I posted this in the anti-Mustachian wall of shame and comedy under the MLM thread, but I though some input from people in the investment section might be a good idea.
Earlier this year, a work colleague sent me an email about something crypto currency related, it looked like an email that was sent out to a large list of contacts and I thought his email had probably just been hacked and had sent out some spam without his knowledge, so I didn’t even click on it. Well, a few months later he mentioned he wanted to get together and talk about investing in a “gold-backed crypto currency”. I have no interest in buying into anything like that, so just listened without expressing any interest. Well, recently he mentioned it again and wants to get together to talk more about it, so out of morbid curiosity I went back to the original email to see what I could learn about it. Oh man, it’s so much worse than just another pointless coin, it’s basically from a company that runs a terrible MLM scheme selling tiny gold bars to people at an absurd markup and there’s a huge pyramid based referral program to sign up other distributors at huge upfront cost. I know the rational move is to politely decline a meeting because I wouldn’t touch this with a ten foot pole, but I can’t help but wonder if I can meet with him and ask questions in a way that helps him re-evaluate his investment. (btw, he has 5 figures in these coins atm, so the stakes for him are pretty high).
Is there an easy way to explain that this company’s coins cannot be backed by gold as they claim? I don’t know if he’s involved with the MLM side (which is banned in my country btw), but I wouldn’t be surprised. Any advice on how I could knock some sense into him would be appreciated
