As bitcoin prices soar, a lot of us are regretting not investing in the currency years ago, when it was nothing but a very sketchy, dubious unknown worth a few dollars, rather than the very sketchy, dubious unknown worth over $16,000 that it is today.
That regret seems to be driving people to any chance they have to get their hands on a bitcoin. For example, a tweet by @Joshwilkyyy, who’s claiming that he’ll give five lucky folks the chance to own some bitcoin, has now racked up over 20,000 retweets.
There’s no sign the promise is legitimate, but people are biting anyway. And chances are, it isn’t a real offer: Joshwilkyyy wasn’t even the first person to make it. Another person on Twitter, Travis Weaver, posted the same exact promise an hour earlier. He’s at over 80,000 retweets and claims that tomorrow at 6PM, he’ll pick the winners. A handful of other copycats have racked up hundreds of their own retweets with a similar promise.
So why do people keep retweeting offers that seem sketchy? It could just be for the hell of it, or for the off chance that they do get lucky and land a bitcoin. But it’s hardly a new phenomenon — it’s essentially a new spin on chain letters, or on those viral Facebook posts that promise to do something ridiculous (like name a child Megatron) after getting a certain number of likes. Or on YouTube, when people ask for a thousand likes to confess to their high school crush. It’s great to feel like you’re part of this greater internet community and that your one like, retweet, or thumbs up can influence someone else in the world. In this case, it might just make you rich.
Weaver claims that he had purchased 1,500 bitcoin in 2011 for $2.87 each, which reflects historic prices. His tweet promises to give away five (more than $80,000 worth of bitcoin) to people who retweet him. But Weaver gave no proof that he really had the bitcoin to give away — nor did others making this offer. Weaver had never even tweeted about bitcoin before.
In a direct message on December 7th, Weaver admitted to The Verge that he doesn’t own any bitcoin and said that his tweet was a “social experiment.” He says, “I was working ... to better understand how users interact with Twitter and it’s gotten much bigger than expected.”
He continued that he actually wished he had bitcoin “because some of the people who’ve reached out today, who I really feel for, could use one.”
Josh, the one who posted a copycat tweet, has not responded to attempts to contact him. Chances are, he might just wish he owned some bitcoin too.
Update December 8th, 11:30AM ET: This article was updated with a response from Travis.
Comments
Which is worse? The liar or the fool?
Personally I think Bitcoin is bringing the worst out in everyone. It’s so out of balance with the world’s way of life. And there’s grave risk involved with what it is doing. Yet, you see little to no media talking about. And I think that is because Bitcoin is part of a global agenda. Something so large that it might be a major turning point.
For thousands of years, money has had something physical to back it up. And NOBODY has ever gotten anything for nothing. There is ALWAYS a COST. Even if it’s down the line. Passing through many hands. But some PERSON will pay for it somewhere. Because all currency value is owned by someone somewhere. All other is counterfeit. Just as the Fed printing phony money thanks to moronic political policies.
So when you buy 1000 Bitcoins for $10 and turn around and have millions in USD. Then SOMEBODY just paid for it. Maybe the money hasn’t been collected yet. But down the line it will be. The bill will pass through many hands before it finally ends up landing on society. In the form of high prices, taxes, blood. Whatever. But there’s no way the filthy rich are going to pay YOU millions for a $10 investment out of their own pockets. There is always a catch.
But unlike any other gambling scheme. Bitcoin is growing into a monster bigger than the planet Earth. And the only thing that will save fate is for it to crash hard and for all investors to lose their behinds. And I can only pray that it WILL happen before we see an enormous global crash.
By highnote606 on 12.07.17 7:06pm
Quick: what physical thing backs up the U.S. dollar? The British pound? The euro?
By Daniel M. Clark on 12.07.17 7:24pm
The roughly 1600 Abrams tanks and other armaments of the US Military?
Only mostly joking. We clearly don’t have a physically secured currency (which is a good thing economically) but it is backed non-physically by the United States Government, with all it’s Diplomatic, Economic, and Military might. BitCoin has no backing or oversight (beyond the planned slowdown of the blockchain) which means you either trust the math that was done once, or you ride the show until you lose or make it big.
By ench on 12.07.17 7:38pm
> beyond the planned slowdown of the blockchain
There is no planned slow down of bitcoins blockchain. Targetted block times average the same 10 minutes so long as the chain runs.
By Volodath on 12.07.17 8:46pm
The number of bitcoins per block has been decreased several times. As well as a regular difficulty increase and the built in limit to the total number of bitcoin that will ever released. All of this could be considered slow down if you determine speed as the amount of bitcoin you can get per processing power.
By BrightSilence on 12.08.17 10:18am
Elon. Please save us.
By eschwiz on 12.07.17 7:57pm
Best case scenario: you earn 16K in bitcoin.
Worst case scenario; you’ve wasted 2 seconds of your life.
Not much of a puzzle.
By juhap on 12.07.17 8:14pm
your best case scenario is statistically worth 50 cents…
5 winners / 160k rt (at time of writing) * 16k
Better than most lotteries, but that’s assume the guy isn’t full of s….
By BrightSilence on 12.08.17 10:22am
And I’d gladly pay $.5 to not be the type of person who retweets something like this.
By joel amos on 12.08.17 5:54pm
My reaction:
By NYC Babe on 12.07.17 8:18pm