A popular joke format over the past decade or two has been Deez Nuts. Know Your Meme explains as “a setup joke that involves asking someone a vaguely phrased question to solicit a follow-up question in response [ . . . ] before yelling out the said phrase in an obnoxious manner.”
It’s more of a prank than a joke really. The point of Deez Nutz and its variations ( Ligma , Sugondese, etc ) is that there’s an unwitting victim to laugh at.
Anyway. You probably heard about the two Estonian citizens who’ve been arrested over an alleged $575mn crypto fraud and money laundering scheme. There’s an unsealed US Department of Justice indictment and an FT story giving all the background , both highly recommended.
Here’s a curious bit:
In May 2017, [Sergei] Potapenko and [Ivan] Turõgin offered investments in a company called Polybius, which they promised would form a bank specializing in virtual currency. They promised to pay investors dividends from Polybius’s profits. The men raised at least $25 million in this scheme and transferred most of the money to other bank accounts and virtual currency wallets they controlled. Polybius never formed a bank or paid any dividends.
Polybius is an odd name for a nonexistent bank. It might be after the Greek historian , or it might be after a nonexistent 1980s arcade game . In geek subcultures, Polybius (the latter) is an urban legend that has become a very long-running joke. The game is said to have been a top-secret government project linked to illegal gambling and capable of mind control.
We can’t be sure, of course. But bluffing people into putting their money into Polybius, a mythical box with magical powers, would look a lot like a Deez Nuts prank. The joke is on the victims — just as the joke’s been on those who didn’t spot the sex and drugs code seeded into funding rounds and $44bn takeover offers .
Finance’s Deez Nuts era has been about an in-crowd laughing at the squares who invest in ignorance. And, quite frankly, it’ll be a relief when it’s updog.
Elsewhere on Tuesday . . .
— Which is worse: inflation or unemployment ? (The Big Picture)
— CME’s Terry Duffy talks about meeting SBF (Twitter / Apple podcast )
— How is the “world’s most advanced central bank digital currency” progressing ? (LSE)
— Why do people talk to Isaac Chotiner ? (Drezner’s World / Substack)
— How Apple stores went from geek paradise to union front line (Bloomberg $)
— Amazon is gutting its voice assistant (Business Insider $, with Ars Technica summary)
— How to be good (The Ruffian / Substack)
— Twitter was special. But it’s time to leave (PwnAllTheThings / Substack)
— Synthetic Jesus (Twitter)
— Army veteran went into ‘combat mode’ to disarm the Club Q gunman (New York Times)
— Is wine fake ? (Asterisk Mag)