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Anatomy of a "pump and dump" scheme

Updated: May 3, 2022

Jeff Hulett, February 23, 2021



I recently saw a wise quote from Bill Gates. This came during an interview about his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.

“Elon has tons of money and he's very sophisticated so I don't worry that his Bitcoin will sort of randomly go up or down,” he said “I do think people get bought into these manias who may not have as much money to spare, so I'm not bullish on Bitcoin, and my general thought would be that if you have less money than Elon you should probably watch out.”

Said another way, don’t be on the wrong side of a pump and dump scheme .... and the right side is akin to catching a falling knife!

This reminds me of the classic pump and dump schemes in history. Whether it is tulips, dubious dot coms, real estate, or bitcoin. The symptoms are classic and often ignored. We tend to be blinded by our emotions and are like a fly to light, wanting to believe "This time it is different." I do hope crypto currency and block chain are different, but more time is needed to tell the story. Crypto has significant challenges. It needs to become a "real" store of value and the underlying "proof of work" algorithms need to become much more efficient. Smart people are working on it, including central banks. It will take time and likely after the Bitcoin mean reversion.


 

The Stoic's Arbitrage: Your Personal Finance Journey Guide


Core Concepts

1. Our Brain Model

2. Curiosity Exploration - An evolutionary approach to lifelong learning

3. Changing Our Mind

4. Information curation in a world drowning in data noise


Making the money!

5. Career choices - They kept asking about what I wanted to do with my life, but what if I don't know? - Part 1

6. Career choices - They kept asking about what I wanted to do with my life, but what if I don't know? - Part 2

7. Career success - Success Pillars - A Life Journey Foundation

8. Career choices - Do I need to be a Data Scientist in an AI-enabled world?

9. Career choices - Diamonds In The Rough - A perspective on making high impact college hires


Spending the money!

10. Budgeting - Budgeting like a stoic

11. Home Buying - Homeownership is an important wealth-building platform

12. Car Buying - Cutting through complexity: A car buying approach

13. College choice - The College Decision - Framework and tools for investing in your future

14. College choice - College Success!

15. College choice - How to make money in Student Lending

16. Event spending - Wedding and event planning guiding principle


Investing the money!

17. Investment thoughts for my children

18. Our Investment Barbell Strategy

19. Using the Stoic's Arbitrage to choose a great investment advisor

10. Anatomy of a "pump and dump" scheme

21. The Time Value of Money Benefits the Young

22. How Would You Short The Internet?


Pulling it together!

23. Capstone - The Stoic’s Arbitrage: A survival guide for modern consumer finance products

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