<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>bombcar</author><text>It happens &lt;i&gt;all the time&lt;/i&gt; but often the community and the physical community don&amp;#x27;t overlap, but check out &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;MLM or other similar subreddits and there&amp;#x27;s whole groups of scammers who target particular groups (church, social, retired, veterans, etc) with particular pitches designed for that group.&lt;p&gt;Because if some rando tells you to join Amway or invest in AmCOIN™ you will tell them to get bent, but if it&amp;#x27;s a trusted friend, you&amp;#x27;re much more likely to be open.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s disgusting, but it happens. And in a small town, likely &lt;i&gt;everyone&lt;/i&gt; goes to the same church or two, hangs out at the same bar, etc. It can spread like wildfire, though usually after the first few scams it becomes known and starts to die out a bit.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you recognize the situation and decide to &amp;quot;participate&amp;quot; (read: lose some small amount of money in the scam) to stay in the community.</text><parent_chain><item><author>zeven7</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m fascinated that some kind of place like this existed. I&amp;#x27;ve only lived in large cities and the picture I&amp;#x27;ve gotten of small towns from trips and media hasn&amp;#x27;t prepared me for the idea of a whole community that collectively buys into a get rich quick scheme.</text></item><item><author>cjbgkagh</author><text>That’s essentially it, a small town where everyone knew each other and all hung out in the same bars. I didn’t pay attention to which one it was, I do remember hearing crazy interest, like &amp;gt;40%. I think you also got a cut from new entrants as well, so it reeked 
 of pyramid + ponzi.</text></item><item><author>rngname22</author><text>Could you expand a bit? It sort of sounds like you&amp;#x27;re describing a small town or a social circle &amp;#x2F; social scene where everyone got involved in some particular altcoin or something and invested a ton of their personal savings into it while encouraging others to do so as well, is that essentially it? Crazy if so.</text></item><item><author>cjbgkagh</author><text>A fool and their money are soon parted. The real problem is that swindlers have made a huge amount of money and can use that money to corrupt politicians so it affects the rest of us. It’s not just the extra tax of having to care for the newly impoverished.&lt;p&gt;My former local community went all in on a bitcoin scam, they made commissions on new entrants so I never heard the end of it. I only talked about it when asked but my warnings not only fell on deaf ears I was effectively ostracized as people were worried that I would talk new entrants out of it. “Don’t talk to that guy, he’s a no-coiner who doesn’t want you to be rich, he’s ngmi”. It was worse than Amway. Even after the crash many of them still avoided me, I guess now out of embarrassment, or worry that I would shove it in their faces like they did to me. I would never. It destroyed the community and many local businesses.&lt;p&gt;Edit: just found out which one it was, it was USI Tech. It failed 4 years ago so it’s not even part of the latest crop. Just sad that it keeps happening.</text></item><item><author>CoastalCoder</author><text>I always have mixed feelings when someone is warned about the riskiness &amp;#x2F; foolishness &amp;#x2F; stupidity of a course of action, and then suffers for it.&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, there&amp;#x27;s a certain satisfaction or Schadenfreude in the sense of vindication. And it&amp;#x27;s pleasant to feel like my own wisdom or self-control has been validated.&lt;p&gt;OTOH, I know that &lt;i&gt;everyone&lt;/i&gt; has limited wisdom &amp;#x2F; self-control &amp;#x2F; intelligence, including me.  So it seems hypocritical to mock someone who trips, knowing that I&amp;#x27;m just lucky to sometimes avoid the hazards that would trip &lt;i&gt;me&lt;/i&gt; up.&lt;p&gt;In the end, about the only conclusions I&amp;#x27;m really confident in is that trouble besets us all, and usually it&amp;#x27;s good to default to kindness and sympathy.&lt;p&gt;EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION: I&amp;#x27;m not saying that I want swindlers to succeed.  I want such predation crushed into dust.  My comment is about the people who don&amp;#x27;t intend harm to others.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Three Arrows Capital has defaulted on a loan worth more than $670M</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/27/three-arrows-capital-crypto-hedge-fund-defaults-on-voyager-loan.html</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>_jal</author><text>It happens a lot, and isolation can help keep scams going.&lt;p&gt;In case anyone has any illusions about how bad financial scamming can get, pyramid schemes famously led to civil war in Albania not that long ago.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Pyramid_schemes_in_Albania&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Pyramid_schemes_in_Albania&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>zeven7</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m fascinated that some kind of place like this existed. I&amp;#x27;ve only lived in large cities and the picture I&amp;#x27;ve gotten of small towns from trips and media hasn&amp;#x27;t prepared me for the idea of a whole community that collectively buys into a get rich quick scheme.</text></item><item><author>cjbgkagh</author><text>That’s essentially it, a small town where everyone knew each other and all hung out in the same bars. I didn’t pay attention to which one it was, I do remember hearing crazy interest, like &amp;gt;40%. I think you also got a cut from new entrants as well, so it reeked 
 of pyramid + ponzi.</text></item><item><author>rngname22</author><text>Could you expand a bit? It sort of sounds like you&amp;#x27;re describing a small town or a social circle &amp;#x2F; social scene where everyone got involved in some particular altcoin or something and invested a ton of their personal savings into it while encouraging others to do so as well, is that essentially it? Crazy if so.</text></item><item><author>cjbgkagh</author><text>A fool and their money are soon parted. The real problem is that swindlers have made a huge amount of money and can use that money to corrupt politicians so it affects the rest of us. It’s not just the extra tax of having to care for the newly impoverished.&lt;p&gt;My former local community went all in on a bitcoin scam, they made commissions on new entrants so I never heard the end of it. I only talked about it when asked but my warnings not only fell on deaf ears I was effectively ostracized as people were worried that I would talk new entrants out of it. “Don’t talk to that guy, he’s a no-coiner who doesn’t want you to be rich, he’s ngmi”. It was worse than Amway. Even after the crash many of them still avoided me, I guess now out of embarrassment, or worry that I would shove it in their faces like they did to me. I would never. It destroyed the community and many local businesses.&lt;p&gt;Edit: just found out which one it was, it was USI Tech. It failed 4 years ago so it’s not even part of the latest crop. Just sad that it keeps happening.</text></item><item><author>CoastalCoder</author><text>I always have mixed feelings when someone is warned about the riskiness &amp;#x2F; foolishness &amp;#x2F; stupidity of a course of action, and then suffers for it.&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, there&amp;#x27;s a certain satisfaction or Schadenfreude in the sense of vindication. And it&amp;#x27;s pleasant to feel like my own wisdom or self-control has been validated.&lt;p&gt;OTOH, I know that &lt;i&gt;everyone&lt;/i&gt; has limited wisdom &amp;#x2F; self-control &amp;#x2F; intelligence, including me.  So it seems hypocritical to mock someone who trips, knowing that I&amp;#x27;m just lucky to sometimes avoid the hazards that would trip &lt;i&gt;me&lt;/i&gt; up.&lt;p&gt;In the end, about the only conclusions I&amp;#x27;m really confident in is that trouble besets us all, and usually it&amp;#x27;s good to default to kindness and sympathy.&lt;p&gt;EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION: I&amp;#x27;m not saying that I want swindlers to succeed.  I want such predation crushed into dust.  My comment is about the people who don&amp;#x27;t intend harm to others.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Three Arrows Capital has defaulted on a loan worth more than $670M</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/27/three-arrows-capital-crypto-hedge-fund-defaults-on-voyager-loan.html</url></story>