Comment by JumpCrisscross
4 years ago
If you are in the U.S. and lost money, please write to your state's Attorney General [1].
The company is Stablegains, Inc. and the people to name are Kamil Ryszkowski and Emil Rasmessen, co-founders and, I think, Board members. Copy Ken Paxton, Office of the Attorney General, P. O. Box 12548, Austin, Texas as well as his challenger George P. Bush at P. O. Box 26677, also in Austin. (Stablegains and its founders are in Texas. They are spearheading the criminal complaint.)
Hopefully the A.G. will recuse himself. He's under indictment for the same crime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Paxton#State_securities_fr...
He didn't recuse himself when he investigated his friend/donor and fired whistleblowers. Why would he now?
yeah, Ken Paxton is … let’s go with “not clear and free of scandal”.
Pyramid schemes and political corruption in the US is a very iconic duo (See: Amway is somehow still in the fraud business. The amount of collusion between it and past presidents is, to put simply, sickening.)
Take it from someone who lost his father’s money (all $11,000 of it) in 2014: it’s easier to just get over it as quickly as possible.
None of this will amount to anything, and you’ll feel awful until you give up. Then the healing can begin.
On the other hand, I’m not sure if I was mentally capable of hearing this advice back then, so…
But it’s true. It’s 2022 now. That’s almost a decade ago. In fact I forget when exactly Gox collapsed, which is how little it matters to me now. But back then, it felt like the end of the world.
> it’s easier to just get over it as quickly as possible. None of this will amount to anything, and you’ll feel awful until you give up
You don't write to your A. G. to get your money back. (You won't.) You do as an act of civic service.
These people will defraud again. Their investors will back people who will defraud again. Putting people in jail doesn't get anyone's money back. But it deters the next fraud.
Write the letter, send the evidence, write off the loss and then move on.
I guess. Just as long as you really embrace the “move on” part.
It was a mistake I made, so I’m just hoping to help people realize that things get so much easier when you stop caring.
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Did you have $11k in BTC or in cash?
The way the rehabilitation proceedings are going you will either be able to recover ~20% of the cash, or ~20% of the BTC which would be a considerable gain at this point.
Creating a public permanent record of having fallen for the latest crypto shitcoin will likely be too embarrassing for some. But then again I'm having trouble relating.
Successful "crypto startups" hardly exist, and most of those are selling shovels to suckers. What was the expectation here?
Isn't it already "a public permanent record" because it's already in the news?
It's in the news about this company, but it's not in the news that I fell for the scam for example.
A blockchain is already a public permanent record in the first place.
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For what it's worth, they are also a YC backed company.
> For what it's worth, they are also a YC backed company
Severely disappointing. I respect PG too much to believe he would knowingly condone this. The partner who did this didn't understand what they were investing in or should be decoupled with haste.
At the very least, the Alaska RMB, U of M Endowment, Bloomberg's family office and SMC should be asking why their capital is backing what should have been clear as day ex ante a fraud. Anyone living in Alaska, going to or an alumni of U of M or Stanford, or working for Bloomberg should be asking the same question.
What does Paul Graham have to do with any of this? He hasn't been operationally involved with YC for years, lots of them, so far as I know. Also: YC invests in companies that are 2-3 people and a vague idea; that's the whole concept. Why wouldn't YC end up backing a shady cryptocurrency company? I read all of your comments and guess we're on the same page about "crypto" and wish YC was staying the hell away from it --- but if they're going to invest in "crypto" startups, they're going to get their share of companies like this.
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Let’s not even get started with Sama pushing Worldcoin, a pretty exploitative attempt at getting everyone’s irises with a pre-mined currency supposed to revolutionize world finance.
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pg defended YC funding a company making installer adware [0], you shouldn't really be surprised
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711
VCs promoting this sort of blatant and obvious Ponzi - and there are many VCs getting into ponzinomic crypto enterprises - is a good reason to start making some of the investors more liable.
> is a good reason to start making some of the investors more liable
I'm beginning to agree.
Piercing the corporate veil is reserved for "serious misconduct" [1]. If you're told someone will sell an unlicensed deposit-like product [2], promise depositors (their words) "will not lose [their] funds" [3] and pay a ten or 20% interest rate, and you give them money to do it, you aided and abetted fraud. (At the very least you were grossly negligent with your LPs' money.) You should have to make the people you scammed and hoped to profit off whole.
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31462617
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What should you write exactly?
> What should you write exactly?
The facts.
Copies of marketing you saw, statements showing what you invested and what you were paid, e-mails and other communication from the company and a statement of loss. There are links in this thread where promises were made that turned out to be lies; I would include those as well if you saw them ex ante.
Here's a sample letter:
Dear government I'm trying to subvert, I complain about the instability of your useful, fiat currency, so I entered into a get rich quick scheme with no intention of reporting gains on my taxes. This obvious scam fell apart. Please punish them with the government system I don't believe in.
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