4th July 2023 > > Feral fiat scammers.

tl;dr

The centralised fiat world retains hegemony in the race for domination of feral scamming.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Overnight we saw a 12-month high for BTC driven by the excitement around Blackrock’s filing for a spot BTC ETF. We are months away from a decision on that specific application but the one from ARK Invest, now incorporating the Blackrock clause, is potentially just weeks away.

You will recall that last June was a dire month for crypto markets with BTC breaching $20k to the downside triggering the first wave of capitulation from weak hands, setting the stage for this year’s rally. To add further fuel to the fire, leveraged short stop-losses start in earnest at $32k, now within touching distance. This could be a volatile week.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Fiat scams

Like many of you I have received loads of those HMRC scam calls threatening me with immediate arrest unless I make a payment over the phone. I usually have a lot of fun with these. It takes a while for a dim-witted scammer to figure out that he is the one being scammed out of his time for my entertainment.

I had a new one yesterday, and at first it was convincing.

“Andrew Simmonds” claimed to be from my bank’s fraud team. He told me that someone had tried to put through £14,000 on my debit card to bookers.com and £4,000 to eBay. I told him to cancel those payments which he said he would willingly do.

Then he said there was another one for £2,885 to Selfridges. Again I said that wasn’t me.

He told me to open my banking app in which a payment of that amount to Selfridges was asking to be approved.

On querying this strange and odd state of affairs, I was told that to receive the refund for a payment I had not made the first step would be to make that payment.

Yeah, right.

I asked what number he was calling from. “It’s on the back of your debit card”. Which it isn’t.

I accused him, with total justification allied with a healthy dose of Olympic quality self-restraint, of being a “feral ******* scammer”. I was going to add that I hope he dies a very slow and exceedingly painful death, and that his loved ones are so utterly ashamed of him that they skip his funeral to do something more productive instead, but I didn’t get the chance to speak over his protestations of innocence.

Eventually, after he realised that I was not going to approve the payment, he told me to “go **** yourself” and hung up.

…

Always, always, hang up and call your bank back if someone claims to be from the fraud team.