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Comment by soniman

3 days ago

38 seems young to quit. Is there another story here?

Given the number of ultrarich and powerful people that already hate the Hindenberg folks... my guess would be that there is some calculus here about the incoming U.S. presidential administration's enmity towards whistleblowers and their prior statements about changing libel laws in the U.S.

  • Um, yes.

    Starting next week, it's open season on suckers. It's going to be like the glory days of the Tel Aviv binary options scammers, who at one time were 40% of the Israeli finance sector and had good political connections.[1] Crypto deregulation is coming. No more CFPB enforcement! No more SEC enforcement!

    There are still people who haven't lost money in crypto yet who can be targeted. They're all little people. No one will help them. Just pay off some influencers and start up your scam.[2]

    [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/topic/binary-options-fraud/

    [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/memecoins/

    • >It's going to be like the glory days of the Tel Aviv binary options scammers, who at one time were 40% of the Israeli finance sector and had good political connections.

      When I started at Goldman Sachs 25 years ago, I was told early on of an "Israeli discount" and "Canadian discount"; that is, investors were more skeptical of companies based in those countries.

      I was not told of any more details than that at the time, but I now wonder if what you said is the cause?

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  • Musk famously hates short sellers, the Trump Social CEO has done the "blame the short sellers" bit, Eric Trump is hyping crypto coins, Trump himself is eager to take credit whenever the market goes up... I think it's almost guaranteed that they'll target short sellers specifically at some point. They're a easy target to blame, and divert attention from the the fact that they are actually fleecing investors right at this moment.

    Soon the only crime will be exposing fraud.

Hindenburg exposes hucksters and frauds. Hucksters and frauds have now taken over the highest office. He just sees the writing on the wall and needs to get out now.

There is a very fine line between investigative journalism and market manipulation. They treaded it pretty carefully so far, but were bound to slip up sooner or later. Especially now that they are prominent enough that HFT bots are instantly shorting every company they mention in new posts. Quitting while they are ahead is a good move.

Off the top of my head the reporting about Block - CashApp was disgraceful and Hindenburg got sued for it. Not sure how that's going to play out with disbanding the "company."

  • I don't think Hindenburg is scared of being sued, otherwise they wouldn't have been in the business in the first place. Their investigations are extremely thorough, with everything fully documented, mostly from public records, for the specific purpose that if/when they show up in court, they can be confident of the basis of their findings.

    https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/adani-group-threate...

    P.S. where did you see Block suing Hindenburg? The closest thing I can find is 'Block said it intended to “explore legal action” against Hindenburg, who sought to “deceive and confuse” Block investors to “profit from a declined stock price.”' which is just PR speak

    • >I don't think Hindenburg is scared of being sued, otherwise they wouldn't have been in the business in the first place

      They should be. If doesn't matter how well everything is documented or how above-board the company is when the courts turn into kangaroo courts for a thoroughly corrupt administration. They're right to get out now while they still can.

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