#arbitrage go scam

[sybaritick]

95% of the time when you think you've spotted some market inefficiency/arbitrage opportunity you are wrong: if you personally think you can pick stocks well enough to beat the market, or make a bunch of money buying and holding some collectible because you KNOW it's going to jump in price, or anything like that, you are probably either being scammed or have missed some information (usually, it's that you don't realize the information you have is already priced in or somehow faulty.)

But the other 5% of the time if you're looking at a small enough market to not be perfectly efficient yet and have special information or skills there IS actually a business opportunity, even if sometimes the "business opportunity" is something like "scalping PS5s because you know a guy who knows exactly when restocks are at some of your local big box stores."

The hard part is obviously 1) distinguishing between case A and case B, and 2) finding things that are actually worth the time and money it will take to pursue them.

Even taking art commissions is this type of thing: you open for commissions because presumably you think you have a skill that makes your time worth more to other people than to you and the ability to market that.

But awareness of this information is not easy: lots of people think "I'll take commissions to make money" and end up getting no buyers or earning $5 an hour, and similarly some people think "no one would commission me" who would definitely be able to make decent money on them.

Like the arbitrage situations, it's about how well you can model the world (or this little slice of the world). And when you and your own knowledge and abilities are some of the variables, it is extremely hard for most people to model the situation well with that massive bias! I've talked before about the value of believing what would be useful to believe about yourself, but this is one of the cases where that is less true: you need to try to evaluate yourself as honestly as possible, and look to external cues and feedback as guides.

[edembrasit]

My Experience with Betcoin.ag and Playbetr.com

Opening Accounts and Initial Deposits

I made my Betcoin.ag account on March 2, 2022. I deposited $1,000 initially and started betting on sports, primarily football and basketball. The limits on Betcoin.ag were not very high, so I explored other options. Towards the end of the year, I discovered Playbetr.com, a sister website to Betcoin.ag with higher limits. I created my Playbetr.com account on December 31, 2022. My first deposit on Playbetr was $4,000, followed by additional deposits totaling around $7,000 to $8,000 in BTC across both websites.

Betting and Winning

I mainly bet on the NBA at Playbetr and initially faced some losses. However, I eventually won several bets on both sites. The bets were different on each site, and my wins were apparently fine for them until I decided to withdraw my balances. I requested withdrawals totaling 0.65 BTC from Playbetr and almost 0.21 BTC from Betcoin.

Verification and Account Lockout

Both sites requested KYC verification. I uploaded the required documents, including my driving license, selfies, and proof of address. My accounts were fully verified, and I awaited my withdrawals. The next day, I found myself unable to log in to either site, or when I could, I had no access to account features. Both sites had blocked my accounts simultaneously without any clear reason.

Accusations and Ignored Communications

I received an email from both sites accusing me of fraudulent actions and stating they had the right to terminate my accounts and suspend payouts. They offered to return my deposits, which I found laughable. They provided no evidence or explanation for their accusations and ignored my subsequent emails for over a month. Live chat support directed me to email for more information, providing no help.

False Claims and My Response

The accusations included syndicate play, match-fixing, late betting, advantage play, arbitrage betting, and other fraudulent actions. I had not engaged in any of these activities. My bets were solely on NBA games, a major market with significant limits. These false claims were an excuse to avoid paying my winnings.

Seeking Resolution

I refuse to let this scam go unchallenged. I am willing to take legal action or pay any amount necessary to resolve this issue. I have seen other users contact Curacao courts and lawyers, and I am prepared to do the same. Betcoin.ag and Playbetr.com must not get away with scamming innocent players.

Proof of My Claims

Proof of withdrawal requests: Gyazo Proof 1, Gyazo Proof 2

Screenshots of winning bets: Gyazo Bet 1, Gyazo Bet 2

Video of account access attempt: YouTube Video 1

Video of conversation with friend: YouTube Video 2

Summary

Total amount: 0.85 BTC (deposits + profits)

Accounts blocked on January 3, 2023, after withdrawal requests

No rules broken

No response on live chat or email

No explanation or evidence provided

I look forward to a reply from Betcoin.ag and Playbetr.com. Thank you in advance.

for more details

[percystreak]

Title: Scammed Out of $20,000: Betcoin.ag and Playbetr.com Exposed

In a saga of deceit and betrayal, Betcoin.ag and Playbetr.com have swindled me out of $20,000, leaving me stranded and furious. It all began innocently enough in March 2022 when I opened an account on Betcoin.ag and deposited $1,000. Over the next year, I engaged in sporadic sports betting, primarily focusing on football and basketball. Dissatisfied with Betcoin.ag's low betting limits, I ventured onto Playbetr.com on December 31, 2022, hoping for better luck and higher limits. Initially depositing $4,000, I eventually added another $1,000-$2,000 to my Playbetr account, mirroring similar transactions on Betcoin.ag, bringing my total deposits across both platforms to approximately $7,000-$8,000 in BTC.

My betting endeavors, predominantly in NBA games on Playbetr, yielded a mixed bag of losses and wins. However, the real nightmare began when I attempted to withdraw my earnings—a modest 0.65 BTC from Playbetr and 0.21 BTC from Betcoin.ag. Suddenly, both platforms demanded Know Your Customer (KYC) verification, including sensitive documents like my driver's license, selfies, and address proof. I promptly complied, believing it to be routine.

To my shock, the next day, access to both accounts was abruptly cut off. Attempts to log in proved futile, and when access was granted sporadically, all account functionalities were disabled. I received chilling emails from Betcoin.ag and Playbetr.com, accusing me of fraudulent activities and unilaterally terminating my account while suspending payouts. Their audacity reached new heights when they nonchalantly offered to refund my deposits—a mere insult considering the substantial losses inflicted upon me.

Adding insult to injury, my pleas for explanation fell on deaf ears. Since January 3, 2023, my emails have gone unanswered, and live chat support has been a paragon of unhelpfulness, robotically instructing me to "email for more information." It's infuriating to witness Playbetr.com boasting about transparency and fairness in online forums while callously disregarding my plight and that of numerous others.

The alleged fraudulent activities levied against me—syndicate play, match-fixing, late betting, and more—are baseless and ludicrous. Their list of accusations includes everything from arbitrage to money laundering, none of which I have committed or even contemplated. My betting was confined to NBA games, a market renowned for its stringent regulations and virtually impossible to manipulate due to its high-profile status and extensive oversight.

I refuse to be another statistic of their fraudulent machinations. While they revel in their impunity, I am resolved to pursue legal recourse, even if it means engaging Curacao courts and legal professionals. Their brazen disregard for fairness and justice cannot go unchallenged. I demand accountability and restitution for the $20,000 they callously robbed from me, tarnishing their reputations beyond repair.

For those who doubt my claims, here is the undeniable evidence:

Proof of my withdrawal requests showing 0.85 BTC held hostage: Gyazo Link, Gyazo Link

Screenshots of legitimate NBA bets won on Playbetr: Gyazo Link, Gyazo Link

Video evidence of Playbetr account lockout post-emails: YouTube Link

Video proof demonstrating my minimal activity on Playbetr pre-December 30, 2022: YouTube Link

In summary:

A staggering $20,000 lost due to their scam tactics.

Accounts abruptly blocked on January 3, 2023, following legitimate withdrawal requests.

Zero violations of any betting rules or regulations.

Utter silence in response to repeated attempts to contact them.

No substantiated explanation or evidence provided to justify their actions.

I eagerly await a response from Betcoin.ag and Playbetr.com. Justice must prevail.

[sptsblogs]

e Formula Reviews: Scam Or Legit? Know The Truth!

Building a profitable online business is one of the most fulfilling and life-changing endeavors. However, without the proper training and methodology, it is difficult to go from idea to continuous income. eFormula seeks to deliver the precise foundation created by internet marketing specialist Aidan Booth.

This full eFormula review will go over what's included, who it's for, the projected cost, and whether it's worth it for individuals looking to make money online.

Who is Aidan Booth?

Before getting into eFormula, it's crucial to understand who Aidan Booth is and his reputation for making money online. Aidan, originally from New Zealand, is a world-renowned internet marketer with over 15 years of experience developing successful online businesses.

Aidan got his start in 2005, when he was struggling financially and discovered the world of online marketing. He launched a website that provides SEO services to local businesses, allowing him to quickly replace his work income.

Aidan has since built multiple multi-million dollar online ventures in a variety of niches. Some of his most successful products are:

Elite Affiliate Pro is one of the earliest push-button affiliate marketing solutions.

Google Sniper is a tool that teaches you how to construct profitable niche sites.

Parallel Profits - E-commerce Arbitrage Training

7 Figure Franchise - Strategies for generating affiliate commissions

Kibo Code - Aidan's most popular course for creating an ecommerce brand

Beyond his personal earning streams, Aidan discovered a passion for assisting others in their online success. He has built multiple online business training programs, including Kibo Code, Kibo Eclipse, and 123 Profit, which have helped over 200,000 students start and expand their own online enterprises.

Aidan Booth has established himself as one of the most credible authority on how to generate a consistent income online. So when he launches a new course like eFormula, it's definitely worth noting.

Overview of eFormula.

Aidan's next online business training program, eFormula, will focus on how to profit from selling digital things online. The essential aspects include:

Selling informational products such as ebooks, video courses, and membership websites. These have huge margins and provide immediate delivery.

Generate free organic traffic using channels such as search, social media, and content marketing. There is no need for paid ads.

Providing enormous value up front to establish authority and trust.

Creating passive income by delivering digital products 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

In essence, eFormula promises to educate individuals and teams a comprehensive method for developing and selling educational-style digital products online in a user-friendly manner.

Aidan's track record of excellent teaching and results from previous courses has raised expectations for the formal launch of eFormula.

How Does the eFormula System Work?

Aidan provided some high-level information about how the eFormula system works during his pre-launch webinar. The essential steps include:

Identify a successful niche or theme for your digital products.

Create quality products or obtain resell rights. - Develop marketing materials such as a website, sales pages, and email follow-ups.

Increase organic traffic using SEO, social media, and free opt-ins.

Convert traffic through convincing copywriting and sales funnels. - Provide exceptional value and increase customer happiness.

Increase expansion with automation and regular income.

In essence, eFormula attempts to give a step-by-step plan for starting and growing a digital product-based firm.

Benefits of eFormula

According to Aidan's coaching sessions, the primary advantages of eFormula include:

Easy for beginners to start - Low overhead (no paid marketing or large teams needed) - High profit margins for digital products compared to physical ones

Complete A-Z solution for selling digital stuff.

Create long-term assets and passive income - Receive ongoing updates from Aidan on model optimization.

For anyone looking for a steady income online, eFormula meets the most important criteria in terms of profitability and longevity. The training attempts to prepare users for long-term success.

eFormula's Launch and Pricing Details

Aidan has stated that eFormula will begin around January 2024. An exact debut date will be announced soon, along with program pricing information.

As in previous courses, many one-time and installment payment choices are expected. Aidan's trainings have a reputation for providing more value than expected. Given the potential profits eFormula can generate, the investment should be worthwhile.

Expect to pay between $1000 and $3000. However, once enrollment begins, Aidan typically gives discounts to early registrants. So it is recommended that you join the priority list.

Who Is eFormula for?

eFormula is developed for a wide spectrum of people interested in building successful online enterprises, including:

Beginners to internet business and income opportunities - Those seeking lifestyle independence and flexibility - Existing business owners seeking additional revenue streams

Side hustlers seeking full-time internet work - Dedicated individuals prepared to work consistently for 6-12 months.

The reality is that eFormula can work for anyone, including those with no prior expertise, as long as they are willing to implement the training step by step over time. Because the approach begins with the fundamentals, even complete beginners can succeed by following the tried-and-true foundation.

eFormula Review: Conclusion

In conclusion, our eFormula review believes it is a highly promising possibility for anyone serious about earning a consistent income online. Aidan Booth, one of the industry's most respected names, created a tried-and-true approach that reflects all of his knowledge and experience.

Given Aidan's track record of success stories and eight-figure businesses, eFormula is likely to be his most thorough training course ever. It's definitely one to have on your radar. Register early to be alerted when eFormula enrollment opens. If applied diligently, the short time investment required to finish the course could yield life-changing results.

[eveninsight-com]

GPbots Review: Legit or Another Scam?

A new MLM-based AI research platform called GPbots has joined the market with the claim that it is a pioneer in the world of cryptocurrencies and AI, delivering potent software that uses modern algorithms to spot differences in Bitcoin prices. In this post, we are going to review GPbots and let you know whether it is a legit platform or not.

What is GPbots?

GPbots provides licenses for Bitcoin arbitrage and provides actionable information about Bitcoin price trends. It also offers an affiliate program referred to as a global matrix on its website.

You can identify the ideal moment to sell and buy the bitcoin through this platform, GPbots identifies the moments through analyzing the fluctuation in global cryptocurrency exchanges. There is no information available about its founders or headquarters on its website. According to WHOIS, in June 2023, Gpbots registered its secondary domain, Gpbots.app, and last updated its primary domain, Gpbots.com. Read: MTFE Trading Review Website Profile WebsiteGpbots.comKnown asGPbotsSite typeCryptocurrencyServices offeredCryptocurrencies arbitrageDomain registration date27 May 2023AddressNot knownContactNot known Read: Versobot.net Review GPbots Review After researching the GPbots company profile and its business model, we found several red flags. Let’s take a closer look: - Founders are hiding - No information available about the headquarters - No contact support - Money circulation scam - Lack of transparency The main red flag with GPbots is that its founders are operating anonymously and haven't disclosed any information about the company's senior executives either. Moreover, their statements about their AI research on their website seem to be a ruse to dupe people, and it appears that their MLM side is their primary source of revenue. Read: G7FX.com Review FAQs Who is the operator of GPbots?There is no information available about the operators of GPbots.From where GPbots is operating?There is no information available regarding its headquarters or location of operation as well.Is GPbots legit?No, GPbots doesn’t appear to be a legit site.Should I use the services of GPbots?No, you should stay away from the services of GPbots. Read: Star-Clicks Review Read the full article

[katrinkunze]

How To Transform Your Trading Career From Beginner To Expert?

Recent investigations show that a majority of crypto traders fail during their initial stages. One of the main reasons why many traders lose their money is by falling for emotional traps and mismanagement of feelings. Traders used to fall prey to unwanted market hype and FOMO trends. As the crypto market is volatile, it is necessary to conduct in-depth research before investing in any digital asset.  

Let us help you to transform your trading performance from a beginner to an expert. Continue reading!

If you are a crypto trader, then you might know how challenging it is to suppress emotions while making crucial trading decisions. The anxiety and pressure in such circumstances are real. Traders lose the tendency to hold on to a failing position, leading to hasty and illogical trading behavior. However, we do have some ways to overcome and control the overflow of trading emotions. 

One of the best-yielding ways to minimize losses is to opt for automatic trading methods. In this technique, you have to choose a special computer software called “crypto trading bots.” However, if you are a newbie, you may fear that the bot you choose might turn out to be a scam. If so, we recommend you develop your own bot using an Automated trading bot development service. 

How Do An Automated Crypto Trading Bot Work?

As we said earlier, novice traders are quite unsure about bots. Still, automated trading strategies like arbitrage trading and decentralized exchange are growing exponentially. Although, you need to do a few things to extract the full potential of these automated bots. 

Crypto bots are just computer software programs that constantly keep an eye on market conditions and execute trades according to predefined algorithms. By doing this, we can achieve high-frequency and automated trading. If you take the traditional financial market as an example, automated bots have been used there for decades. In fact, as per Deutsche Bank, 80% of cash-equity and 90% of equity-futures trades were conducted by automated algorithmic trading. Isn’t it enough to understand the growing adoption of trading bots? 

Also, some trading bots can go even further by incorporating trading signals into their curriculum. With this, trading bots can improve their overall performance and precision. Additionally, some bots also perform copy trading to yield fruitful results. 

How Crypto Trading Bots Address Emotions While Trading?

Unlike humans, bots are highly resistant to emotions. At the same time, they can work all day without even exhausting. So, the trader doesn’t need to keep 24/7 monitoring on the market because the bot does it for them. Ultimately, bots will eliminate the negative impact of trading due to emotions like fear, anxiety, or greed, thus making decisions only based on statistical research and predefined rules. 

Above all, trading bots can investigate a massive amount of data in a short time, simultaneously keeping track of market happenings. 

Begin Right!

For some traders, automated trading might be the best-fitting solution to upgrade their trading performance from the first level to the advanced level. New traders who have a basic understanding of market orders and research indicators can start trading using trading bots. With their high-performing ability, crypto bots might be the right place to start your trading journey as a beginner. You can develop your own trading bot with customized trading strategies with the help of a cryptocurrency trading bots development company. 

[masonpelt]

Advertising Scams With MrBeat and Cory Doctorow

Nearly everyone who's incorporated a business in the United States has been mailed an advertisement attempting to collect some form of fee in exchange for an official-sounding non-service. Going back to filing my first LLC, I've gotten letters that look official, trying to collect between $50 up to a few hundred dollars from the new company. These letters always walk the line of claiming to be a government agency, but they are ads.

Local media in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania covered one of these business letter grifts back in 2020. The scammers know that a company has just been filed, the name of that company, and the address of that company from public records. That's a lot of information to make specific creative. A letter to the registered address, using the company name, and the registered contact's name to demand the purchase of an official-sounding certificate is as specific as it is deceptive.

If you're not bothered by scams targeting businesses, remember not every company is Johnson & Johnson creating a new firm to avoid a judgment. Massive evil firms and others spinning up a labyrinth of LLCs for liability and tax mitigation aren't falling for this. These scams are hitting mom & pop restaurants, and the artist trying to collect a few thousand dollars a year without handing out a social security number.

Online Ads Shenanigans

The principles of being deceptive and specific underpinning a business letter extortion racket are easy to implement online. I've worked in advertising for over a decade; online ads targeting gets crazy detailed. Talking about data brokers is out of scope for this article; but remember Facebook ads for T-shirts with people's last names on them? Yeah, in the world of creepy online ads targeting, those are a party trick.

On Twitter and in a blog post, Cory Doctorow highlighted a scheme using fairly simple ad targeting and creative taking advantage of restaurants and their customers. I'm calling this a scheme, not a scam because while It's deceptive, objectionable, and scummy, it isn't as blatantly evil as a fraud ad I'll point to later.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1628948906657878016

In this scheme, someone created a clone of a real restaurant’s website. That clone website was promoted with an ad on Google Search for the restaurant’s name. When Doctorow clicked the ad and placed the order, the fake site placed an order under his name with the real restaurant, charging him a 15% markup.

While this is all incredibly parasitic, it’s seemingly soft as fraud goes. Yes, the fake website was impersonating the real restaurant and taking money for nothing. But I have no evidence that this particular website was used to steal credit card data, and clearly, the fake site was at least attempting to complete the orders placed.

In Doctorow’s story, things worked out. The real restaurant called him, to let him know they canceled the order placed by the fake site.

Even “reputable” food delivery companies like DoorDash, Grubhub, and Postmates have all scraped restaurant menus from the internet, adding them to the respective delivery platform without permission. Sometimes these platforms are even willing to lose money on the transaction to create growth; take a look at Ranjan Roy’s classic pizza arbitrage article for an example. Sometimes delivery platforms even create fake websites for restaurants, much like the one Doctorow found.

When an upstart restaurant I worked with tried to register a trademark for their name a parasite bought the dot com domain name. I spent over 100 hours dealing with ICANN’s Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution and communicating the process with the client. Yes, they should have picked up the domain name before filing the trademark, but don’t excuse the parasites who squat domain names in response to legal filings.

From Scheme To Scam

In 2021 I Tweeted about seeing ads on YouTube impersonating MrBeast, an entertainment sensation who currently has 136 million subscribers, who at the time had a mere 80 million subs. MrBeast is known for huge giveaways; collectively his videos have given away many tens of millions of dollars.

The YouTube ad shows Jimmy Donaldson, the face of MrBeast, claiming to give away “10000$ to every person who visit this page[sic]”. The ad should set off red flags, but this isn’t nearly so ridiculous as the old Bill Gates chain emails people fell prey to for a decade.

That ad drove to mrbeast-giveaway dot com a landing page prompting people to click a button and enter some information to claim their reward. Clicking the button drove to Rewards Giant (now called Level Up Rewards Program). Rewards Giant is probably a scam, if legit it purports to let people take surveys, download & play mobile games, and other such tasks to earn points that can be redeemed for gift cards.

Even if Rewards Giant were a legitimate company, the offer is a far cry from MrBeast giving away money to fans. It’s deceptive and predatory. The MrBeast (like all other creators) team have very few tools available to police or even track this problem. For now the most creators can do is Tweet warnings about scams.

Get Mad

I could show many more examples of illegitimate ads falling all over the scam continuum. But no one wants to read a 10,000-word article showing every valueless course or webpage that takes payment for parking tickets that don’t exist. Perhaps you’ll just believe me when I say scams are advertised on every platform.

Every digital advertising platform wants more revenue and less expense. Policing ad quality is an expense, whereas advertising, whether the purpose is legitimate or not, generates revenue. Only when the economic incentives shift due to public outrage, demands from large advertisers or investor pressure will the companies in a position to stop advertisements of scams do something. 

Scams promoted with advertising have gone on since time immemorial. It takes a lot to get media coverage or regulatory action. The general public often reacts to hearing about a scam by blaming the victim's stupidity. If you want the ads to stop, get mad. We know how the world is right now; let’s push toward how it should be.

Article by Mason Pelt of Push ROI. First published in MasonPelt.com on February 27, 2023. Photo: collage created by Mason Pelt.

[behindmlm-us]

Arbitrage Go Review: This is an MLM that operates in the cryptocurrency MLM niche, and the company has claimed as being incorporated in the UK and is headed by Carl Filby.

[seat-safety-switch]

I’d been putting off going to the dentist for too long. Now, it’s not that I’m afraid of good dental health. I love to watch any kind of specialist do their jobs. There’s always something to learn. And you can’t deny the joys of checking out all of their little power tools. It’s just a very expensive endeavour, but I recently figured out a way to make it a little bit cheaper. Let me clue you in a little bit.

See, when you have a cavity, you can ask the doc for nitrous oxide. For the pain or something, I guess. Medical-grade nitrous oxide. The stuff they sell over the counter at the parts shop has a bitterant mixed in it, so you don’t buy a bunch and then sit in your squalid 1-bedroom apartment huffing it all day. As if you couldn’t find actual drugs cheaper than twenty-five bucks a litre. Naturally, the dentist has no such compunction, but they do have a budget.

And that’s where the little power tools come in. I figured out where they buy their little mouth vacuums from, and I bought one of my own. If you fish the nozzle up through the collar of your shirt and into the mask, you can scavenge a good litre or two of the stuff, and they won’t charge you any more money. This is what my brothers in white collar prison would call a “market inefficiency” and “arbitrage opportunity.” Your dentist is gonna be too busy to notice that an extra mouth-vacuum has joined the choir, and just chalk it up to a very busy day when he has to refill the laughing-gas tank a little early.

Of course, there is the problem of convincing them that you have a cavity. And, like any other good scam, it requires a greedy victim to pull off. If you find a desperate enough dentist – say, some asshole has been coming in under fake names and stealing all of his nitrous oxide – they’ll start work as soon as you tell them you have a toothache. The weight reduction in my mouth is probably even better for my quarter-mile times than all the free giggle gas has been. Thanks, malpractice!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Understanding /r/wallstreetbets

There is no shortage of takes about what's going on with Gamestop (and other surging stocks), Robinhood and Reddit's r/wallstreetbets, many of them contradictory - at least on the face of them. But I think it's possible for most of these takes to be right. Here's how.

First you need to understand the underlying mechanics of the story. Stock markets are fundamentally a way of making bets, including bets on the outcome of other peoples' bets, and bets on the outcomes of *those* bets.

All this complexity creates lots of exploitable opportunities. Some of these opportunities are considered legitimate and are given respectable names like "arbitrage." Others are considered illegitimate, and are called disreputable things like "stock manipulation."

A hypothetical Martian observing all this through a telescope could not tell you which kinds of bets were honest and which were dishonest, because the difference isn't about any objective standard, but rather, about power.

The strategies of powerful people are legit, while the strategies of their would-be dethroners are not legit. Sometimes, even outright frauds are OK if they're done by people with enough power.

If your scam pays out quickly enough, you can sometimes parlay the resulting cash into retrospective legitimization, so even the strategies of the out-group can end up being retconned as legit, if they're successful enough.

That's why Amway isn't illegal: Betsy DeVos's father-in-law was simultaneously the boss of Amway and head of the US Chamber of Commerce, and Gerry Ford was his Congressman, who was then elevated to president in time to legalize its business model.

To understand the Gamestop rise, you have to understand a couple of different kinds of bets.

"Shorting": this is a bet that a stock will go down. There's a complicated backstory to how you make this bet, but it doesn't matter.

The thing to know here is that shorting a stock can make you rich...if the stock goes down. But if the stock goes up, you lose money. There's not really any limit to how much you can lose here.

Every time the stock goes up, the shorts have to pony up more money to keep their bet alive (in the hopes that it will go down again later), or they have to take their losses, pay out the winner of the bet and surrender any chance of winning later.

Shorting isn't just a bet on someone else's failure - it's a way to fund bullshit-detection. If you know (or suspect) that a company is lying about its prospects, you can bet against it.

Shorts fund a lot of research into defective products and scammy businesses, because they win when bad companies are exposed and their stocks go down. Some of the scary security research you read about bad IoT software is funded by shorts.

That's why habitual bullshitters like Elon Musk *hate* shorts. Musk leads a cult of credulous worshippers who buy whatever he's selling. Shorts make bets that Musk's cultists will get deprogrammed. Musk uses this to sharpen his cultists' resolve: "they want us to fail!"

"Options": many different bets get lumped in as "options" but for the purposes of this discussion, buying an option means buying the right to buy stocks later. The people who sell you the option usually go out and buy the stock right away so they'll have it to sell.

"Front-running": Cheating. Front-runners insert themselves into transactions by spying. If I know that Alice is buying a bunch of Bob's shares, I can snap them up a millisecond before Alice gets there, mark them up, and sell to Alice at a profit.

"Retail investor": An "average joe" who buys stocks from a brokerage like Robinhood.

"Institutional investor": Hedge funds, private equity funds, pension funds, index funds, investment banks, etc. Whales and sharks.

"High-frequency trader": A bot. Someone (usually an institutional investor) who uses an algorithm to buy and sell shares very quickly. HFTs might buy a stock and sell it less than a second later (when they're front-running, for example).

With that all out of the way, here's what seems to be going on. Reddit's r/wallstreetbets is a "retail investor" forum of average joes, many of them angry at the scammy, evil stuff that the big institutional investors get up to.

Their grievances are mixed: some are angry that big investors have figured out how to destroy good businesses for money. Some are angry because *only* big institutionals get in on the action when that happens and average joes are locked out of those plays.

They are stuck at home, have little to spend their money on, and - critically - have access to "trading platforms" like Robinhood that let them buy and sell stocks without any fees (institutionals often have sweetheart deals like this, but average joes used to pay to play).

They're getting together to make money and to punish their enemies. The easiest enemies to punish are shorts, because if they push up a stock even a little, the shorts get pounded for millions of dollars.

If they can keep the stock up long enough, the shorts will give up and the average joes will collect their winnings. And the average joes are clever. They've figured out that they don't even have to buy the stocks to force the price up - they can buy cheaper options instead.

An option is a bet. The people on the other side of the bet usually buy the stocks they sell options on. If I buy an option to buy a stock from you and then the stock goes up, you have to go out and buy the stock and sell it to me at a loss.

If you're an option seller who thinks a stock will go up, you protect yourself by buying shares now.

Buying options is a cheap way to get someone else to buy a stock, which pushes the price up. If the price is going up, options sellers will snap up more stock.

There's two prominent versions of the Gamestop story. The first is that r/wallstreetbets represents so many angry average joes that they can "move markets" by buying unlikely shares, like Gamestop or AMC, and confound the markets.

https://marketsweekly.ghost.io/what-happened-with-gamestop/

The second story is that r/wallstreetbets has figured out a hack. They inflict asymmetric pain on shorts (a tiny gain for average joes is a huge wound to the sharks). By buying options, they can eke out tiny gains for a fraction of the price.

https://www.cnet.com/news/reddits-gamestop-stock-surge-is-a-terrifying-new-occupy-wall-street/

But there's a *third* story, and I think it's the most important one. That's Alexis Goldstein's account of what's going on with Robinhood and the institutional investors it's in bed with.

https://marketsweekly.ghost.io/what-happened-with-gamestop/

Recall that all of this is only possible because Robinhood lets average joes buy and sell stocks for free. How can Robinhood give away a service that costs it money and still stay in business? (Hint: They're not making it up in volume).

The answer is: surveillance. Robinhood partners with institutional investors and lets them spy on what the average joes are buying and selling. Sometimes, this is just "market intelligence" ("Hey, people like fidget spinners") but the main event is front-running.

If you're paying Robinhood to tell you what assets its customers are about to buy, you can go out and buy them up first and sell them for a profit to Robinhood's customers.

Or you can buy some of that asset up because you know its price will go up once Robinhood's customers orders are filled.

Or both.

Citadel Securities is Robinhood's main institutional investor partner. Founded by billionaire Ken Griffin, they combine tech (high-frequency trading), an "asset manager" (they spend other peoples' money) and a "market maker" (they sell things like options).

Citadel gets to see all those r/wallstreetbets buy orders before they're filled. They can fill some of those orders, making a profit. They can buy some of the same stock for themselves, making a profit. They can sell options, making a profit.

A little bit of this profit comes at the expense of average joes: if there wasn't a front-runner marking up the stocks they buy, the average joes would pay a little less. But the average joes are still profiting from the destruction of the shorts.

Citadel is merely taxing their winnings. The real losers here, though are Citadel's competitors, funds like Melvin Capital, who were seriously short on Gamestop and went bust thanks to all of this. Guess who bought Melvin at fire-sale prices? That's right, Citadel.

So the third story goes like this: there are a lot of average joes. They're numerous, pissed and smart. They move a lot of money against shorts and make it go farther thanks to the force-multiplier effect of options.

*Then* all this activity is multiplied again by Citadel, a fund that is no better (and no worse) than Melvin or the other targets of the average joes' wrath. Citadel's bots are triggered by the average joes' activity, which turns kilotons of damage into gigatons.

It's not clear whether the average joes know they're triggering Citadel's bots, or whether this is just Citadel's bet on frontrunning average joes paying off for Citadel. It's possible Citadel is the joes' patsy, and the joes are *also* Citadel's patsies.

It's also not clear whether Citadel - and its feuding cohort of competing finance-ghouls - can contain the storm. Maybe they profit off the average joes now, but the joes figure it out and turn their weapons on Citadel and the whole system later.

Remember, the "legitimacy" of a financial strategy isn't determined by its objective decency, but rather by the power of the people who deploy it. If the average joes can attain respectability, they may be legitimized.

But the road to legitimacy is rocky. Yesterday, the finance monopolist TD-Ameritrade halted trading on the stocks targeted by the average joes. Today, Robinhood followed suit. Maybe they fear that they can't control the monster they created?

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/28/22254102/robinhood-gamestop-bloc-stock-purchase-amc-reddit-wsb

[telanana]

A thread on the Current Stock Market Mess

Thread text:

“There is no shortage of takes about what's going on with Gamestop (and other surging stocks), Robinhood and Reddit's r/wallstreetbets, many of them contradictory - at least on the face of them. But I think it's possible for most of these takes to be right. Here's how. 1/

First you need to understand the underlying mechanics of the story. Stock markets are fundamentally a way of making bets, including bets on the outcome of other peoples' bets, and bets on the outcomes of THOSE bets. 2/

All this complexity creates lots of exploitable opportunities. Some of these opportunities are considered legitimate and are given respectable names like "arbitrage." Others are considered illegitimate, and are called disreputable things like "stock manipulation." 3/

A hypothetical Martian observing all this through a telescope could not tell you which kinds of bets were honest and which were dishonest, because the difference isn't about any objective standard, but rather, about power. 4/

The strategies of powerful people are legit, while the strategies of their would-be dethroners are not legit. Sometimes, even outright frauds are OK if they're done by people with enough power. 5/

If your scam pays out quickly enough, you can sometimes parlay the resulting cash into retrospective legitimization, so even the strategies of the out-group can end up being retconned as legit, if they're successful enough. 6/

That's why Amway isn't illegal: Betsy DeVos's father-in-law was simultaneously the boss of Amway and head of the US Chamber of Commerce, and Gerry Ford was his Congressman, who was then elevated to president in time to legalize its business model. 7/

To understand the Gamestop rise, you have to understand a couple of different kinds of bets. "Shorting": this is a bet that a stock will go down. There's a complicated backstory to how you make this bet, but it doesn't matter. 8/

The thing to know here is that shorting a stock can make you rich...if the stock goes down. But if the stock goes up, you lose money. There's not really any limit to how much you can lose here. 9/

Every time the stock goes up, the shorts have to pony up more money to keep their bet alive (in the hopes that it will go down again later), or they have to take their losses, pay out the winner of the bet and surrender any chance of winning later. 10/

Shorting isn't just a bet on someone else's failure - it's a way to fund bullshit-detection. If you know (or suspect) that a company is lying about its prospects, you can bet against it. 11/

Shorts fund a lot of research into defective products and scammy businesses, because they win when bad companies are exposed and their stocks go down. Some of the scary security research you read about bad IoT software is funded by shorts. 12/

That's why habitual bullshitters like Elon Musk HATE shorts. Musk leads a cult of credulous worshippers who buy whatever he's selling. Shorts make bets that Musk's cultists will get deprogrammed. Musk uses this to sharpen his cultists' resolve: "they want us to fail!" 13/

"Options": many different bets get lumped in as "options" but for the purposes of this discussion, buying an option means buying the right to buy stocks later. The people who sell you the option usually go out and buy the stock right away so they'll have it to sell. 14/

"Front-running": Cheating. Front-runners insert themselves into transactions by spying. If I know that Alice is buying a bunch of Bob's shares, I can snap them up a millisecond before Alice gets there, mark them up, and sell to Alice at a profit. 15/

"Retail investor": An "average joe" who buys stocks from a brokerage like Robinhood. "Institutional investor": Hedge funds, private equity funds, pension funds, index funds, investment banks, etc. Whales and sharks. 16/

"High-frequency trader": A bot. Someone (usually an institutional investor) who uses an algorithm to buy and sell shares very quickly. HFTs might buy a stock and sell it less than a second later (when they're front-running, for example). 17/

With that all out of the way, here's what seems to be going on. Reddit's r/wallstreetbets is a "retail investor" forum of average joes, many of them angry at the scammy, evil stuff that the big institutional investors get up to. 18/

Their grievances are mixed: some are angry that big investors have figured out how to destroy good businesses for money. Some are angry because ONLY big institutionals get in on the action when that happens and average joes are locked out of those plays. 19/

They are stuck at home, have little to spend their money on, and - critically - have access to "trading platforms" like Robinhood that let them buy and sell stocks without any fees (institutionals often have sweetheart deals like this, but average joes used to pay to play). 20/

They're getting together to make money and to punish their enemies. The easiest enemies to punish are shorts, because if they push up a stock even a little, the shorts get pounded for millions of dollars. 21/

If they can keep the stock up long enough, the shorts will give up and the average joes will collect their winnings. And the average joes are clever. They've figured out that they don't even have to buy the stocks to force the price up - they can buy cheaper options instead. 22/

An option is a bet. The people on the other side of the bet usually buy the stocks they sell options on. If I buy an option to buy a stock from you and then the stock goes up, you have to go out and buy the stock and sell it to me at a loss. 23/

If you're an option seller who thinks a stock will go up, you protect yourself by buying shares now. Buying options is a cheap way to get someone else to buy a stock, which pushes the price up. If the price is going up, options sellers will snap up more stock. https://marketsweekly.ghost.io/what-happened-with-gamestop/  24/

There's two prominent versions of the Gamestop story. The first is that r/wallstreetbets represents so many angry average joes that they can "move markets" by buying unlikely shares, like Gamestop or AMC, and confound the markets. https://marketsweekly.ghost.io/what-happened-with-gamestop/… 25/

There's two prominent versions of the Gamestop story. The first is that r/wallstreetbets represents so many angry average joes that they can "move markets" by buying unlikely shares, like Gamestop or AMC, and confound the markets. https://marketsweekly.ghost.io/what-happened-with-gamestop/… 25/

The second story is that r/wallstreetbets has figured out a hack. They inflict asymmetric pain on shorts (a tiny gain for average joes is a huge wound to the sharks). By buying options, they can eke out tiny gains for a fraction of the price. https://cnet.com/news/reddits-gamestop-stock-surge-is-a-terrifying-new-occupy-wall-street/… 26/

But there's a THIRD story, and I think it's the most important one. That's @alexisgoldstein's account of what's going on with Robinhood and the institutional investors it's in bed with. https://marketsweekly.ghost.io/what-happened-with-gamestop/… 27/

Recall that all of this is only possible because Robinhood lets average joes buy and sell stocks for free. How can Robinhood give away a service that costs it money and still stay in business? (Hint: They're not making it up in volume). 28/

The answer is: surveillance. Robinhood partners with institutional investors and lets them spy on what the average joes are buying and selling. Sometimes, this is just "market intelligence" ("Hey, people like fidget spinners") but the main event is front-running. 29/

If you're paying Robinhood to tell you what assets its customers are about to buy, you can go out and buy them up first and sell them for a profit to Robinhood's customers. 30/

Or you can buy some of that asset up because you know its price will go up once Robinhood's customers orders are filled. Or both. 31/

Citadel Securities is Robinhood's main institutional investor partner. Founded by billionaire Ken Griffin, they combine tech (high-frequency trading), an "asset manager" (they spend other peoples' money) and a "market maker" (they sell things like options). 32/

Citadel gets to see all those r/wallstreetbets buy orders before they're filled. They can fill some of those orders, making a profit. They can buy some of the same stock for themselves, making a profit. They can sell options, making a profit. 33/

A little bit of this profit comes at the expense of average joes: if there wasn't a front-runner marking up the stocks they buy, the average joes would pay a little less. But the average joes are still profiting from the destruction of the shorts. 34/

Citadel is merely taxing their winnings. The real losers here, though are Citadel's competitors, funds like Melvin Capital, who were seriously short on Gamestop and went bust thanks to all of this. Guess who bought Melvin at fire-sale prices? That's right, Citadel. 35/

So the third story goes like this: there are a lot of average joes. They're numerous, pissed and smart. They move a lot of money against shorts and make it go farther thanks to the force-multiplier effect of options. 36/

THEN all this activity is multiplied again by Citadel, a fund that is no better (and no worse) than Melvin or the other targets of the average joes' wrath. Citadel's bots are triggered by the average joes' activity, which turns kilotons of damage into gigatons. 37/

It's not clear whether the average joes know they're triggering Citadel's bots, or whether this is just Citadel's bet on frontrunning average joes paying off for Citadel. It's possible Citadel is the joes' patsy, and the joes are ALSO Citadel's patsies. 38/

It's also not clear whether Citadel - and its feuding cohort of competing finance-ghouls - can contain the storm. Maybe they profit off the average joes now, but the joes figure it out and turn their weapons on Citadel and the whole system later. 39/

Remember, the "legitimacy" of a financial strategy isn't determined by its objective decency, but rather by the power of the people who deploy it. If the average joes can attain respectability, they may be legitimized. 40/

But the road to legitimacy is rocky. Yesterday, the finance monopolist TD-Ameritrade halted trading on the stocks targeted by the average joes. Today, Robinhood followed suit. Maybe they fear that they can't control the monster they created? https://theverge.com/2021/1/28/22254102/robinhood-gamestop-bloc-stock-purchase-amc-reddit-wsb… eof/ “

[tripledistilleds]

Jonathan Braxley, Triple Distilled Club, and other people’s money

Jonathan Braxley AKA Jon Braxley AKA Bradley Jon.

Jon Braxley does not now, nor has he ever, held any directorships or chairman titles in Australia for software based businesses.

A statement from Milk & Honey PR on behalf of their client Jonathan Braxley

Reevera is a dynamic software development company leading the way in user friendly, software and IT for the arbitrage industry.

A statement on the website of Reevera, a software company in Australia of which Jonathan Braxley was director.

I have spent the last six months trying to get Jonathan Braxley to answer a few simple questions – to give me names of some of the companies he set up, to explain what they did, or what happened to them. I have asked for explanations of how he became an expert in such disparate fields as real estate, software sales, and sports arbitrage betting. I have also asked why there are multiple accusations of fraud against him on the internet. For someone who loves to talk, Bradley seems pointedly unwilling to actually tell me anything.

His denial about Reevera is a good example – his business partner in this and other ventures was an old friend of his named Stephen ‘Steo’ Keating, AKA Steifin Ceitinn, currently being prosecuted in Australia for being the ringleader of a gang that scammed millions out of consumers with fraudulent software sales. All Bradley would say about Keating was that he is not currently in business with him.

Jonathan Braxley also told me he has nothing to do with Freedom Investment Club. Here he is representing them at a seminar in San Diego 2015:

YouTube Poster

Here he is on the Freedom Investment Club Vimeo hosting a Freedom Investment Club webinar:

This has been typical of my dealings with Bradley via Milk & Honey PR, who represent his Triple Distilled Club operation and its wholly owned subsidiary The Craft Irish Whiskey Company. He tells me almost nothing, and when I do ask a question, he either ignores it or gives a misleading answer.

So the question is – why? Why the unwillingness to supply basic information to back up his grandiose claims about his business acumen? I have no idea. But I can give you a couple of reasons why you should not invest in Triple Distilled Club.

The Background

Before Triple Distilled Club (W&WC), there were few places where you could buy casks of whiskey in Ireland. The vast majority were cask clubs, where a new distillery generates much-needed revenue by selling casks to fans. The casks are usually priced between the €5k and €9k mark. These are not really investments – it is unlikely that you will make a mint on a €6k cask when you decide to bottle or sell, as the purchase price was high. Cask clubs are more like a distillery fan club.

Enter W&WC, who offered to connect distilleries to cask buyers at prices lower than cask clubs – their first offering was casks from West Cork Distillers. It seemed like a good proposition to all concerned – West Cork Distillers believed that the casks were going to be offered at a reasonable mark-up from their asking price of about a grand a cask. Except W&WC are not offering value, they are offering casks sold in pallets of six for €17k.

West Cork Distillers were also the source for Jonathan Braxley’s Craft Irish Whiskey Company, which also offered casks direct to consumers but more in a cask-club style. Those casks were priced at €7,650, with claims that a distillery was being built. Bradley told one Irish journalist that he has stills on order, but when I asked about this, seeking to know where he was ordering them from, he declined to answer. I also asked where his distillery was being built. Again, silence.

West Cork Distillers are no longer dealing with Bradley, nor are they going to be dealing with him in the future. Despite this, in an interview last July, Bradley insisted he was getting more casks this year from West Cork Distillers. This, West Cork Distillers have emphatically stated, is not the case. In fact, after seeing the prices W&WC were charging for casks, West Cork Distillers launched their cask co-operative where punters could buy casks for reasonable prices. It makes sense – West Cork Distillers have mature whiskey bottled and on supermarket shelves so you can test before you invest. West Cork Distillers have also been in operation for well over a decade, so they have a proven track record in business.

The next cask offering from W&WC was less quantifiable. Boann in Louth only started distilling late last year after long delays. Their current whiskey, The Whistler, is sourced – they don’t make it, they just bottle it. So there is no way of knowing what the quality of their distillery output – ie, the liquid in the casks being bought through W&WC – is going to be like. Despite this Boann have been central to the W&WC operation for some time, with prospective buyers being shown around the distillery, with Jonathan Braxley acting as guide. Bradley is also offering members of the media tours of the distillery.

In what might have come as a surprise to the Cooney family, who own Boann, Bradley recently launched an ambitious bid to take over the distillery and brewery group, saying that the Cooney children ‘did not see themselves as being capable’ of taking the company forward.

It’s worth pointing out that, aside from W&WC, not one of the many, many business entities that I know of which Bradley has been involved in are in existence today. The lifespan for his projects appears to be two years, then it folds, and he moves on.

There are two pieces written about Triple Distilled Club which are worth reading: One is on Bond Review. It eviscerates W&WC; but it also highlights that Jonathan Braxley was named as Bradley Jon on the company documents. When I queried this with W&WC they blamed a company formation firm, and they corrected the error. I also queried why Jonathan Braxley was, at that time, not named or photographed on the W&WC team page. He has since been added.

We review Triple Distilled Club – returns of 10% to 20% per year with "relatively little risk"? #whiskey#unregulatedinvestments #reviews https://t.co/KSCZrf4M5R

— Bond Review (@BondReview) August 13, 2019

Then there is Peter Mulryan’s piece, which asks some serious legal questions about investing in whiskey casks generally, but was written in reaction to W&WC.

For now it would appear the only distillery willing to supply Bradley are Boann. Even Great Northern refuses to deal with them. In fact, when W&WC first appeared they were telling potential customers that they had a contract with Great Northern Distillery for supply. Great Northern contacted W&WC via their solicitor to ensure they stopped using their name.

The Deal

So imagine you bought six casks from W&WC at the start when they were sourcing from West Cork Distillers. You paid around €17k for them. Then consider all the members of the West Cork Distillers Whiskey Co-op who bought 4,000 casks priced between €800 and €1,100 a piece last year, and another 4,000 again this year. That’s 8,000 casks from the same distillery you bought from, all hitting the market around the same time yours will – ie, after three years maturation.

Then consider Great Northern’s link-up with Ally Alpine of Celtic Whiskey Shop, who are selling casks direct to consumers for similar prices to those of West Cork Distillers. So you have thousands upon thousands of casks from proven distilleries which are going to be all over the market for the next decade. But while I can flip my casks for a small profit in three years, you have to sit and wait to make the same profit as you bought at a higher price.

Reading the W&WC brochures, you would never know any of this. In fact, there is a lot wrong with their brochures.

The first iteration of their brochure has a photo stolen from the Irish Whiskey Association Twitter account. Taken at a whiskey tourism launch in Midleton, the photo included IDL archivist Carol Quinn and Minister Andrew Doyle. Neither gave their consent for the image to be used by W&WC. The IWA requested it be removed. After some time, a new W&WC brochure was released, without the stolen photo, but with similar amounts of what one industry accountant described to me as ‘fantasy economics’. Here’s a sample:

The future for the Irish whiskey market looks incredibly optimistic. In May 2019, Redbreast released a limited-edition bottle called the Dream Cask. All 924 bottles had sold out in under 14 minutes at a cost of €340 per bottle. In September 2018, Teeling auctioned its first bottle from its new Dublin distillery. Despite the relatively early maturation age of three years, the bottle sold for £10,000…. All of this attention, coupled with big marketing budgets, bodes very positively for Irish whiskey

No it doesn’t. Dreamcask = very mature single pot still, a commodity only one distillery in Ireland currently has. The Teeling bottle mentioned was auctioned for charity and the rest of them sold for 55 euro. So none of that has any bearing on the value of your theoretical cask of Boann or West Cork whiskey.

Here is another excerpt:

30 years to grow €3,000 to €300,000

There have been recent reports of record prices achieved on rare whiskies. For example, a 12-year-old ex-Bourbon cask with an asking price of €75,000 was sold via Midleton’s cask circle, as well as a 16-year-old cask for €320,000 (400 litres, which is double the size of our casks, so €160,000 by comparison). Another example is a 27-year-old 500-litre Marsala cask which went on sale for a colossal price of €907,000.

And a slightly subdued disclaimer:

While not all 27-year-old casks will achieve this, it’s an important marker for just how much an aged barrel can sell for

No it isn’t. Midleton’s cask circle mostly offered single pot still whiskey. Again, there is no other distillery with stocks of SPS at the age Midleton has. So the value of those SPS casks is not representative of how much you will sell your SPS casks in 20 years time, when the nation will be awash in casks of SPS from West Cork Distillers, GND et al.

You would need to know a little about whiskey to understand this, and this is where Triple Distilled Club thrive – with people who have only seen the headlines about the Irish whiskey boom and know that they want in, without really understanding what they are actually getting themselves into.

The long history of Scotch tells us that whisky is cyclical – there are periods of boom, and then oversupply when distilleries get shuttered. We will most likely be the same. Right now there is a boom, but with distilleries popping up all over the country, in ten years we will be swimming in whiskey – the cask value today is today’s value, not a decade’s time. The graph will not continue to rise as it has.

The ‘Wealth Advisors’

So what happens when a punter expresses an interest in investing with W&WC? I spoke to one person who found out. He works in the emergency services in Dublin, lives in Naas with his wife and kids. He didn’t want to be named. But this is what he told me:

“Last October I was looking to invest some money. An ad for investing in Triple Distilled Clubkept coming up. I don’t claim to know a huge amount about whiskey but I do like the odd dram so I downloaded the information and read it (you need to put in your contact details to download). It seemed too good to be true and although I was interested I decided not to act on it as I didn’t know enough about it.

“A few days later I got a phone call from Sue Kiernan of Whiskey and Wealth, she gave more information and explained that the possible returns were extremely good – up to 55% compound – and asked if I was interested in investing as they were coming to the back end of their third cask release. I said that I would need to check up on a few things before I could commit as it was more than I had planned to invest (this was really to get her off the phone as she was becoming very convincing, she was very knowledgeable and knew her stuff). In the coming days I didn’t really do any background checks and thought that would be the end of it but a few days later Sue phoned me again.

“She said that there was only a few casks left in their 3rd release and if I wanted to hold them I would have to make a small deposit before they were gone. The next release would be in early 2020 at significantly higher prices. Sue explained the cost involved i.e. 17k for a pallet of six Single Malt which could return up to 47k after five years.

“I reluctantly gave her a €300 deposit to hold six casks which I received a receipt for online, Sue said it was fully refundable so that gave me some comfort.

“It was then that I started to check up on whether W&WC was as good as it sounded. On their YouTube video it shows Boann Distillery with W&WC investors who all seemed very happy. So I contacted Boann and spoke to Patrick Cooney. I asked him if W&WC was legit, he was very honest and explained that he had been paid by W&WC and had entered into a deal with them. He also said that the price of a cask is significantly less than the price W&WC were charging me for.

“He wouldn’t say if W&WC claims were correct but if they were he would be keeping all the casks for himself.

“I then received the Offer Documents from W&WC which stated that I had placed an order for 6 Pot Still casks from the 2nd release so I decided to call in unannounced to the W&WC Dublin office which is on Harcourt St. to meet and talk to people face to face, as there was something not right here.

“The door of No. 20 Harcourt St. was locked and W&WC did not show on the list of companies on the door buzzers. I waited outside and after a while someone came out so I ran in. I walked the whole building and asked other staff if they knew where W&WC was in the building, nobody had heard of them. I then rang Sue on her office number she answered and I asked her if I could call in to see her in the office as I was in the area. She said that she was working from home that day but she could meet me somewhere to save me driving all the way from Naas.

“I phoned several other distilleries over the next few days and all of them were quite sceptical about W&WC, most of them were selling casks for more than W&WC but they explained that it was not as an investment but more as a way for some people to feel a part of the whiskey process while giving ownership in a unique way.

“They said that not much money if any would be made by their own cask members, that was not the reason it was intended.

“I arranged to meet Sue in Avoca on the Naas Road later that week. I asked her for more details about where the whiskey is coming from as it’s clearly not from Boann, she said that it comes from many small craft distilleries around the country but that Boann had some problems setting up their distillery which meant they had to go elsewhere for their casks.

“I asked her about the lack of an office and she said that they were in the process of getting it painted and she was working from home in the meantime. I mentioned that the offer was incorrect and I was been given Pot Still which is less expensive than Single Malt which I was told I was ordering. She couldn’t explain why that had happened. The next day I told her that I had decided not to go ahead with investing and could I have the deposit back, she said of course and that it would be done straight away as promised.

“A week later nothing had happened so I phoned her again, no answer so I sent an email politely reminding her to refund the deposit, no response. I continued to leave voice messages and emails over the next few days and eventually while calling from my wife’s phone I got through. Sue explained that she was out of the country for a few days and apologised and that the deposit would be refunded straight away. Another couple of weeks passed and still nothing, again I phoned and emailed with no response.

“On the 9th of December I sent another email saying that if I had not heard back by the close of business, I was going to the papers. Amazingly, I was contacted that evening by the Richmond Office in London with a full refund.”

I asked the PR firm about the Harcourt Street office that does not exist, and they responded: “Triple Distilled Club has offices in both Dublin and London. We have a serviced office which a team of two in Dublin who use it as a satellite office. We anticipate this team will grow by year end to 20 and require a more permanent office. We did the same in Richmond with a small serviced Regus office that housed our first six employees, until such a time as we outgrew it. We now have a two storey 3,500 sq ft permanent office in Richmond with 27 staff. We anticipate this team will grow to 45 by the end of 2020.”

Sue Kiernan is Jonathan Braxley’s sister. She was also director of Nedax Financial Consulting Team Limited, also trading as Gosling Investments, Richard Group, Financial Software Systems, and Managh Systems Inc. There is a discussion about Gosling Investments – which sold sports arbitrage software for 7,500 – on Ask About Money, the Irish consumer website. There is a similar thread on Boards.ie about the same company.

Jon Bradley, another sibling, was also a director of Nedax. He was also director of Share Success Online, also trading as Acorn Wealth Strategies Limited, Market Price Today and Guardian Trades. It sold share trading software. And once again, there is a discussion about the firm(s) on Ask About Money. There is also this from the Irish Independent:

A Birr, Co Offaly, auctioneer was lured into handing over €7,000 to an internet agency which promised quick and easy money simply by following its stock trading tips, a judge heard today.

Barrister James Nerney, counsel for auctioneer Glen Corcoran, told the Circuit Civil Court his client had been promised in a brochure that he would “make money and achieve financial freedom”.

Mr Nerney said Corcoran, of Tumbeagh, Ballinahown, Co Offaly, had been promised a programme of training, education and coaching in profitably dealing on the stock market via its software package.

“The brochure had been followed up with phone calls and emails which had led to his entering into a contract in January last year,” Mr Nerney said.

Corcoran told Judge Jacqueline Linnane that following representations by John Lawlor, a manager with Acorn Wealth Strategies Limited, which trades as Share Success out of a Balbriggan, Co Dublin, industrial unit he “signed up and forwarded €6,990 by electronic transfer” to the company.

He said that in a cold call phone conversation Lawlor asked if he would like to make money and make it quickly with minimal time and effort. The company had promised him “a lucrative money making strategy as quickly as possible.”

He had been assured he would be trained in finding stock trading opportunities and forecasting market trends in a unique package which had turned out to be simply a licence agreement to deal in “contract for difference” opportunities and not hard physical share dealing.

“I wanted to make money and had been attracted to the original offer, Mr Corcoran said. “When I raised the matter of CFD’s with Mr Lawlor he said I could make money with them whether the economy was in boom or recession,” Mr Corcoran said.

He said the training he had been promised turned out to be two or three 10-minute on-line sessions a week with a Zac Harris.

Mr Corcoran said he had “fared fairly poorly” with his attempts to signalling financial movements in the market but had not reached the stage of investing further monies before contact and correspondence with Share Success had dried up.

He had later told Harris and Lawlor of his disappointment and lack of progress and had sought reimbursement of his money before going to James Lucey, his solicitor, who issued proceedings in November last.

Judge Linnane granted Mr Corcoran judgment for €6,990 against Acorn Wealth Strategies Limited, trading as Share Success, Unit 12, Balbriggan Enterprise and Training Centre, Stephenstown Industrial Park, Balbriggan, Co Dublin.

The defendant did not appear in court and a legal firm which had been representing the company was allowed to come off record for them.

After the case Mr Corcoran said he hoped his case would highlight “this poor business practice” to anyone else who may have dealings with the defendant.

Andrea Bradley, the fourth sibling, was also involved in a number of businesses with James and their father Shamus, as well as Steo Keating’s D11 Enterprises.

Shamus passed away late last year, and a video of his funeral – in which a recording of him asking to be let out of the coffin was played – went viral around the world. In the media coverage of the man and his life which followed, there was no mention of his work in software sales.

A furniture upholsterer by trade, Shamus Bradley was a cook in the army for a few years, and worked as a debt collector, where he earned himself a conviction for a brutal, prolonged assault on noted equestrian Ken Bryan, then a draper in Portarlington. Ironically, some years later Bradley was taken to court himself over unpaid debts to a furniture company.

Shamus Bradley emigrated to Florida in 1990 where he ran a pub; he then worked in sales for two years selling frozen meat; before moving to Australia and moving into software sales. He joined a small software firm, taking a share of the company in return for running the sales division.

The software package he sold was called Global Trader, and there is a lengthy thread here dedicated to it. It also gets mentioned in a thread about World Trading College, which Shamus Bradley and a taxi driver named Ray Dalglish ran. The duo also ran Principal Investments, which also operated as Trading Like A Bank and which boasts this absolutely bonkers promo from former Aussie Rules star Warwick Capper.

While Jonathan Braxley claims he had nothing to do with any software firms in Australia, he was listed as chairman of Global Trader on their website in August 2006, with Steo Keating listed as secretary.

I spoke to one of the software developers behind Global Trader under condition of anonymity. He worked on software projects with the Australian military before moving into international banking. After returning to Australia, he helped create Global Trader. He told me about his experience with both Bradleys and Keating. His name has been tarnished ever since – he is lambasted in posts about Global Trader, as he was pushed out as the public face of it.

He was also the creator of a sports arbitrage package which he was commissioned to build for Jonathan Braxley and Steo Keating’s AusSoft entity. The product was called ArbATrader, and complaints about it are easy to find – you can read them here, here, here and here. Many of Bradley’s firms are interlinked or interchangeable – the AusSoft website had a number of celebrity endorsements. The exact same celebrity endorsements were also used on the website of Bradley’s Globalsoft entity.

Jonathan Braxley does admit that he hired the developer to create the first generation of his sport arbitrage software, but claims he commissioned a ‘more robust’ version which he then released via an Irish-registered software firm named Baranstone, of which he was director. He does not mention the name of the firm under which he released the first package. He did not address the other accusations which the developer made and which I put to him.

On the Wayback Machine you can still see many of the websites of Jonathan Braxley’s business entities – Baranstone, Globalsoft, AusSoft, and the aforementioned Reevera, the Australian-registered software business of which Jonathan Braxley was director, while Steo Keating was secretary.

Reevera offered software that it described as the amazing amalgamation of technology and pure genius called Syntrade. Through this exciting new software, a small but fast growing group of professional sports arbitrageurs have arisen. These are the people who are continually finding the risk free, tax free, (depending on where you live) profitable sports arbitrage trades. These are the people setting new standards in arbitrage and they are becoming known within the industry as Syntrageurs.

Sports arbitrage blogger Shane Greenup was less enthused, denouncing Reevera’s Syntrade software package as a rehash of AusSoft’s ArbATrader. Greenup was also highly critical of Baranstone and its SORT system.

Greenup told me via email that sports arbitrage was the bitcoin of its day as it was new, complex and lay people did not understand it.

“It was an easy thing to scam people with because technically it does work. You can make money doing it, and you can make 1%, 2%, 3% trades – and you can show people the odds that create these trades. You can show them past bets which you actually made which returned these kinds of returns…. and then you can just imply that you can do that every few hours with all of their money and they will be making 100s of percent returns per annum! (which is the lie, because you can’t do it with all of the money, and you can’t do it that often, and it takes a lot of work, and there is a limit to how much money you can move through the system).

“But all of the details are based in fact, and it is easy to omit the difficult bits and create a compelling narrative which looks legitimate. And yeah, I think it was a fad from back when arbitrage trading was new, and the profit was there to be made. These days the scams have moved on to Cryptocurrencies for the same reasons.

“Technically, there is money there to be made. But no, anyone selling you a scheme which guarantees to make that money for you is a liar.”

One of the most detailed complaints about Bradley’s companies is this one about Baranstone/Tradesmart. It is worth reading all the way to the end, and the comments beneath.

I did manage to find one person on LinkedIn who had Baranstone listed as a former place of employment. When I contacted him he declined to comment and immediately removed any mention of Baranstone from his profile.

I asked Jonathan Braxley about Baranstone, and this was the response: “Baranstone ran for one year in Ireland from May 2007. It was a software company enabling sports betting. When bookmaker rules changed in summer 2008, it was closed. Closing this business 11 years ago was his final involvement in this industry.”

In fact, in documents submitted to the Companies Registration Office in Dublin in late 2010, Mr Bradley changed secretary for the firm, so it was still in some level of operation three years after it was created. This was the last document filed by Mr Bradley with the CRO in relation to Baranstone.

Dublin native Steo Keating, named as the ringleader of the Irish Boys software scam gang, was prosecuted as Stiofan Ceitinn, the Irish version of his name. Among the many, many companies he ran was an entity called D11 Enterprises. Another Irish national, John Daly, was director of LTC Services, one of the firms specifically targeted by the Australian police unit which brought down the Irish Boys gang.

Globalsoft Technologies Ltd, the Irish-registered firm of which Jonathan Braxley was a director, and which also traded as Tradesmart Technologies, was described on its Australian-based website as ‘the latest expansion of the Australian-based LTC and D11 Group’.

Jonathan Braxley AKA Jon Braxley AKA Bradley Jon; with Stephen ‘Steo’ Keating AKA Steifan Ceitinn, and John Daly AKA Sean O’Dalaigh on a night out in 2009.

The Bradleys left Australia for the US around 2011. Shamus Bradley, his business partner Ray Dalglish and Jonathan Braxley then set up The American College Of Wealth, which also listed the matriarch of the family and younger daughter Andrea on their staff page. Shamus’s bio makes no mention of his time in Australia, while James’s is as follows:

Like his father, Jon Braxley has been driven from a young age to achieve greatness. Finishing school early to work in his father’s furniture factory in Ireland, he learned a valuable trade in furniture-making but couldn’t ignore an innate desire to learn about building wealth and managing money. Jon moved away from his family to settle, marry, and have children in Australia. Following in his father’s footsteps, Jon created his own business, a financial advisement corporation specializing in stock market investment and trade. As friends and family learned of his trading skills, he held informal classes in his living room and developed a love for teaching the skills he had learned and developed himself. Inspired by the banking industry, Jon founded a company that created software used by banks to execute currency trades. Partnered with a former Goldman Sachs algorithmic programmer, Jon’s company grew into a boutique private hedge fund with over 1,000 members and millions under management. At 30 years of age, Jon sold the company and retired, but remains on the board as the Chief Strategy Officer. In 2008, Jon was one of four founders creating a company selling distressed US property investments to international buyers. The organization became an incredible success, opening offices in Princeton, Atlanta, Dallas, Memphis, and Florida with global offices in Singapore, the UK, and Australia. Jon is presently the largest shareholder and sits on the board of directors. After traveling the world with his wife and three children, Jon settled into his role with his father’s previously founded financial empowerment college, ACW. He serves as CEO, bringing a wealth of experience, knowledge, and passion to the institution. ‘

No names of any of the companies where he made his millions. How odd.

The property firm mentioned is US Invest Global, a company he set up with Ryan McFarland.

I asked Mr Bradley, via the PR firm, to explain US Invest Global: “US Invest was set up 2010, a successful business with over 2,500 satisfied clients. It operated by giving international investors the opportunity to invest in the US property market. At the time, the US dollar was weak against most stable currencies. However, as the US economy recovered and its currency strengthened, the investment value was reduced. The model no longer made sense and so the business was voluntarily closed in July 2015.”

This is in contrast to this post. Someone purporting to be Ryan McFarland, his former business partner in US Invest Global, posted this in reply, explaining what happened and distancing himself from Jonathan Braxley. McFarland even went to the trouble of threatening legal action over a post linking him to Jonathan Braxley.

After US Invest Global folded, Bradley set up RAW Business Growth, which he operated from Waiheke Island in New Zealand, where he ran a pub named Smugglers Smokehouse. In my first, more genial email from him, Mr Bradley told me that he was forced to sell the pub and that he lost all his money doing so, but there was no further explanation of what appears to be a somewhat paradoxical statement.

As for RAW Business Growth, it centred around a series of YouTube videos in which Mr Bradley gave the public a chance to ring him on a premium phone line to find out how to be successful like him. RAW has been folded, and the videos deleted. The official line from the PR firm is that Mr Bradley closed RAW when he was headhunted by a client – they didn’t elaborate to explain by who and for what he was headhunted. After RAW came Triple Distilled Club and the Craft Irish Whiskey Company, and James segued from being an expert in real estate, sports arbitrage, business growth and software sales to suddenly being a whiskey expert.

When I first contacted James, before the PR firm took over the communications between us, he told me he was a fan of my work, and said it hurt to see me ridicule his Craft Irish Whiskey Company videos on Twitter, writing: “After the comments against my whiskey brand, before we even had a chance to get going, I’m obviously a tad concerned as to the motives of this piece. I’m all about positivity for Irish Whiskey. As it’s hard enough for the Irish to get back on the world map and claim our place as the originators and the best, without the internal negative press.

“I’m happy to chat with you, be open and honest with you, but only if its (sic) a genuine article and its (sic) reciprocated and not some hit piece.”

Here are some things I can say with certainty – that there are multiple accusations of fraud against Jonathan Braxley which he is pointedly unwilling to address; that not one business enterprise he founded – aside from W&WC – is still in operation today; and that for someone who talks about how successful he is he is unwilling to give a single, concrete example. I can also say that there are also accusations of fraud against other members of his family or against firms run by his father, brother and sisters.

I can tell you that Jonathan Braxley’s close friend and former business partner Steo Keating is being prosecuted for running a massive boiler room scam which defrauded millions through share trading and sports arbitrage software. I can also tell you that Irish Boys member, Neil McKenny, from Ardee in Louth, was jailed last year for his part in the scams. Three other Irish Boys gang members arrested as part of Operation Unwind received suspended sentences.

I can tell you that in their brochure, Triple Distilled Club’s other director, Sam Scrobberand, proudly states that he worked with Jonathan Braxley for almost two decades; that Scrobberand, via the PR firm, is also unwilling to tell me the name of a single firm he was involved in. I can also tell you that he is named in the comments section of this post.

But above all, I can tell you this – Triple Distilled Club is a terrible investment; terrible for consumers, terrible for distilleries, and terrible for the Irish whiskey category as a whole. They claimed they brought in four million in revenue in their first year, and ten million last year, and at the start of this month, they finally released some accounts. I asked some accountants to look over the documents, which can be downloaded here. One said this:

“Mismatch in trade creditors and debtors – a lot of sales to debtors are still o/s… add to that a large value of creditors coming up for payment on a year – cash conversion cycle is out of whack- also £188k to ‘group undertakings’? Wtf? Who what where? You need to see a cash flow to get a better picture – id stay away from it for now – imperfect info and all that … and all of this with 4 employees only .. nice bunce if you can get it …”

Another said this:

“What strikes me is that it isn’t an investment company which would be a more legitimate route for investment (I.e. the company holds a portfolio of casks and you own shares in the holding company) rather it seems to just be a retailer/wholesaler in effect with someone telling the buyer that what they sell is a great investment. You aren’t buying shares or anything regulated just booze in bigger containers. How is the model any different than an off licence selling “rare” whisky? In fact you would probably get a safer return from buying a Macallan from Master Of Malt.”

The best case scenario here is that this is simply a lousy investment, especially in relation to the potential returns being promised by Triple Distilled Club’s ‘wealth advisors’. The worst case scenario is that this is an Irish Nant. Jonathan Braxley’s unwillingness to answer all the simple questions I asked him does not reassure me. Likewise, Boann have ignored my emails and warnings.

What are the repercussions for the wider industry if this all falls apart? What if, as Bond Review asked, W&WC are unable to fulfil their contract to supply the whiskey – which not a criticism of W&WC, but an inherent risk when dealing with any small company. In this case investors would be looking at up to 100% loss.

What then?

Comments are closed. Email william.linnane@gmail.com.

Author: Bill Linnane

Bylines in the Irish Independent, Irish Examiner, Irish Tatler Man, Evening Echo, and Distilled. Proud owner of the award-defying TripleDistilled.Blog, Ireland's Least Successful Blog™. View all posts by Bill Linnane

AuthorBill Linnane

Posted onJune 6, 2020

CategoriesWhiskey

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[percystreak]

Title: Scammed Out of $20,000: Betcoin.ag and Playbetr.com Exposed

In a saga of deceit and betrayal, Betcoin.ag and Playbetr.com have swindled me out of $20,000, leaving me stranded and furious. It all began innocently enough in March 2022 when I opened an account on Betcoin.ag and deposited $1,000. Over the next year, I engaged in sporadic sports betting, primarily focusing on football and basketball. Dissatisfied with Betcoin.ag's low betting limits, I ventured onto Playbetr.com on December 31, 2022, hoping for better luck and higher limits. Initially depositing $4,000, I eventually added another $1,000-$2,000 to my Playbetr account, mirroring similar transactions on Betcoin.ag, bringing my total deposits across both platforms to approximately $7,000-$8,000 in BTC.

My betting endeavors, predominantly in NBA games on Playbetr, yielded a mixed bag of losses and wins. However, the real nightmare began when I attempted to withdraw my earnings—a modest 0.65 BTC from Playbetr and 0.21 BTC from Betcoin.ag. Suddenly, both platforms demanded Know Your Customer (KYC) verification, including sensitive documents like my driver's license, selfies, and address proof. I promptly complied, believing it to be routine.

To my shock, the next day, access to both accounts was abruptly cut off. Attempts to log in proved futile, and when access was granted sporadically, all account functionalities were disabled. I received chilling emails from Betcoin.ag and Playbetr.com, accusing me of fraudulent activities and unilaterally terminating my account while suspending payouts. Their audacity reached new heights when they nonchalantly offered to refund my deposits—a mere insult considering the substantial losses inflicted upon me.

Adding insult to injury, my pleas for explanation fell on deaf ears. Since January 3, 2023, my emails have gone unanswered, and live chat support has been a paragon of unhelpfulness, robotically instructing me to "email for more information." It's infuriating to witness Playbetr.com boasting about transparency and fairness in online forums while callously disregarding my plight and that of numerous others.

The alleged fraudulent activities levied against me—syndicate play, match-fixing, late betting, and more—are baseless and ludicrous. Their list of accusations includes everything from arbitrage to money laundering, none of which I have committed or even contemplated. My betting was confined to NBA games, a market renowned for its stringent regulations and virtually impossible to manipulate due to its high-profile status and extensive oversight.

I refuse to be another statistic of their fraudulent machinations. While they revel in their impunity, I am resolved to pursue legal recourse, even if it means engaging Curacao courts and legal professionals. Their brazen disregard for fairness and justice cannot go unchallenged. I demand accountability and restitution for the $20,000 they callously robbed from me, tarnishing their reputations beyond repair.

For those who doubt my claims, here is the undeniable evidence:

Proof of my withdrawal requests showing 0.85 BTC held hostage: Gyazo Link, Gyazo Link

Screenshots of legitimate NBA bets won on Playbetr: Gyazo Link, Gyazo Link

Video evidence of Playbetr account lockout post-emails: YouTube Link

Video proof demonstrating my minimal activity on Playbetr pre-December 30, 2022: YouTube Link

In summary:

A staggering $20,000 lost due to their scam tactics.

Accounts abruptly blocked on January 3, 2023, following legitimate withdrawal requests.

Zero violations of any betting rules or regulations.

Utter silence in response to repeated attempts to contact them.

No substantiated explanation or evidence provided to justify their actions.

I eagerly await a response from Betcoin.ag and Playbetr.com. Justice must prevail.

[proflipperz-2021]

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[somnilogical]

case study: elle benjamin

the rationality community's least skilled exploiter of transmisogynistic coordination points known to me

when thinking about strategy, i often use the least sophisticated version of a given strategy that i know of to reason about the minimal elements of the strategy in general. i have an index of unsophisticated versions of things that i ping and ask "is this strategy basically this vector but with more optimization power behind it?" it helps compress a lot of information. to check, i can make a prediction given a set of examples of the pattern and test it.

(like i did with the transmisogynistic rationalist orgs "i bet this org has 0 transfems in positions of power" and yep they did, they all did.)

and thats how i factor strategies generated by agents with large amounts of optimization power. who might have more ability to optimize in a domain than i do.

both of these claims are false. elle benjamin never let emma into the group. shes culpable for her continued choice to "believe" bigoted propaganda. just as davis tower kingsley is culpable for "believing" that anna salamon, the president of cfar, isnt involved in cfar's hiring.

elle benjamin is deeply concerned about the treatment of trans people in the rationalist community. elle isnt that good at social optimization so this is an obvious false face. like a cop during segregation who runs an algorithm of "smile at people" if no black people are using the WHITE water fountain and "beat up a human" if a black human uses the WHITE water fountain. as long as trans women know their place as violent abusers like ▘▕▜▋, elle is happy.

if we start claiming we are women just the same as them and how people are treating us is wrong, if we protest against omnicide, if other people are coordinating against trans women along lines of transmisogyny; then elle decides its time to show us our place in the social order as male. violent, child abuse loving, misogynistic, strong-arming, men.

this decision-circuit is not peaceful. people who start trying to exploit transmisogyny in an attempt to coordinate with others against you only when you look vulnerable or they think they can get away with it and otherwise smile at transfems are with their whole soul given over to transmisogyny.

erica's post is so passive-aggressive!

<<One issue is that i think this group is just too large to remain a high trust environment.>>

<<Thanks everyone for keeping this a civil place that deals with sensitive issues all these years!>>

in reference to my blog posts about how they didnt have any transfem mods and immediately took down hot allostatic load because it was a [[bad culture fit]] and [[incoherent]]. as if i were expected to keep some confidentiality about transmisogyny. i have no loyalty to keeping secret that kind of oppression, i signed no contract to that effect.

as if telling other trans people exactly what they did was "uncivil"! as if it were ruinous to society instead of ruinous to a cis women coordinating on transmisogyny.

as if posting hot allostatic load and talking about transmisogyny on my blog were less "sensitive" than the other things the group was doing which included posts like "How many romantic novels/movies/etc do we have left, once we take away all the ones focused on a man relentlessly trying to convince a woman through trickery and persistence and stalking that she should really have sex with him" and "the White Knight/Damsel in Distress dynamic" at the time HAL was taken down.

https://somnilogical.tumblr.com/post/175420481784/i-tried-to-post-to-rationalist-feminists-closed

its an equilibrium where anyone opposing the "peace" of transmisogyny is labeled "antisocial" and "disrupting things".

would you say this woman is being misogynistic and "strong-arming" a female DA?

<<Last year, I was arrested twice in Sonoma County at Sunrise Farms and then Petaluma Poultry, two massive industrial farms that torture and kill hundreds of thousands of birds- while lying to the public about how these animals are treated. My crime? Asking the county to help the starving animals inside. Not just asking by email or phone call or office visit (though all these efforts were made and ignored), but asking by going right to the frontlines myself, exercising my statutory right to help neglected animals, and calling the attention of the authorities to this pervasive cruelty. The fact that the sheriffs chose to arrest us and ignore the animal cruelty broke my heart. It's hard to believe we live in a world where helping someone who is dying is the "crime" and not putting that life in danger in the first place. But have hope that this will change, and my hope growing.>>

<<Now, in response to the action at Reichardt, Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch has decided to file additional charges against me, Priya Sawhney, and Wayne Hsiung. We are already facing 7 felonies and 5 misdemeanors and we're still fighting for animals every day. Do you think new charges will stop us? No. And it wont stop the movement, either. They think they can stop DxE by targeting leadership, but they don't understand that we are a network of leaders. That every single one of us is leading the world to one of the biggest changes it will ever see. #RightToRescue>>

probably not because shes cis and looks like:

laying down and making it clear that you offer no impediment to mass murder is not a female thing, its not a feminist thing. its a *you* thing, elle benjamin.

someone commented on the screenshots:

<<(It feels relevant that when I met this person a few months ago they went on a rant about the evils of TERF’s before telling me I couldn’t experience misogyny bc I was “male-socialised.” They apologised quickly after having it explained but the idea of their being the Font of Wisdom about transness to rats is insane.)>>

https://loving-not-heyting.tumblr.com/post/614660027724283904/ht-somni-for-screengrabs-this-sums-up-absolutely

ozy brennan, i know what the fuck im talking about when i say "transmisogyny". ive been lied to then kicked out of a homeless shelter for being a trans woman. several men forced me to the ground and held me down and cut off my clothes while i shouted "I DONT CONSENT" locked me in a bare room then crowded around a window embedded in a door and said "i told you it was a guy" and a bunch of people came to gawk at my naked body. and so much more.

some of my interactions on the street in the bay:

<<at bart ppl would call me an ugly bitch and ask me to sleep with them in exchange for meth

someone tried to sell me something and i was like "im not interested in being scammed today" and they were like "bitch!!!"

i walked around in sf talking with a homeless women for ~8 hours and someone asked if we had boyfriends and offered to sell us meth if we went with him and i was like "no thanks" and she was like "how much?" but it was too expensive or something. she showed me lots of places to get food and shelter.

and like if i sit down in places for long enough people will come up to me and ask me if i have a boyfriend or if i want to go get coffee with them on a date.

sometimes ppl ask where im *really* from and if i was born a girl. sometimes ppl touch me on my back or thigh.>>

ive compared notes with cisfems, i get more solicitations to have sex with men in exchange for meth.

this isnt oppression olympics, this is "maybe 7-8 years ago when i started transitioning i didnt have a detailed model of transmisogyny, but now i cant not have one". alyssa vance could have one too (and know things like elle is the kind of person who exploits transmisogyny whenever she gets a chance) if she werent busy using her adult intelligence to defeat itself for miri/cfar.

what elle benjamin did was transmisogynistic and i can arbitrage actually being aligned with justice by taking a stack of screenshots of all the things she said and showing them to transfems uninvolved with the ambient miri/cfar gaslighting. and theyll be like "yup, thats transmisogyny". and other transfems can be like "yup, elle was also transmisogynist to me."

rationalists like alyssa vance and ozy brennan currently have an incentive to imply people who accurately identify transmisogyny are crazy. to go along with the status quo. (if i had to guess: ozy to protect an environment where they can provide for their baby, alyssa because she routed her hopes for personal immortality through miri/cfar.) though its not like i expect /alyssa vance/ to start calling transfems “gross uncle style abusers" like patrick lavictiore did or start listing off their "manly" physical characteristics contra anna salamon being a small feeble cisfem like peter did. not because alyssa vance is a particularly good person, shes not. but because thats paying in to a coordination technique that could be used against /her/. she doesnt expect social reality to label her "psychotic" anytime soon so she pays into that instead. ozy does and didnt call me "psychotic". this optimization is dumb, myopic, and doesnt serve their own values. but all evil is like that.

i dont hold by "use words for their expected value over a community" like scott alexander does. this is nice because i can align what i say with my internal cluster structure of anticipations of reality and escalate arbitrarily far without things breaking. elle benjamin cant escalate very far until her claim of ziz being a "misogynist" shatters, because its not exploiting the cluster structure of thing-space.

anyway GG on this front. the territory of "elle benjamin isnt transmisogynistic, somni is hallucinating transmisogyny" isnt worth enough for the miri/cfar campaign to expend energy on; elle benjamin isnt an important piece to miri/cfar like anna salamon is; and alyssa vance isnt in an environment with a bunch of warm bodies she can coordinate on a falsehood with. so afaict this region is ceded.

one technique of fem v fem cyberontological combat when you are right is arbitrage. when people gather a bunch of warm bodies together to gaslight you that elle benjamin isnt doing transmisogyny or whatever. instead of submitting to a series of increasingly arcane requirements until your writing looks like the inside of /principia mathematica/ and then have people complain about you writing long technical paragraphs saying they dont understand them dont care to understand them and you must be crazy;

just take a comprehensive recording of them all choosing to be dumb in a given direction and show it to people who dont have a political commitment to be dumb in that direction (which, when you are right, is often most people outside of the gaslighting bubble) and explain why its wrong. there are a lot of overlapping social spheres and you can iteratively arbitrage between them exploiting the fact that the methods of rationality and justice are more universal than specific false coordination points. in go terms, the spirit of this strategy is tenuki.

--

alyssa vance also says anna salamon isnt transmisogynistic, tried claiming ziz whistleblowing on miri/cfar paying out to blackmail was blackmail, and defends paying out to oneshot blackmail with subjunctive dependence for cdt reasons.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The cum-ex scam stole $60b from European tax authorities: it's monumentally boring, complicated, and very, very important

Cum-ex (previously) is a technical, boring financial engineering technique that lets fraudsters file multiple tax-refund claims for the same stock transactions (they called it "dividend arbitrage"); from 2006-2011, the EU's largest, most respectable banks, law firms, and investors used the scam to steal $60,000,000,000.

Cum-ex is the kind of scam that the finance sector excels at: a socially useless financial engineering marvel that makes staggeringly rich people much richer, protected by a thicket of dull, deliberately complexified terminology and tactics that exist solely to obfuscate the obvious fraud underway.

A few bankers have gone on trial for criminal fraud for their role in cum-ex, but so far most of the perpetrators have gotten away with it, keeping the money (one trader, Sanjay Shah, relocated from London to Dubai and bought a $1.3m yacht he calls the Cum-Ex).

But German prosecutors have embarked on an aggressive program of prosecutions for everyone who profited from cum-ex, including the prominent lawyers who wrote legal opinions arguing that cum-ex was legal. They are launching 400 prosecutions stemming from 56 investigations. Among those is Hanno Berger, a former German state tax auditor who switched sides and became a key player in the theft.

Berger is a revered European finance law scholar, and his work was key to conferring a halo of lawfulness to the otherwise obvious scam. In private, Berger was more frank. One of the lawyers who worked with him says that he told the lawyers he supervised that they should quit if they didn't have the stomach for raiding the German state's coffers: "Whoever has a problem with the fact that because of our work there are fewer kindergartens being built, here’s the door."

The masterminds of the scam have roots in New York finance, but their perpetrated their crimes in the EU, where they believed that regulators would be less diligent and also less vengeful, should they get caught out.

The worst of the cum-ex raids took place immediately after the 2008 crash, when the same institutions that were stealing billions from national treasuries were also relying on those treasuries for massive bailouts that kept them from going bankrupt.

The lawyers who backed these firms threatened tax-inspectors who flagged their transactions: one clerk in the Bonn Federal Tax Office was threatened with "criminal, disciplinary and liability law" if she pursued her complaint.

Many of the banks that participated are now out of business, others are cooperating with authorities.

https://boingboing.net/2020/01/25/hanno-berger.html