"Hacking Elon’s Twitter account and using it for a crypto scam rather than a stock-trading scam shows a complete lack of imagination" - Naval

https://twitter.com/naval/status/1283507218294292481?s=19

The popularity of Naval is something I fail to understand.

He was an investor of ours, and among the most useful. There was rarely a founder/investor issue he hadn't run into, or knew someone who had. That sort of help is invaluable to founders, especially given his experience and everything he knows about both raising, and building a company. He's really solid.

In case anybody else had no idea who this "naval" is:

Naval Ravikant (@naval) is the CEO and co-founder of AngelList. He’s invested in more than 100 companies, including Uber, Twitter, Yammer, and many others.

https://fs.blog/knowledge-project/naval-ravikant/

Fortune cookies syndrome, it affects millions.

Here are a few I just invented to mimic these pseudo philosophers (modern day VC charlatans):

Tomorrow is a mist. Today's the sunshine.

Make the world better by building something anything today.

Build shit. Ship shit. That's all there is to success.

----- I almost feel like these Twitter personalities like Balaji, Naval, Chamath are the VC equivalent of Shia Lebouf. They became popular by shouting out loud. I have no idea why they matter at all in the computer science industry.

>>I have no idea why they matter at all in the computer science industry.

What is the computer science "industry"? To the extent that such a thing exists, I suppose you are talking about people who have directly made money by creating software (Chamath), or invested in companies which made money (Naval and Balaji). How can any industry exist if no money is ever made?

And whom do you propose people follow instead? :-)

With Balaji Srinivasan it is even worse. He is open supporter of Modi current prime minister of India(BJP party) and supports caste system. My advice is if you are not from upper caste(brahmins) do not waste your time with him.

What is that? I googled it and I didn't see anything, am I being stubborn?

Basically when someone says something vague enough to apply to many situations and people who hear it think he's telling the future.

"You will need clarity to deal with upcoming personal conflicts."

You get in a argument with your friend/spouse/partner/coworker, the fortune cookie sounds prophetic

I guess he’s saying dishing out clever aphorisms is similarly like the sayings in fortune cookies.

Just guessing: fortune cookies are bite-sized tautologies, but people still eat them.

Pseudo-philosophical vague sayings that appeal to the masses.

I disagree, a stock-trading scam would be way easier to track than crypto.

$20B of TSLA is being held short right now. How in the hell would the SEC discern you from any other Robinhood trader holding TSLA puts?

I'd wager the list of folks who: -hold a meaningful enough short position for a potential attack to be worth, say $500k or more (not a rando robinhood trader with a $200 put) -are not an existing bank or long term day trader

is already quite small, and could be quickly prioritized based on how anomalous the trade was, other flags (foreign national, software engineering babckground). I suspect the SEC could get to a workable list of 50 prime suspects reasonably easily.

There are people on /r/wallstreetbets who are blowing up 100k accounts on TSLA puts on Robinhood. On the front page of /r/wsb right now the 3rd highest post is someone who has lost 30k gambling on TSLA.

Even betting 20k would have probably netted you more than what was gained via BTC and you would still be indistinguishable from RH day traders.

Naval is wrong because fiat will be harder to launder while bitcoin is borderless censorship-resistant money.

I'd imagine picking a highly volatile stock with a lot of wallstreetbet bros in it, like TSLA, would serve to helpfully obfuscate your trades and their relationship to the hack.

It's almost like people think he has some magical insight into to everything when really he's just a VC with severe survivorship bias.

The idiot has never hacked a thing for profit in his life.

How would it be harder to launder? You bet on a Tesla stock drop. That's perfectly legal. Musk tweets some bad news, and says he was hacked, but that doesn't mean you hacked him.

True, but it makes you a suspect for further investigation.

In a stock scam it is already laundered, because there is no direct flow.

Market surveillance is much better than most people realize. The accounts making money on a scam like this would be identified, filtered for anomalous activity, and the people at the other end investigated.

They might be, but the money nevertheless is pretty clean (has an acceptable origin).

The way around this is to leave no traces of the hack or to cash in using another person.

Are we certain that Twitter's share price won't be affected?

I can't find the tweet now, but Tavis Ormandy once talked about companies share prices often rebounding after a breach, so he was buying stock in companies that got hacked. Equifax was an example, I think.

It's called "buying the dip" and it's not specific to hacks; it happens on all kinds of bad news.

An egregious example at that.

It already is around $1.4 from the close on heavy volume. It's pretty clear that they have a major problem.

Assuming the ultimate purpose for the hack is a crypto scam shows a complete lack of imagination.

Who is Naval? Their website doesn't have an "about me" page.

Founded AngelList and made some good investments https://angel.co/p/naval

this is the first thought that popped into my mind when hearing about it. Why are you quoting tweets as a reply on HN?

Easier to trace, higher monetary investment etc. This they can likely get away with without risk of losing a big investment.

On TSLA? You can probably blend in with all the YOLOers on /r/WSB.

Yeah, buying out-of-the-money options is a dumb way of insider trading in general, but on TSLA specifically you might could get away with it. Just don’t make your first trade right before you post to Elon’s account.

Not that it changes your point, but hacking Musk's account to tweet wrong info about TSLA would be fraud, not insider trading, since they're not actually an insider. Either way, OTM options is a dumb way to profit on fraud or insider trading.

Profiting from fraud or insider trading is dumb already. Might as well get the most bang for your buck and leverage your scam to the tits.

The hacker could have puts on Twitter as well. The Bitcoin scam might be just a cover / distraction so it looks like an unsophisticated hacker while the real money might be made with options contracts.

Yeah.. seeing twitter's drop thats definitely possible and pretty imaginative. but, twitter's drop wasn't that sharp. also, running this after hours means the options markets are closed and putting on a big short position can be super risky since there may not be a huge amount of liquidity to cover your position, then you'd have to sit on it overnight.

This is the route I would have taken, but not with OTM puts. It’s far easier to let the stock tank, then buy up calls knowing that the reason is bullshit, and wait for the price to recover and sell.

You will blend in perfectly because you have an alibi for why you are buying so many TSLA calls.

And when you buy an OTM put, it’s hard to predict what a good price would be exactly. How far do you think the stock would drop? With a call you could be fairly more confident it will return to a previous level.

That said, this kind of attack requires you to have a good amount of capital on hand, so you need to be a fairly independently wealthy hacker.

My crazy theory: the real attack is on the Twitter stock price and the bitcoin is a distraction.

It make no sense, the market was closed by the time of the attack. And they have started with bitcoin exchanges, not with the high profile accounts.

It makes potential sense in fact.

If this rocks Twitter to its foundation as a trustworthy platform, it's the end of Twitter as far as prominent figures being willing to utilize it. If Twitter loses its prominent figures edge, it's all coming down. Twitter has nothing else, it's mostly a broadcast platform for elite people in terms of where the extreme majority of all of its value is produced.

That said, that outcome is far-fetched. The content that was Tweeted appears to be far too benign to accomplish that outcome. The attackers seem to have intentionally avoided Tweeting anything particularly dangerous. If they were trying to ruin Twitter, they would have used the accounts to do something far worse, that would terrify prominent figures away from using the service.

I think they had one target in mind, to go after their DMs, and hit lots of accounts as a cover to hide which one was the primary target.

You can trade after hours but I really doubt that was the purpose.

Not enough volume so you can't blend in with /r/WSB that way

Then why not go big and hack @realDonaldTrump?

I assume each of his tweets have to be approved manually by some employees somewhere considering a hacker could start a war with his account.

Would make sense to have something like this for @jack, too — could explain why his bio was changed but he didn't tweet.

I think his bio always said #bitcoin. He owns the cash app.

Nobody want a drone over their head.

seriously, this hackers are not so imaginative.

Hacking a former president and presidential candidate.... not really that far of a jump.

It would be also much easier to track. Significant gains this way would not go unnoticed.

Are you sure? TSLA is the most shorted stock in the US. I think it would be easy to blend in with the crowd.

They were talking about Twitter stock, not Tesla.

They could have just bought puts on twitter as it is currently down 4% after hours.

Now _this_ may be the real con! A much better idea.

Do you know they haven’t shorted twitter? Lots of ways to play this game.

Sounds like "committing suicide" in a US super max with extra steps.

Golden rule is you don't steal money from rich people, only poors.

It's not 100% guaranteed though; Tesla stock is odd. And it might be possible to people short selling who timed it exactly right.

This "scam", while crude, will probably not result in any loss and it would be much harder to catch them

Or SPX puts, /ES futures, etc and a tweet from a certain political account...

The attack didn't start until after the markets closed.

they could have bought puts expiring tomorrow a few days ago

It would be ridiculously easy to track down those puts and narrow them to a possible hacker. Authorities would find them in hours.

The SEC would be able to trace the trades, and the person would be busted. Bitcoin allows them to remain anonymous.

I would argue it's kinda the opposite. With some trades, the SEC knows who you are but there's no direct connection from your transaction to the hacking, so you're free to do whatever with the money and if your trade is this small it'll probably blend right in.

With Bitcoin, sure nobody knows who owns this account, but the blockchain will store every transaction this account and future accounts make, so trying to actually use the Bitcoin is a fair amount harder.

Couldn't market-traded options be rolled back in the event of a hack, though?

That's way riskier though. There's a reason they are using BTC.

What makes you think they have not bet on stock as well?

It isn't over yet.

Oh god. Nightmare fuel