulette for a financial ticker tape.

Economic forces are unpredictable and their outcomes can only be 'speculated' through the examination of economic models.
If 'we' knew ahead of time that a market crash was imminent, there would be no market crash.
A market crash is a sudden event.

Anti-plunging legislation and other remedial measures are in place to limit and control stock trading in sudden economic downturns, but there are no safeguards against speculation, risk-taking and panic selling.