She's not a programmer. As far as I know OneCoin never even had a blockchain, it was just a regular ponzi scheme they sold as cryptocurrency. Not the first time this happened and it won't be the last, sadly. I actually have a distant relative who bought into another such scam.

It didn't have a block chain. There's a great BBc iPlayer podcast about it, crypto queen. Worth a listen. Apologies if this has already been mentioned.

That detail is in the article, which is about the making of the podcast…

AWS and until recently Azure have Blockchain-as-a-service. The real winner of a gold rush are the people selling pickaxes.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/blockchain-servic...

https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain

> The real winner of a gold rush are the people selling pickaxes.

No I'm pretty sure the people who hoarded gold (coins) have made more money from blockchain than IBM and AWS.

You'd think so, but Pickaxe coins like the graph have significantly less gains than dog meme coins. I actually think a sure sign of when a coin won't go mega is when it tries to do something practical, since then its obvious its not that great a practical utility after all (as almost nothing is on a blockchain, except gambling).

Nvidia is getting nice profits, and with way less risk than those “investing” in crypto

The only problem is that especially these ppl will probably not sell until it's too late.

With cryptocurrencies, the pickaxes are GPUs and ASICs. I doubt this is a serious revenue generator for AWS because of how few things actually need and use blockchains. It's mostly there so consultants can sell blockchain solutions to companies desperate for a blockchain strategy.

Out of whatever cases may exist for what you're describing (re: desperation, etc.), do they almost always involve someone getting conned?

Microsoft is apparently shutting down its blockchain service, though: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/blockchain/service/mi...

So much for selling pickaxes...

Just so you know, Dogecoin's blockchain is trivial to attack; its ledger can be altered at such low cost it is unlikely several such attacks aren't already underway. Upon publushing of new "longest chains" it will no longer be possible to determine which doge chain is valid, putting all balances in danger until the Proof of Work mechanism is replaced - which will only work briefly before the same problem recurs, due to the nature of how blockchains are secured. This will demonstrate why Bitcoin and Ethereum are valuable. More info: https://www.intuitecon.com/post/why-dogecoin-is-going-to-zer...

Most of the other articles I saw when I googled "51% attack doge" said that this was unlikely, and that it had the 3rd most hashing power among crypto, mainly because of it being mined with litecoin. Saying it would be trivial to attack comes off as a hyperbole with that in mind. Litecoins 1 hour attack cost is $29,000, while Bitcoin's and Ethereums are $716,000 and $418,000 respectively, only a magnitude higher.

Those articles also mentioned a lack of incentive due to sending the price to zero, but perhaps that's an incentive now since there are ways to short the price of a coin.

Yes, DOGE can be borrowed and then sold, to be repurchased later (at a possibly lower price); short positions can be opened. Plenty of DOGE is available for shorting. GPUs currently mining Ethereum can be used instead in a 51% attack against DOGE. No such pile of resources exists that can be redirected to attack Ethereum or Bitcoin.

Dogecoin may as well be called Eloncoin, now; the value tracks his tweets about it.

A practically-infinite cap and always-easy mining? It's designed to rapidly deflate in value. _That's the joke_. And yet it bubbles.

He just realized that he can, so he does it.

Probably got on the market before the BTC/Tesla announcement and then pumped it, then thew DOGE in the for the memes and then Tesla announces that BTC consumes too much energy and that are looking out for a greener alternative. ETH is switching to PoS. At this point, he is probably slowly filling bags of ETH and gonna pump as soon as PoW on ETH ends. Expect a series of excited twits from Elon then

My friend Eddie, who knows a lot about Elon Musk, says Musk is setting the stage to start his own coin, funded by divesting bitcoin. Mining will be performed on the moon and powered by solar. By using Luna Block Coin you'll be supporting the first moon colony and also helping save the planet and get a favorable warranty on your Tesla. Eddie's a little weird (his walls are covered in clippings about Musk with all these strings and sticky notes over top), but I kinda hope he's right here.

I didn't believe this theory at first but then I noticed that Elon Musk is actually an anagram of Pepe Silvia and it all started to click into place.

Seems like I've bern hearing "Eth is switching to PoS" for like a couple of years now.

What's the actual timeframe for that move?

I expect the same, incidentally.

As soon as Tesla stated that btc was bad for the environment it was clear they'd be leaping on eth in the future.

ELON already exists, 630m market cap right now...

https://www.dextools.io/app/uniswap/pair-explorer/0x7b736449...

Those properties mean it could actually work as a currency, unlike bitcoin.

It also can handle higher transaction volume with cheaper fees.

I don't think it'd be a good currency, but it's funny to compare it with bitcoin which was marketed as such but is totally a failure for that use case.

No one wants negative rate savings accounts.

It's meant to be a currency not a savings account. It's not called cryptosavings - although perhaps it should be. Bitcoin is sort of like digital gold, but totally sucks as a currency or way of transacting.

If it is inflationary like doge you have the incentive to spend it instead of hoard it.

Huge segments of the population use a savings account as their primary method of saving money; they don't invest, at all.

I think the difference is likelihood of success.

If you and I did what you'd describe it would almost certainly not succeed. A high effort fraud has a much higher likelihood of returns.

a few semi pro traders i've seen made one for the lulz (with absurd names like karencoin) and the price rocketed (illiquid asset) which made them withdraw their trade from the market because they assumed it was a sign of dumb level bubble hit

How about Losercoin? Two self-described broke losers in rural China created it and put their life savings into providing it with liquidity. It now has a 53 million dollar market cap.

Isn't all this altcoin "market cap" stuff fake cap generated by bots that thinly trade new coins until a sucker buys them out?

To the extent that's true, it's true if all crypto.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and some others are not thinly traded.

fraud is profitable because it makes exaggerated claims. that is why people do it.

legit projects are expensive and have high rate of failure

doge is just one success out of probably thousands of others that tried similar concepts. Doge was able to gain a loyal following and community early on.

Ironically, because of how ridiculous it was.