The crypto market as a single unified scam

Guest post from Reddit user NonnaBomba on /r/buttcoin, in a discussion of Tether hitting fourteen billion USDT, republished here by permission.

I’m thoroughly amazed by this giant three cards monte game, where the Lady keeps making the rounds, a few times “players” find her but most of the times is either the house winning or an accomplice of the scammers … which is how this game is supposed to work, but here the scammers keep adding new cards, new rules for how to “almost win” by finding lesser Ladies and they add new side-tables and even layer new desks upon the old ones, adding related, intertwined games to the lot, with cards chained to each other with near invisible nylon threads. Everybody is excited by the novelty of it all and think that with so many different games they can surely find one where they can win. They play on multiple tables to “hedge their chances”. Nobody ever stops and thinks for a second that the game is just one and the only way to win it is still finding the original Lady, which is always one and only one card despite all those new cards and side-games going on.

At this stage, scammers are letting players win a bit more frequently — not enough to let them turn a regular profit, obviously, just enough to mask the fact they are slowly draining their funds — and they added these amazing new Rube Goldberg machines that play against themselves in one of the layers but reset and run again only if players keep pouring tokens in them. Which they do, because they think it’s fun and sometimes, their machine wins, so it’s a good investment. It must be.

If you want to get paid what you’re due at any point, you either wait and hope the scammer paying you can find an old, crumpled, smelly banknote in their pants, not all you were due but that’s “what they have at the moment” or you accept to get all your winnings in the form of cheap plastic tokens with “$$ real monies $$” embossed on it, which you can’t sell to anybody or spend in any way, but you can “reinvest” them in another round at the game on any of the side tables accepting them.

There is a press machine in the background that’s making those tokens by the billions now, and though they look somewhat real if you try to watch closely at how they make them it’s only thin air and empty promises going in the metal hopper … but you can’t really tell what’s going on as there’s a thick velvet curtain around the machine with the printer’s name embroidered in gold, which is “Honest Giancarlo & co.” It’s practically magic. There’s so many tokens around, that every player seems to have them now and only uses those, not money, to play most of the times.

Nobody seems to notice that the only ones bringing any real money to the multi-layered giant set of tables is the players, while the scammers keep bringing away to the bank bags and bags of euros and dollars. The ability of placing 2 and 2 together has been erased from the players’ minds while they were busy LARPing as “savvy investors” and “finance experts”.

Honest Giancarlo keeps his printing machine running and watches it all with a grin, knowing his work is keeping the game running and profitable (for the scammers) and that his private coffers are filling too.