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194 sats \ 3 replies \ @elvismercury 18h \ on: $330M Bitcoin social engineering theft victim is elderly US citizen bitcoin
Additional thought: interesting to me that, with $330m on the line, the laundering happens through Monero.
Some people insist that Monero is worthless (discussion here], but this is a pretty giant fucking revealed preference re: actual utility in a high-stakes situation, as far as I'm concerned.
Especially given that it moved XMR price by 50%. The dude really wanted those funds in Monero.
When I was a young lawyer I represented my dad on real estate deals. He had been going deaf for years, but refused to acknowledge it. Once we were at a closing when the party on the other side of the transaction took my dad aside and, in a low voice, asked for a concession my father would never grant. Rather than say "I can't hear you" , he smiled and said sure." I had to step in to correct the misunderstanding. It was embarrassing for him, but not embarrassing enough for him to get a hearing aid.
I hope I learned the lesson he never did.
I am recently thinking a lot about this decline too specially because I'm seeing it in my own family with rapid decline and it is very sad to see. They don't realize. They make the usual jokes about age and such but I'm sure they are not very aware of the extent of the problem. Even simple problems become huge. And it reminds me that while I still feel great I have only a small number of good years left and that is counting that I would not get any other illness.
Make the most of your youth. It goes fast later.
Universities will die out without major change.
Thinking back on my time in college (graduated in 2023 from a public state school), it offered me little to no true value. I saw 3 large issues going through undergrad.
- The College's goals are misaligned with the customers (students)
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Colleges only care about making money and making their school more exclusionary to create a facade of being an "elite University".
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Students care about getting skills that translate to getting a job and making money. Most are too brainwashed to care about price... That is a whole different rabbit hole
- College doesn't teach you the skills you need for the workforce
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I majored in finance and only saw the business school, but it was a mess...
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The majority of my professors have never worked outside of academia and were hard to understand due to speaking broken English.
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Want to learn how to actually use Excel, PowerPoint, Word, etc? You're going to have to figure that one out on your own.
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Want to learn how to get a job? Going to the job fair with a resume in hand is not going to get you there. Yet again, you're on your own for that one.
- College brainwashes students into believing the slip of paper is "special"
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In school, if you do the basics, you get a slip of paper and a mindset that you deserved it and deserve a great job because of it.
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Get ready for the cruel reality of the world, but just showing up or doing the bare minimum does not guarantee success or money.
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No company worth its salt wants to deal with a whiny little brat who has never gone above and beyond. There are a million other people with that same slip of paper.
TLDR: College needs major changes made. My time in undergrad offered little true value. Here are the top 3 issues I saw going through school.
When I spent more time on Nostr, I know there were folks selling coffee for btc there, but I'm too picky about my coffee (and too stingy with my stack, especially given the last year) to have tried any of them, I'm afraid!
"I realize that x is beyond my capacity, and that I can't understand it, even though I used to understand it"
This is terrifying enough that most people wouldn't admit it to themselves. I'm still relatively young and I think about decline a lot, knowing I'm always getting closer than I have been, and I don't like it.
Ha ha, yes. I'm just following the lead of Kalshi. They've brought in the smartest and the best traders from early days to Kalshi.
I am leaving my government rent-seeking position. Short term pain, but exciting stuff is on the horizon. Won't say anything else for now. Will update later on.
I can see the decline in myself in many ways, but I can't remember them all right now- senior memory loss!
One I notice regularly reminds me of the George Carlin quote:
“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”
I used to be a fast driver. I drove too fast, got my share of traffic tickets, and was at times a maniac on the road. Now cars zoom past me at what I consider maniacal speed.
orange pilling encounter today:
a man arrives from the reusable cloth diaper service
- he hands me a bag of fresh cloth diapers
- i hand him a bag full of dirty diapers and a bitcoin education brochure
we'll see if he has any questions next time
"Elbows up" Canadian boomers in disbelief that their hero CBDC Carney didn't get the first deal done.
Good friend (late 60s) has been scammed out of his life savings (except his house) by online scammers and he is struggling to accept it- they used bitcoin and crypto extensively to cover their tracks.The police here do not have the resources to seriously investigate.
I tracked some Bitcoin transactions, part of the scam, to HTX exchange but neither HTX nor the NZ police would help trace the funds further.
More recently the scammers demanded a 'final payment' of $20k, which he refused and does not have anyway and they then impersonated a friends facebook profile and extracted from him his home address. They then posed as buyers of things he was selling on facebook marketplace and asked him to arrange shipping via a fake website where they gained his current credit card details and once gain cleaned out his credit card- this time the bank was onto it and called him to check the card use was legit.
The scammers are persistent. He now faces having to go offline or seriously reduce online use. They now have his home address. He is understandably concerned.
Another friends father (93) calls her from the ATM to ask her birth date as its the pin number for his bankcard. Hes been taking out large sums of cash lately but family don't know what for.
Seems to be a lot of it going on.
My father in law, who has the beginnings of dementia, apparently asked my mother in law, "Am I going crazy?", as his memory issues became apparent to him.
He's now been relieved of all financial duties. Our worry is that...he doesn't really have anything else to do. All he did was go through financial emails, and papers, and worry and think about them but...at least it gave him something to do.
One positive is that he could not be scammed anymore. He just couldn't follow their steps. (He has gotten scammed before).
My dad is aware that he can’t read and follow mathematical writing and arguments the way he used to be able to.
I don’t know that he’s realized that his cognition has taken a similar turn in most areas.
It is very hard for people to accept their diminished state. I think they see it as giving up. I am currently dealing with this issue with my dad but more on the physical side of things than on the mental side you speak of. He refuses to give up the outdoor chores he always handled like mowing the lawn, trimming the hedges etc. We only live 7 minutes away so I told him I am happy to come over and do this stuff, and he can hang out with the kids. He still refuses. If he knows we are coming for a visit, he will complete the chores before we arrive.
Stubborn maybe. In denial maybe. More likely he doesn't want to feel useless.
Given that it's from the CPS, I'm guessing this does factor in your hours worked.
What I'd like to know is how much of that productivity is real value creation and how much of it is make-work due to misallocated resources.
I'm going to try to get more details. This hits home. I would qualify as elderly. It's easy to say I have been hodling and holding my own keys for years now, but dementia is a real thing. Who knows what my mental acuity will be in the years to come?