Mocking the scammers

general
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Donald Trump in 2019: “I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity. We have only one real currency in the USA. And it will always stay that way. It is called the United States Dollar!”

June 2021: “Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam. I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.”. “The currency of this world should be the dollar. And I don’t think we should have all of the Bitcoins of the world out there. I think they should regulate them very, very high. It takes the edge off of the dollar and the importance of the dollar.” “It’s potentially a disaster waiting to happen.”

August 2021: Cryptocurrency is “potentially a disaster waiting to happen”, he’s “not been a big fan”, he likes the currency of the U.S., investing in crypto “hurts the United States currency” and “we should be invested in our currency”

2023:Trump’s financial disclosure form reveals he invested in cryptocurrency. Researchers found he has items in the crypto wallet for TrumpCoin and one called MAGA.

2023-2024: Here’s my NFTs you can buy. Own a JPEG with a piece of code attached to it that makes it completely unique.

February 2024: “You probably have to do some regulation But many people are embracing it. More and more I’m seeing people wanting to pay bitcoin. And you are seeing something that’s interesting. I can live with it one way or the other.”

June and July 2024: “Our country must be the leader in the field. There is no second place.” “I’m very positive and open minded to cryptocurrency companies, and all things related to this new and burgeoning industry. Our country must be the leader in the field.”
 

Can you guess where this is going?
 

September 2024: Trump announces he’s starting a new crypto business called World Liberty Financial, which Trump Jr. “suggests” will provide opportunities for people who cannot get financing from traditional banks. It’s not ready yet but has been in the works for nine months, which is right around the time he publicly started supporting crypto. That’s also right around the time where he said he could live with it.

Since there’s little info about this right now, the speculation is WLF will work similar to Coinbase, Gemini and Binance, which charge fees for users to trade cryptocurrencies. It may have its own token in the future called WLFI.

Now, if WLF can duplicate what those three companies do, it wouldn’t be a scam. But I would expect it to have a lifespan of less than five years, as many of Trump’s failed businesses have had, which includes Trump Mortgage.

Given that this has been announced less than two months before an election where he is one of the candidates, this is already throwing up red flags about conflicts of interest. As President again, Trump could create policies in favor of crypto, which would then benefit himself personally. And when has he ever passed up a chance to benefit himself personally?

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The needle appears to already be moving from “legit” to “scam” in the few short days since World Liberty Financial was announced to the world.

Trump’s partners in this venture include four people that ran Dough Finance, which lost around $2M in July from multiple “flash loan transactions”. There’s an analysis on Certik, but the gist is it happened via exploiting unvalidated call data. CoinDesk is reporting that the early stages of WLF appear to have been based on Dough Finance and that codebase has now been deleted from GitHub.

As a reminder, when Truth Social was first launched, the site stated it had proprietary technology until it was discovered they had used Mastodon to create it. The “proprietary” tech statements were removed from the website and whatever code they submitted to Mastodon for review was enough that legal action for licensing violations wasn’t necessary. A later analysis showed Mastodon really wasn’t designed for this kind of application. It also took them a long time before they had the TS app available for both iOS and Android, partly because they only hired programmers that had certain political views.

The people involved in WLF are the following:

  • Zachary Folkman, who is the co-creator of Subify, which is a censorship-free competitor to both Patreon and OnlyFans. He has a registered company called Date Hotter Girls LLC. Under his previous name of Zack Bauer, he had seminars on YouTube about how to pick up hotter women.
  • Chase Herro, the co-creator of Subify. Herro described himself in 2018 as a “dirtbag of the internet” that regulators should kick out, and has a boat named Clickbait. He’s sold many things over the years, which includes weed, weight-loss “colon cleansers”, and a $149-a-month get-rich-quick class. His view on crypto in 2018 that he recorded as he drove in a Rolls-Royce was “You can literally sell s– in a can, wrapped in piss, covered in human skin, for a billion dollars if the story’s right, because people will buy it. I’m not going to question the right and wrong of all that.”
  • Octavian Lojnita will be the smart contracts lead.
  • Someone who goes by just “Boga” and puts their name in their code as “0xboga”, is the front-end developer.
  • Donald Trump, “Crypto Ambassador”.
  • Donald Trump Junior, cryptocurrency advocate or web ambassador
  • Eric Trump, same
  • Barron Trump, “DeFi Visionary”

If anyone had thought that Melania shielding and protecting Barron would keep him out of the family grifting business, “The question has been answered, Logan Five.”

All of the Trumps are spokesmen, so this sounds like yet another licensing deal for Trump, the same as with his NFTs and many other businesses, many of which failed famously (Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Mortgage, etc.).

Once the WLFI token are ready, 70% of them will be reserved for the group’s “founders, team, and service providers” and the rest will be available for public sale, with the founding team receiving a portion of the sale. So not only do they get a majority of what will be made, they get a cut of the sale of all of the rest. As the CoinDesk article said, “If insiders plan to hoard most of the World Liberty Financial money for themselves, how will it deliver on its lofty promises?” The article also quotes Nic Carter that WLFI will be “the juiciest DeFi target ever and it’s forked from a protocol that itself was hacked” that will hurt Trump’s campaign if WLFI gets hacked.
 

The creation of this company is affecting two other areas: Truth Social and future U.S. Government policy.

The effect on Truth Social is direct and indirect at the same time. Its stock (technically Trump Media & Technology Group’s stock, but TS is its only product so far) had a meteoric rise when it went live but fell right back to where it was just two weeks later and continued to dive for another week. The three months after that was the rollercoaster of $23 to $54 volatility, but it was on July 15 that it began a steady downward trend from $40.58 to Friday’s closing at $13.55. That’s barely above the stock’s initial sale price of $10 way back when it sold under the DWAC label.

The value of Truth Social stock is based on one thing: the value of Donald Trump. That is the only thing it has that nowhere else has. That’s changing as Trump dabbles in returning to Twitter. It’s also changing because recent statements he made about not selling his stock and boasting about how it will do in the future are in violation of several rules and laws. Add in his political future doesn’t look as rosy as it did six months ago, and even less so since two months ago, plus this new company being yet another thing Trump adds to his plate so all of the other things he already has gets less and less of his attention, and confidence in the stock sinks, reflected in the price of the stock.
 

The future U.S. Government policy being shaped by the creation of this company comes from Trump’s statements at the Bitcoin2024 conference at the end of July that he wants to create a “strategic national bitcoin stockpile” by never selling the bitcoins confiscated by the federal government, about 210K so far.

An article in the Financial Times titled “Trump’s call for a bitcoin strategic reserve is a very bad idea” says this strategic reserve would mean a major world government would decrease the strength and reputation of its own valuable asset, the U.S. dollar, and put it that into something that it can’t control by the very nature of that asset. As the article points out, such a strategic reserve would change bitcoin’s story.

Add Trump starting his own cryptocurrency company to his statements of wanting U.S. policy to support crypto by having this strategic reserve, and it’s even more clear there will be conflicts of interest if Trump is elected again.

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The scam that graced this topic’s second post is still around and it nearly snagged a new victim: Mike Rowe’s father. Fortunately, his mother was there to clue him in.

In this case, it sounds like the scammer somehow did get an actual password they used, which has been changed. They followed up with the banks just to make sure.

This is very entertaining to hear Mike read what his mom wrote, including talk of “dunking your biscotti”.

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Well, well, well. What a surprise. The “God Bless the USA” Bible was first sold by singer Lee Greenwood and includes a copy of the Pledge of Allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The price when he was selling it was $50.

Donald Trump makes a licensing deal with Greenwood to endorse this edition of the Bible and the price jumps to $60, meaning Trump takes 16.667% as his fee.

An article by The Independent reports that The Associated Press looked into global trade records and found that a printing company in Hangzhou, China shipped about 120,000 of these Bibles to the US in February and March, with an estimated value of $342,000 or less than $3 per Bible. Based on the original $50 price, that’s a 1667% markup. At Trump’s $60 price, it’s a 2000% markup.

Since one court ruled the Bible can officially appear in Oklahoma schools, the Oklahoma Department of Education put out bids for about 55,000 new Bibles to be placed in the schools. The requirements of what must be in those Bibles just happened to narrow down which qualify to exactly one: The “God Bless the USA” edition.

After this was made public, the superintendent made a statement that he didn’t know who would be supplying the Bibles, didn’t know who had applied, the process will be fair and transparent, and the “left wing media hates Donald Trump so much, and they hate the Bible so much, they will lie and go to any means necessary to stop this initiative from happening.”

Okay. So, superintendent, you’re obviously going to resubmit the request for bid to make it possible for other publishers of Bibles that are not the Trump-endorsed “God Bless the USA” Bible to participate, right? You should already have copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, so you don’t really need them to be included in the Bible if your goal is to get the Bible into the classroom.

I mean, seriously. You can get a bonded leather edition (leather or leather-like binding is another requirement) on Amazon for $14.57. That’s 25% of the cost of the Trump-endorsed Bible, and since many government agencies are required to go with the lowest bidder, ordering them from Amazon will save your organization a ton of money. 55,000 “God Bless the USA” Bibles at full price is $3,300,000. The same number of Bibles from Amazon is $801,350.

Surely, Mr. Superintendent, you would want to save the taxpayers as much as you can by not having so stringent requirements that force vendors to provide an overpriced product available from only one source, right?

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I tend to call it “penny wise, pound foolish”.

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Called it.

Less than a month after it was speculated World Liberty Financial might start selling their own WLFI token, they started selling their own WLFI token They had 20 billion, yes, billion, tokens available for sale on October 16. At the start of the next day, 848.63 million had been sold for a total of $12.7 million.

Who could buy these? Not just your average Joe. No, you have to be an “accredited” investor that lives in the U.S., earns $200K/year, has a net worth of >$1M, or are general partner, executive officer, or director of a company issuing unregistered securities. Raise your hand if you’ve got that kind of dosh. Raise your hand if you’re willing to pass a KYC check by uploading your passport or driver’s license.

Once you buy a $WLFI, you can’t transfer it to another wallet and you can’t sell it. According to the terms and conditions, you’re supposed to think of them as any other non-refundable purchases of goods and services “and accept the risk that once you’ve paid the purchase price, your interest in the Token may decline and you have no expectation of resale of the Token.” Very literally, “You should assume that the Tokens are non-transferable indefinitely.” Because of this, don’t expect the company to create a secondary market for the tokens.
 

What you do get is the ability to vote on how the DeFi protocol will work after it’s released. If you and others vote to add transferability, they’ll do it if it doesn’t “contravene applicable law”, and you have to wait a year after the completion of the token sale. If they manage to keep the current pace, they could have all 20 billion sold before Thanksgiving, so in December 2025, you might be able to sell your tokens.

The website crashed and was offline for 2-3 hours. Way to instill confidence in your company, Donald, by not having robust enough servers. Okay, technically, it’s not your company. You’re just a paid spokesperson for them with a Rhodium parachute of being part of the group that has 70% of the tokens reserved for themselves.

Oh, how about that? I just realized that when you have a group of less than a dozen people that have 70% of the available assets, wouldn’t that mean they’d have 70% of the voting power if $WLFI stuck around long enough to be eligible for a vote? How easy would it be for them to quash any and all votes?
 

I think the tokens were supposed to sell for 1.5¢ each. But the first day’s sales came to an average of 0.067¢ each. The Coin Market Cap website says that as of a couple hours ago, one $WLFI is worth $0.000000000003274. A third of a billionth of a cent.

I had to scroll back through the previous messages to find the other crypto scam that used a “buy item A now and wait for item B to become available” method. That one was the Squid Coin, where you bought squids that would later be traded for marbles that you used in an online competition. It would have cost you >$500K before you made it to the final round. If you want to read about it, here’s the link.

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Let’s get an update on the Oklahoma schools Bible bid.

First, there is one other Bible that meets the requirements. The “We the People” Bible has the same extra documents in it and has a leather cover embossed with a weathered flag design based off of the 20-star U.S. flag of 1818 and “We the People” from the Constitution. Wouldn’t you know it? This is even more expensive at $90 and Trump Jr. endorsed it.

Ryan Walters issued a memo in June that made it mandatory that the Bible be incorporated into the curriculum to “teach our kids about the history of this country”. Not just that, but “Adherence to this mandate is compulsory” and “Immediate and strict compliance is expected.” What if you don’t comply? Find another job.

Translation: You’re going to be forced to teach the Bible in the Oklahoma public schools.

I don’t know about teaching a full history course in it, but I can give you the overview right now: Some religious groups came to this country because they were persecuted for their beliefs and wanted freedom to practice their religion unhindered. Others came because they didn’t want to be a part of a government-chosen religion. After the U.S. was founded, separation of church and state became a thing, with the original intent being the state wouldn’t stomp on the church, but the church could be involved in the state. That later became keep them both apart as much as possible.

In September, Walters announced he would set aside $3 million from his office’s budget to buy the Bibles, coming from a staff salary reserve. He later asked the state legislature to make it $6 million. Obviously, he needed a buffer in case he just couldn’t find anyone to sell him the very specific edition he wanted at below MSRP.

The 55,000 Bibles wanted is more than the 43,000 teachers in the state, most of whom don’t teach history or literature, so they don’t need to teach the Bible as mandated by Walters. “Today, class, we’re going to learn how to build a bookcase and find out how the Bible tells us to store our reading materials.”

The bid had a shorter timeline of two weeks to respond instead of four, and required shipping to schools within two weeks of the contract being signed. That means the bidder had to already have 55,000 Bibles in stock and staff ready to ship them as the ink on the contract dries.

After the backlash, Walters amends the bid requirements. You get an extra week, but that still means you need product in stock and ready to go. You still have to provide the same extra documents, but they could be separate instead of in the Bibles. However, if you make them a separate book, that also has to be “bound in durable material”.

Let’s look at the page count:

  • The Pledge of Allegiance: 1 page unless you use 72-point bold type.
  • U.S. Declaration of Independence: 1 page if you use a picture of it, or somewhere around 3 or 4 if you type it out at a easily readable size.
  • U.S. Constitution: 1 page if you use a picture of it, or 4-8 pages for a text version.
  • U.S. Bill of Rights: 1 page if you use a picture of it, or 4-8 pages for a text version.

In order to meet the bid of supplying a King James Bible bound in a durable leather or leather-like material that you might already have in stock, you have to create a separate book that could have as little as four pages in it but also must have the same kind of binding. And you have until 1 p.m. Central Standard Time on Monday, October 21, 2024 to submit your bid, and be able to have them arrive at the schools by November 4, 2024.

Should it be any surprise that the amended bid makes it almost impossible for any company that isn’t selling the “God Bless the USA” or the “We the People” Bibles to have any chance at meeting the bid?

Should it be any surprise that Ryan Walters endorsed Donald Trump?

Should it be any surprise that on Friday morning, a lawsuit was filed by five organizations representing 32 plaintiffs claiming Walters’ personal religious beliefs are being imposed on their children via “coercive instruction on religion in their public schools that is contrary to their own beliefs”? Or that Walters violated the Oklahoma Administrative Procedures Act that have procedures for issuing new rules, which includes a provision of notice and a comment period"? Or that Section 5 of Article II and Section 2 of Article I of the Oklahoma State Constitution prohibits state funding for the promotion of religion?

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