With Latinum in specific, the company has been sued over securities fraud and misappropriation of funds, and Phil is still standing by the company. That's significantly worse than what Doug did: get hoodwinked by a scam company and then resign.

I'm not going to pretend like Doug has never made any mistake in his life, so you can probably pull something up. But he did nothing wrong with coinflex and arguably Helmuth is endorsing a scam company, which is worse imo. Just look at the laundry list of stuff the company allegedly lied about while Helmuth is still shilling them: https://www.poker.org/hellmuth-front...in-california/

Doug said "everyone in the space knows that anything with BITCOIN or ETHEREUM in the name is a scam"

certainly not unreasonable to think that he should know anyone offering the APYs and saying to put all your money on their Exchange is a scam.

Anyways its clear you won't hold him to the same standards he holds others and you don't fault him for holding people to what you think are absurd standards even though hes profited off of hit pieces on peoples characters over them, anyways I get it, you are a doug polk fan boy.

I really don't want to look up to see if doug was trashing hellmuth for wearing that hat before hellmuth reasonably knew anything was wrong, but I guess I'd be willing to bet that he did.

No. Plenty of smart people recommended this category of investment as well (although probably not coinflex specifically as they were small). Off the top of my head, Jason Strasser, a former poker player who now has run a successful hedge fund for over a decade, recommended these types of investments offering similar apy with the same business model. I could probably find tons of poker players recommending them. It definitely wasn't an obvious scam, which is why nobody took Doug up on his 100:1 bet. You're simply seeing a bunch of captain hindsight people claiming how obvious it was, because they want to hate on Doug.

I don't think it instantly makes it a scam, I also don't think a name instantly makes something a scam either. He shouldn't be surprised other people are using his previous logic against him now though.

Can you elaborate on the logic? If someone calls out an obvious scam that turns out to correctly have been a scam, and then falls for a not-so-obvious scam later, they have done something morally wrong? I can't really follow the point you're making.

Which wouldn't be the first time. Cereusly.

It's not hard.

Doug Polk made his name calling out people who promoted scams.

He then promoted the exact same scam that he was calling people out for.

He didn't 'fall for a not so obvious scam', he got paid to promote a scam.

Do you know how hard it would be to collect if Doug didn’t want to pay? And do you know how bad it would be to make an enemy out of Doug? Cmon Bro. How can you actually believe that if nobody took him up on the offer that means they didn’t believe coinflex was a scam

You actually think there are no other reasons?

Yeah... very poor logic. Can just as easily say that there were people buying up millions of dollars worth of btc latinum a day so it makes it less likely it's a scam, lol.

Or that FTX wasn't likely to be a scam because their Mcap was much higher than at launch. (More people betting on it not only not being a scam but it going up in value than not)

There was no timeframe provided so the 100:1 odds is kind of meaningless. If someone took him up on it, he could just say 100:1 only applicable for conclusive proof of intentional scamming within next 3 months. There's no way he would have accepted bets at 100:1 for something like that they would never pause withdrawals within the next 2 years and then be willing to escrow the money for that duration.

The difference is knowingly vs unknowingly. Your statement is more accurately said as "He got paid to promote a scam when he wasn't aware it was a scam. When he realized it was a scam, he cut all ties and let everyone know it was a scam asap."

If you can't see why it matters whether you know something your shilling is a scam or not, then I don't know what to tell you.

Of course there are other reasons why someone wouldn't bet. The fact that there was a public offer strongly indicates that is what Doug believed though. The fact there was 0 interest from anyone in even discussing terms means it's significantly less likely it was an obvious scam to many people. For example, if someone like shaun deeb saw that post and also thought coinflex was an obvious scam, do you think he would have just kept quiet when faced with a possible way to make easy money? He doesn't care about getting in the middle of controversy. Again, it's not definitive proof that nobody thought it was an obvious scam. But it's a strong indication that it's unlikely that a significant number of people thought it was an obvious scam when nobody wanted to even discuss terms.

My point wasn't that nobody thought it was an obvious scam. I'm sure some people did. My point was that most people didn't think it was an obvious scam. I certainly didn't and don't remember anyone saying it was on any posts referencing coinflex. Most people didn't say blockfi, Celsius, and all the other similar business model companies were obvious scams either.

You conveniently leave all the details out and make it black/white when it certainly is not, especially by doug polk standards.

I also don't think PH knows a damn thing about btc latinum, he knows some people are upset with them but probably thinks people are upset with every company. Haters and all that.

Ignorance is not ok for others but it's ok for doug who is suppose to be an expert, makes sense, /s

Except they didn't have the same chance as doug to do due diligence, honestly you don't even KNOW if doug missed something obvious. Instead he came out full on endorsing it after claiming he holds himself to a more stringent due diligence than everyone else and ended up being very very wrong, that's the point. What we do know though as he found out roger vers involvement and believes him to be a scammer and he didn't let anyone know about that afaik. That should have been impetus enough for him to start demanding even deeper DD requests, he confronted them but once he knew a serial scammer was involved he should have asked for proof of reserves.

I agree PH likely doesn't know **** about crypto. But he certainly can read a lawsuit summary or an article summary about all the reasons why his company is scamming others, right? That's the difference you're ignoring. Both are roughly doing the same when they were shilling cryptos. But when the companies are proven scammers, that's when Doug and PH acted differently. Doug disavowed the company, Phil kept shilling.

Thing you are ignoring is I've never tried to absolve PH's actions, I'm letting you know why people are upset/disappointed with Doug.

And walking away when its become obvious to the world doesn't absolve previous improprieties by either of them, and doug positioned himself be held to a higher standard... ph didn't.

Of course I don't know if Doug missed something obvious, nor does it matter for the point I am making. Missing something obvious doesn't mean you acted unethically. It means you might be incompetent about your crypto DD abilities. People should absolutely give less weight to his crypto recommendations going forward. But I'm not going to say he did something unethical unless someone can show he intentionally misled people. He gave his reasons why he accepted the Ver thing. It seemed reasonable to me. This is also within the context of him personally vetting the CEO with other people he trusted. The CEO hoodwinked a lot of people.

I'm sure there exists a world where he could have known it was a scam if he asked the right questions. That's not the point though. Acting unethical about a recommendation requires deceit. Imo, he did his best to vet his recommendation and failed. You're morally allowed to give bad advice if you are attempting to give good advice. If you give bad advice, your advice should not be as trusted going forward, but your character is still in tact.

Except there was no previous improprieties by Polk. There was a possible lack of DD. But I'll point out that arguably the greatest and most successful investor of all time, Warren Buffett, has bought and recommended scam companies that were significantly breaking the law before. But the point is, when he was aware that the CEO he met in person was scamming him and other investors, he disavowed them. There's a world of difference between doing your best and failing at preemptively finding out something is a scam before regulators do, and continually endorsing a known scam.

You don't know that. Not sure how you are so sure of that tbh. You state your opinions as absolute facts and ignore all context whilst giving him all the benefit of the doubt and more importantly holding him to less culpability than he holds others to.

Either way the I've conceded in literally my first post that if he never acted how he acted in the past/said the things he said about others/acted as if his DD would be above and beyond all others NOBODY WOULD CARE THAT HE GOT DUPED if that is infact what did happen.

I understand your opinion not changing about the morality of his due diligence etc, but are you really lost as to why people are upset with him?

I should have been more clear. Of course I don't know that for 100% that he didn't intentionally deceive people. But I have seen literally 0 evidence he knew it was a scam. It makes 0 sense that he would endorse coinflex if he knows is a scam if he's going to get paid in coinflex dollars. Why profit $0 on an endorsement scam? All of his businesses are based on his good name (training site, poker channel, poker room). Why jeopardize all of them by endorsing a known scam? Obviously I'm not 100% he didn't endorse a known scam, but it just seems absurdly unlikely from any angle I've thought about it, and have seen 0 evidence or logical reasoning pointing otherwise.

And again, you keep saying he is holding others to a higher culpability than he holds himself. Except he's done literally nothing morally wrong (unless he knowingly endorsed a scam company which makes 0 sense), so I don't see wtf you're talking about.

Yes, I'm pretty lost at why people are mad at him. You're allowed to give a recommendation that doesn't work out. You think I'm hating on Warren Buffet months after he invested and recommending wells fargo because they created scam accounts? He recommended a company that happened to scam people. It was relatively unknowable. You can't possibly know all the internals about other companies. Your recommendation isn't a guarantee. It's a recommendation about your personal belief.

Maybe he hasn't done anything morally wrong, but if PH was endorsing this then this happened he would have ripped them to shreds.(this is a belief, just a provable as your beliefs above, since you are about public consensus suppose we could poll that... even amongst polk fans) I'm led to believe that because of how he has come after others and how cavalier he has been with calling people scumbags/immoral or whatever, that is the culpability/standards I'm talking about.

PH also claims he has only been paid in Latinums and has not cashed out

Good post. It's certainly possible he'd be a jerk if the shoes were on the other foot. And yeah, good point: I agree that Phil is likely just as naive as Doug was, because of him still holding the Latinum and not cashing out.

Link me to Phill Hellmuths websites/crypto channels/ podcasts where he claims to be an expert.

Please

I didn't take him up on the bet because the terms of the bet were also a scam. So long as Doug claimed they say they are honest he wasn't paying. Note how he NEVER offered a fact based bet on whether those he was shilling would actually give you what they promised. Only a true fool supports Coinflex Doug.

Google Decent.bet if you want to see a PRIOR PH cringe-worthy endorsement of a crypto company without substance.

There had been a presentation by Decent.bet at Aria and it was clear it was simply an ICO-type grab with complete nonsense spouted, zero substance and no operating or use case plan. I was astounded to see Phil's subsequent YouTube "gushing" endorsement video.