<
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/business/rainbowex-crypto-ponzi-scheme.html>
"At a backyard barbecue in San Pedro, Argentina, last May, Rafael Flaiman
spotted a friend wearing a light blue blazer that looked a little too snazzy
for the occasion. He needled the guy a bit. What’s with the jacket? Mr. Flaiman
asked.
“La China pays,” the friend replied, with a triumphant smile.
La China? Mr. Flaiman grew up in San Pedro, a struggling riverside town of
70,000, and for 16 years he’s been a reporter at
La Opinión, the local
newspaper. But he’d never heard of someone named La China — Spanish for the
Chinese woman — and had no idea why she’d bought a nifty new blazer for his
buddy. A handful of the 20 people at the barbecue, it turned out, knew all
about this mysterious figure and were eager to explain the singular way she’d
earned them money.
Every weeknight at about 9 p.m., they said, La China turned up on the Telegram
channel of a crypto currency exchange called RainbowEx. There, she texted
instructions to buy some type of crypto — invariably an obscure and thinly
traded one, known in the industry as a memecoin — at a particular price. The
same message said to sell the coin when it reached a certain, higher price,
which it always did soon after.
It was as steady as a clock. Everyone on RainbowEx bought the coin, the value
of the coin rose, everyone sold. Up ticked the balance in their RainbowEx
accounts."
Via
The RISKS Digest Volume 34 Issue 60:
https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/34/60
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
