Dipping Into the Cryptocurrency Scam Well Again

Since I've been writing about right-wing affinity scams and cryptocurrency grifts, I figured I'd mention yet another cryptocurrency scam that I recently found about.  Matt Binder, on his Doomed podcast, discussed a cryptocurrency 'pump and dump' scam run by professional gamers and 'influencers'.  Given the youth of their typical audience member, this scam is particularly grotesque.  For those with an hour and a half, the podcast is well worth a listen, if only for the revelation that such a cryptocurrency as MILF Token exists.

For those unfamiliar with how cryptocurrency works, this primer is a good place to start, though the bewildering array of shitcoins is beyond the scope of the video.  For a  quick overview of the current 'influencer' cryptocurrency scam, this video is the place to start, though it might put you in a stabby mood:

 

 In one especially egregious case, one asshole joked that the MILF Token cryptocurrency was trash three weeks after plugging it. 

In a follow-up to the embedded video I posted, commentor Coffeezilla noted that one of the influencers plugging a QAnon-friendly 'Save the Children' cryptocurrency held 6.2 million tokens. While the value of these assets is in fractions of cents, at that scale, even a minor pump-and-dump scam becomes profitable:

  

Cryptocurrencies are a disaster from an environmental standpoint, and a disaster from a regulatory standpoint. The 'meme' altcoins in particular are Dunning-Krugerrands. The fact that web-celebrities are pushing get-rich-quick crypto-scams (well, THEY get rich quick because they get their crypto-coins early on and pump up their value) on young people, who already face a tough job market, and a world chock-full of predatory lenders, is monstrous.