“You can’t cheat an honest man”
This saying has been referenced by eCash members often times and with good reason, as scams in the crypto space are rampant and coming in many different flavors and themes. While there is an undeniable truth in what is being said, do not feel disheartened if you’re one of those that have been scammed before; It doesn’t automatically mean you are a dishonest person.
This space is new territory for many and it is easy to get fooled. But let me dive deeper into the meaning of this saying and what we can bear in mind about the reality of life and business as well as the space we are in, going forward…
There are countless cons and scams we all got to experience in one or the other way. Be it the common shell game, a spam-email from a supposed prince from a far away country trying to secure his wealth or the latest hyped up project that has nothing else to show except a promise to take you “safely to the moon”. Interestingly enough almost all have a commonality: you have to pay money upfront in order to be eligible to reap in those promised rewards. Sounds familiar?
The underlying trick
But there is yet another, deeper commonality. If you are not susceptible to such cons on the street or online, you simply know that something does not come from nothing. This is what people who fall for it have not internalized. If someone is skillfully shuffling around 3 cups in front of your eyes, but somehow your unskilled eyes can exactly follow which of them is the winning cup, then the situation is simply too good to be true.
See, what differentiates con-artists from a downright dishonest businessman is not simply that they try to cheat you by selling you a mislabeled product, for example. The con artist usually does not claim to make an honest deal. What they do is to make you an offer that in itself is a borderline illegal or a dishonest way to get rich quick by having a supposed unfair advantage over others or even the con-artist himself. And once they trapped you in that deal, the only one taken advantage of is you.
And that is why you can’t cheat and honest man. The honest man is of course not interested in illegal activities for one, but moreover he is not naive about how value is being generated and gladly pays the price for a mutually profitable deal. And therefore the reverse is true, too — He is vary of getting something for nothing and certainly does not like the idea of taking advantage of another sucker to make a quick buck.
And this is the most important point I want to convey today. I won’t be going into the history of crypto-scams or pointing out the shady practices of influencers and even supposed leaders in the space. And I will only quickly point out “how to avoid scams”. It’s fairly easy and not much to explain anyway. In short, do not pay anyone anything upfront or donate to people who have not validated their legitimacy first, no matter what they promise you in return and no matter who they claim they are or for what purpose it is. So much for the obvious scams, but my focus lies on something different here…
Todays flavor of crypto-scams
My focus is on the completely legal, yet pretty much completely dishonest categories of cryptos many of todays favored projects fall into: Most of these are NFT projects that use a lot of buzzwords and promises and use cases that no-one can even explain; or there are projects, which are advertised as “meme”-tokens. The lack of anything material is in the name itself. What was slandered as “vaporware” a few years ago seemingly is now the ultimate selling point. These projects are not even promising you some fantastic future like “web3” and “metaverse” advocates do, they explicitly tell you that their project is nothing more than an idea in the first place. There is no promise to deliver anything, other than explicitly the hype itself. The idea or the meme, which just enough people have to “believe in” to make it valuable, which certainly is possible in a sense, even though most certainly not sustainable in the long run. These “meme-tokens” are not much more than immaterial PR-gags — and pretty uncreative ones at that — of which many people that are involved deep down actually know to be a hot potato. I am struggling to call them downright scams as they are particularly open about how useless they actually are — again it is not simply a mislabeled product. However, there is still that other sucker implied that can be taken advantage of…
I have talked to quite a bunch of people who somehow started their crypto journey by “investing” in Shiba-Token. Maybe they did not realize themselves the quiet part they said out loud to me, but in all the conversations I had, it ultimately boiled down to them taking their chance on the possibility that they are ahead of the others in this dishonest musical-chairs game and simply hoping on the fact, that they can profit from other suckers coming in after them. They don’t expect anything to come out of the project, other than more fomo and higher prices in the short term. They agree, when I tell them there is not even the pretence of delivering a technology anymore and that they are not investing in something that generates real value that would justify all the money extracted out of it. To me, right here lies the con. They are being taken advantage of while they are trying to take advantage of someone else.
Personally, I think the crypto space as a whole cannot be taken seriously, if an ever growing number of people come into this space with this kind of get-rich-quick fantasy in combination with an ever increasing crab-mentality and the focus on ridiculous assets with a value of an off-brand trading card game for ten year olds. Teams that are working on such projects will either soon be leaving with the money they sucked out of the ecosystem or their project will simply implode or die off over time.
Be honest to yourself — and others
This is why I am making my case this week, asking you to stay honest to yourself, not trying to chase to be a millionaire by next year, just by blindly buying $10 of the “pump of the day” or god forbid putting your life savings into a copy of a copy of a joke-token that has no ambitions other than marketing itself to the gullible. And over everything else, I ask you to stay honest to the strangers, not trying to make money off of their backs.
If your “investment” involves the notion that you know a particular project to be fishy or simply useless but you think you can benefit from the fact that others do not know it, then guess again. Those supposed suckers think the same about you and in the end you are both trapped in a giant shell-game with the scammers having you right where they want you to be. “Investors” thinking in such terms are similar to crabs in a bucket, trying to benefit over others by pulling them down, while in the long run they ultimately will get chopped into pieces and boiled by the man who created the entire bucket they are trapped in, in the first place.
In other words, don’t let yourself get fished by too good to be true nets and don’t try to get out by pulling others in. There is no sustainable value-generation in dishonesty and everyone else trying to get rich by scamming the other is not a viable investment strategy, if you haven’t noticed.
Especially a self-regulating market like the crypto-space needs to pay more attention to excellency, honesty and thoughtfulness to actually make this space thrive, deliver real solutions and create wealth in the process. Use this space as a stepping stone to learn and grow. To take opportunities and get to work and be competitive via fair means and acquired skills; be it software- or business development, marketing, trading or journalism. Certainly be bold and take risks if needed, but do it to drive the entire space forward and do it in support of the ambitious projects that have proven legitimacy making a good case at delivering something that is actually useful for the space or mankind as a whole.
Understand and abide by the rules of the game you are playing which are not much different than basic rules of life and business. Forget the idea that you can somehow circumvent those rules, just because it is crypto you’re dealing with. Only then you can expect potential returns from your investment, just like you would for any other honest work.
Thanks for reading, stay safe, till next week!
- Kousha
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