Blaming low IQ people for their low intelligence is a form of discrimination. High IQ people should be shielding them, because there is a good chance we will eventually be low IQ the older we get.

Can’t tell if you’re joking. Discrimination means treating people differently based on who or what they are they are; “shielding” is discrimination. Elder abuse is its own thing that should probably be handled separately.

You're technically right but you must be aware that the colloquial usage of the term means that the unjustified selection has negative consequences. Shielding is positive. I can't tell how you could've missed that...

They targeted marginalised groups and heavily targeted uneducated people in the developing world

Victim blaming is no good

And it’s important to note that OneCoin simply pioneered the model that every crypto uses today.

23% of Black Americans own crypto according to the Economist: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/05/20/why-the-...

These products have been heavily marketed to minorities, and the only real difference between today’s crypto and OneCoin is that there’s a smokescreen of technology and VC money.

I wasn't aware of this, but it makes me dislike 'crypto'-currency even more, which I did not think was possible. Thank you for sharing this.

They didn't recruit in the slums of Manila or the Nepali countryside. I'm sure there were some poor people among the victims too but the majority wasn't. Just look at the amounts of money they gave them. What "marginalized" person from a developing country has thousands of dollars lying around to give to random people promising them high returns? Poor people get debt trapped with so-called microloans, happens to millions in Africa and South Asia.

The minority in this case were folks with more wealth than brains - in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. What poor person has the money to travel all the way to places like Dubai to attend a OneCoin conference?

No they absolutely did recruit in the developing world and in the type of “slum” you refer to. They took huge amounts of money in Africa.

Your comment shows you haven’t looked into one coin deeply. There were huge one coin conferences in Africa. For example Uganda was plastered with onecoin. https://youtu.be/NMt4KUSz_Fw

A youtube video by some random guy with 310 views is not a credible source. Surely you've seen some kind of evidence that isn't social media hearsay to make you so convinced. Pictures, videos? Can you tell us the name of the slum you're referring to?

>They took huge amounts of money in Africa.

"Huge" amounts. What sort of amounts are we talking about? Do you have a more concrete number and a source? Must be someone involved in the scam who told you because the perpetrators have not even been caught yet, let alone tried.

German authorities tried charging a single couple that collected over 320 million Euros for Ignatova on their own! Just to give an idea of what sort of sums we're talking about. The average each of the European victims invested is in the thousands, possibly over 10k Euros.

The media commonly cites 4 billion dollars that Ignatova and her accomplices collected in total. How much do you think they got out of that supposed Ugandan slum?

Thus, probably mostly stolen money. Stealing from other crooks is made to seem hardly like stealing at all.

I actually looked at their powerpoints and put it in front of people to see if what they would say

I actually have a bit of empathy for people after that

They don't ask the questions like “where’s the block explorer”, or that verification is a pre-requisite in blockchain technology. in fact there is no verify to people, there is no “trust, but verify” there is just “trust”

and sadly, people trust scams more than properly structured investments because all they know are scams as thats familiar, and have been shut out of investments

We are going to be number one global currency because I truly believe we are number one. Our network is an ecosystem for everyone, number one worldwide.

reminds me of the language of a rather important person from recent years..

Victim blaming is never okay. Neither is blaming capitalism, all systems have rule breakers and thieves.

I used to feel this way, very strongly, but spending time on the crypto subreddits has changed my mind. There is a substantial set of people who actively refuse to learn form experience and just keep seeking out scams. They do not have mental defects, they just actively refuse to learn from their experiences. It is not unlike the people in failed doomsday cults who continue to believe in their revelation after one or more failures.

Victim blaming is wrong, but it is more than fair to observe that there are people who actually are at fault for their situation.