Today in magic beans

December 14, 2022 10:28 PM

“Everything I have came from $800.” On Twitter, the men touted themselves as financial sages in a community known to fans as FinTwit. Two launched a Discord server, Atlas Trading, amassing more than 230,000 members who avidly followed their stock tips. They appeared on podcasts that soared in popularity with the bull market, and showed off luxury cars on Instagram. The ‘FinTwit’ Influencers now face charges in $100 Million Scheme.

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posted by Toddles (24 comments total)

Who could have pred-....aw fuck it.
posted by rhizome at 10:37 PM on December 14, 2022 [9 favorites]

Geez, it's not even crypto just a garden variety stock scam.
posted by fiercekitten at 11:42 PM on December 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

Is there anything bad Twitter doesn't make worse?
posted by krisjohn at 12:04 AM on December 15, 2022 [6 favorites]

working conditions at tesla?
posted by ryanrs at 12:33 AM on December 15, 2022 [6 favorites]

Fin... twit?
posted by SoberHighland at 4:28 AM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

They ... showed off luxury cars on Instagram.

There's the tell.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:46 AM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

If it's sounds too good to be true, it usually is?
posted by plonkee at 5:26 AM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Fin... twit

A deformation of FinTech, FinTube, etc. Some ironic self-awareness originally intended, now hitting differently.

It's a bad year for the sigma male grindset grift. Things are getting kinda weird.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:02 AM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

I think the irony of this is if they were pumping and dumping cryptocurrency they would have been much less likely to be prosecuted, since those aren’t clearly securities regulated by the SEC.
posted by CostcoCultist at 6:33 AM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

Probably still garden-variety wire fraud to be prosecuted by the DOJ, though (see the charges brought against Bankman-Fried). Maybe harder to prosecute because of the unavailability of a fraud-on-the-market theory.

People wondering why I get so heated about the danger and stupidity of meme and crypto investing...Well.
posted by praemunire at 7:13 AM on December 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

They were arraigned in Texas, where the Attorney General who was just reelected is also on the docket for similar charges. But since he's the AG, he'll never actually face charges. If you want to crime, my tip is make sure you get elected first.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:46 AM on December 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

It's awful watching a whole new generation fall prey to very old fashioned securities scams.

Every time I read about this kind of fraud I feel worse for the victims. Many of whom think the only way they can ever make it in America is to get rich quick, have a lucky score with stocks or crypto or forex or whatever the particular scam is. It doesn't look like gambling to them because it sounds like Adulting to buy stocks. Worse, it's not even honest gambling, they're gambling in a rigged casino.
posted by Nelson at 8:47 AM on December 15, 2022 [5 favorites]

You can find half of the stuff going on in the crypto and meme stock spaces in Reminiscences of a Stock Market Operator (published 1923), just slightly adjusted for different technologies.
posted by praemunire at 8:50 AM on December 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

Yeah, where I live (rural Ohio) I have heard 20-something guys talking crypto like they know what they're doing, and it all sounds like get rich quick stuff to me, which honestly I UNDERSTAND. I don't like or sympathize with the let's-go-brandon types, but they live in a bind as far as I can tell.

If you don't want to farm and you don't want to work heavy industry or construction, and you are trapped in ideas about being a provider, about prosperity being tied to morality, about what kinds of work you are fitted for, there's not much going on out here. Crypto and investing (and actually, flipping houses of all things, I know lots of people get into real estate) sound like ways out of the boxes they live in.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 9:03 AM on December 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

If you don't want to farm and you don't want to work heavy industry or construction, and you are trapped in ideas about being a provider, about prosperity being tied to morality, about what kinds of work you are fitted for,

Somehow, in the U.S., everybody but white men manages to figure out that if they want to be a provider (or simply self-sufficient), then they need to take the work available to them rather than gamble in zero-sum games that take money away from other people. "It's very important to me to be a provider, but only on cozier terms than everyone else" is a contradiction. (These guys never want to be labor organizers and change everyone's terms, for some strange reason.)

And, sure, 20-year-olds of all races and genders tend to be stupid, but at a certain point you have to be a grown-up.
posted by praemunire at 9:11 AM on December 15, 2022 [12 favorites]

Hard agree, honestly.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 9:48 AM on December 15, 2022

You can find half of the stuff going on in the crypto and meme stock spaces in Reminiscences of a Stock Market Operator (published 1923), just slightly adjusted for different technologies.

This then begs the question, has everything in that book shown up in crypto markets yet? N..no reason....just....curious. Yeah, that's it, curious.
posted by VTX at 10:10 AM on December 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

Really, it seems a large proportion of these people seem to half-way understand it's a scam. They just believe they can get in, ride the wave, then get out before it crashes on the "suckers".
posted by aleph at 10:55 AM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Greater Fool theory gets cited in discussions of crypto a lot.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:17 AM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

Though it has been funny to see all the dumb money piling in recently, just as the shit hit the fan. I am speaking, of course, of the crypto VCs. Absolutely the last ones to the party, ha ha.
posted by ryanrs at 11:17 AM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

Fintwit has gotta be a Dickens character, no?
posted by tom_r at 12:26 PM on December 15, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'll never forget having lunch at this diner near my place a few years ago and hearing these two old guys talking about Bitcoin. They clearly didn't really understand what it is but had read stories of people getting rich on seeming Internet magic and thought it could help them because their money was getting tight. It's just sad seeing desperation preyed on like this.
posted by star gentle uterus at 3:05 PM on December 15, 2022

Somehow, in the U.S., everybody but white men manages to figure out that if they want to be a provider (or simply self-sufficient), then they need to take the work available to them rather than gamble in zero-sum games that take money away from other people.

Yeah I’m not sure that’s true. That other kinds of people in the U.S. figure that out, I mean.
posted by atoxyl at 11:32 PM on December 15, 2022

Or that there are many ways to achieve financial security in our society without participating in "zero-sum games that take money away from other people." That's true in some way as soon as you have lower-paid employees under you whose surplus value you help extract, or in relationships to consumers in a lot of present business models, etc.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:25 AM on December 16, 2022