Big deal. It took him how many years to speak common sense. Why did it take him so long to work these things out?

And Coinflex was completely centralised, you handed your money or your crypto over to them and could kiss it goodbye if they didn't want to give it back to you.

Other things he's said in the past:

Put 50% of your net worth in crypto. FlexUSD is a stable coin, it can't go lower than $1.

I feel a Dankness video incoming, ripping him for his sudden bout of humility and the epiphanic dawning of reality.

https://coinflex.com/blog/seychelles...turing-update/

There is a link on this page to the ruling. I think the story is that Ver isn't allowed to wind the company up in the Seychelles because the $200 million he says he's owed is not enough of an interest according to their laws. Also, he didn't disclose his shareholder agreement. This is good for coinflex but their price hasn't gone up.

I just don't even know where to start....

First, the DougBot is doing nothing but repeating CNBC/Financial Times talking points in a desperate attempt to save his own credibility in the cryptosphere.

Second, actions speak louder than words.

"Not your keys, not your coins"

This guy shilled the exact opposite thing when telling people to trust CoinFlex w/thier crypto... and tried to bet people 100x their money that it wasn't a scam!

This psychopath thinks that if he just acts like he never shilled CoinFlex, people will just forget all about it.

Doubt it. There's almost no legal due diligence required for a celebrity endorsement of a product/company. A celebrity endorser has basically no legal responsibility to make sure a company is legit. Does anyone seriously think Tom Brady should read FTX's balance sheet to a higher standard than the regulators did who also didn't figure it out? There's 0 chance Tom Brady, Doug Polk, etc, are held liable for this stuff (unless they're held liable for something tangential, eg. not disclosing they are a paid endorser in a specific ad).

Furthermore, anyone saying Tom Brady, Doug Polk, etc, have a moral responsibility to go through the balance sheets of a company before endorsing them..... Polk/Brady aren't forensic accountants that can uncover fraud. That job is for regulators.

I agree entirely. But this is about to be put to the test. Some loser who dumped $750K in crypto is suing the Golden State Warriors for because they had an endorsement deal with FTX. I don't think that part of the suit will go anywhere, but you never know with a jury.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/03/kim-...promotion.html



Why didn’t Kim hire you guys? How much money could you have saved her?

If you'd have read his post, Ten5x covered that.

Not the same thing at all. But I think you already knew that.

You mean like Polk himself? That is why he has got so much backlash from this, his previous views/smashing of people he deemed immoral. The 100x to 1 bet while being known as an accomplished gambler and presumably framing himself as a crypto expert/resource is not quite the same as Steph Curry doing a commercial then tweeting; "so guys whats this crypto stuff about?"

He basically worked for a very long time to build all this goodwill/rep up with his viewers/fanbase whatever you want to call them and certainly people lost more than they would have normally because of it. How much who knows, but once again this is certainly not comparable to other celeb endorsements. Also if some other poker pro did this doug would still be ripping into them and making "SCAM!" videos.

But yea I don't think it would have been a big deal really if it wasn't for his previous build up. (perhaps you knew all this/agree with it, not sure haven't read many posts in this I'm not arguing for a legal precedent here)

Missed that sry

100% this.

When a sports star or entertainment celebrity advertises a financial product, the viewer/potential consumer will often say to themselves "meh", or if they are attracted by the celebrity endorsement, they will know that Steph Curry shoots hoops and is therefore not likely to be a financial or crypto expert too.

As Eskaborr said, Doug Polk was operating in the crypto sphere (or "space" as he and others put it), having made numerous YouTube videos about crypto scams, crypto new offerings, crypto investments, crypto forks, and even has/had his own (or was co-founder) of CoinCentral https://coincentral.com/

So when he endorsed, advertised, promoted CoinFlex, many viewers would have a natural assumption that he was doing so from a position of expertise and knowhow and furthermore that he was one of the most on the ball people in crypto regarding potential scams as well as the pitfalls of new crypto related projects.

No, I don't mean like Doug Polk himself. He can only do so much DD. If a company insider is lying to him about the state of their books, or the practices they do, how on earth can he figure it out? Just explain that to me. That's why I said a forensic accountant with complete access to the company's operations probably would have been needed to suss it out. I get that it's funny that an experienced crypto person got rugpulled, and they should lose respect about their crypto knowledge. But that doesn't mean it's immoral to get tricked by a company that lies to you and the public.

In this particular case it seemed immoral to be offering 100 to 1 when he knew about ver who he claims is a scammers involvement in the company(or not updating people after he found out, not sure if it was before or after his insane 100 to 1 offer). Or the immorality comes from him over stating/representing his crypto expertise and insulting people calling it a potential ponz etc.

The 100 to 1 claim in and of itself seems immoral honestly with or without ver involvement. As you point out there is likely no way he should be that certain or it atleast in the eyes of most people would likely tend them to believe he has done above and beyond when it comes to DD.

Anyways when I said "like doug polk himself" it wasn't about his morality when it came to coinflex, I was talking about how absurd his stances were on other people who promoted things in the past.

He said "not your keys, not your crypto" in his recent tweet, so why didn't he mention this when promoting Coinflex?

He doesn’t have to figure it out. He just has to show that he did a good job trying. If they lie and deceive him, that’s on them. But if he doesn’t dig deep enough, that’s on him.

News flash to people talking about due diligence. Not much due diligence is needed when they offering 8-20% interest rates, when fed funds rate was much lower. That's just common sense. Anybody with a pulse would know they were taking tremendous risk to advertise that yield. The fact so many were so easily fooled shows how financially illiterate 99.2% of people in crypto are. Another news flash the real experts in crypto are not in crypto. At the end of the day Either Polk knew what he was doing and sold out his audience or he was just very stupid when it comes to finance and doesn't even know basic **** and got fooled, either way it's a bad look. Then when you factor in his vocal past of being the moral police it's pathetic he whiny lil B about being called out on his crime. Fwiw I do think he didn't know about it, but that doesn't mean he should not be criticized. He pawned himself off as a guru when he wasn't that likely backfired on him and his audience.

Doug also said their stablecoin cannot go below $1. For him to say that as a paid spokesman is probably fraud, even if he's mistaken. If he said "I don't know how it could possibly go below $1" that's very different, as you're only guaranteeing something about your own knowledge, as opposed to the stronger guarantee of what will actually happen. Being willy nilly with your guarantees when promoting products is inviting the error that you profit off a guarantee you can't actually make. It's no longer an honest mistake at that point as it could be avoided if you cared to.

I agree. He promised a return of 0%. That’s specific.

Never forget...

Doug spent 5+ years going after DNegs for his obvious shilling of PokerStars after Dnegs said "More Rake is Better."

A cursory google search shows that he posted the first video on this topic in Oct 2016.

Holding Doug to his own standards, no one should ever forget about him shilling Coinflex and he should be confronted about it during every single public appearance that he makes.

In fact, I may just start referring to him as CoinFlex Doug in perpetuity.

That’s a fair critique

Institutional players make established markets very very efficient. There's teams of people with basically infinite money competing for scraps that make sure each corporate bond issued is priced fairly relative to each government bond. In a market like crypto without institutional players keeping things very efficient, there's plenty of ways to make 8% nearly risk free. Certain defi lending platforms are fully collateralized. So you deposit your ethereum on it or whatever, and others pay 8%/yr to borrow x token. Then if the price changes in such a way where the risk of default starts to exist, it automatically gets sold. The only risk would be if there's some hack or something. But there's no institutional money arbitraging all of these opportunities. In regulated markets where institutional players can trade, this type of fully backed lending gets paid at like the fed rate +0.25% or something small because so many players have nearly infinite money to bid the prices down.

As I understand it, Doug didn't just "claim" it was 100:1 to not be a scam. He offered 100:1 betting odds on it not being a scam. The fact that nobody took him up on the bet means people that saw the tweet didn't believe coinflex to be a scam. It's not immoral to offer a bet that you think is fair. He wouldn't have offered the bet if he thought there was any chance it was a scam. Explain how it's immoral to stand behind your stated beliefs by offering a wager?

He's known as a very sharp professional gambler who understands EV. Him offering that bet for any reasonable amount of money surely implies he thinks hes getting the best of it, especially if you know anything about him... no reason for semantics here.

Obviously some people may have thought it was a scam or at least very risky, but once this seasoned gambler crypto vet is willing to lay 100-1 for a non trivial amount of money it may have swayed them, upon other reasons for not taking the bet... and that's the point.

I already told you what I thought was immoral about it you just don't agree.

To refresh your memory, it is highly reasonable to expect that he has gone above and beyond typical due diligence if he is laying 100 to 1 because obviously an endorsement by steph curry on something he knows nothing about is not the same as doug offering 100-1 odds, The very nature of coinflex and the returns that were offered coupled with roger vers involvement(plus our now power of hindsight) make it being 100-1 against very unlikely. Now if you want to say he was ignorant to that well then he is not the crypto genius super sharp gambler he portrays himself as, and prob shouldn't be flying around 100-1 offers influencing peoples actions especially if he didn't update said line if info became apparent after that offer. He is aware of his image and tried to cultivate it, then attempted to profit off of it. He also understands the responsibility of his opinions/words to viewers/fans/would be investors because he holds everyone else to a very high standard.

In the realm of him having to culpability and this being a non issue it's still immoral. It's immoral to not hold yourself to the same standards you judge others on especially when you are A. Profiting from it. B. Campaigned against other people who did similar non issue things and he knowingly tried to hurt their livelihood/reputation over them.

His 100-1 bet was also made to discredit/silence a critic who we now know was correct, sure he didn't know that at the time... but he should be even MORE sure than 100-1 to be even offering this/taking this action because this isn't an opinion on the weather, its essentially and endorsement of a financial investment.

You're literally not judging Doug by the same standards he has judged other people who have done less. I do not understand why. Even if you somehow still think Doug didn't act immorally here, he has then been highly immoral in the hit pieces he has put out on others. Perhaps you agree on that idk, but seem to be white knighting for him hard here.

I personally think Doug literally did literally nothing morally wrong by endorsing a company he believes in that happens to commit fraud against Doug and their clients. Further, it's absolutely baffling to me how many people think he did something morally wrong. A celebrity endorsement crosses to immoral or illegal is if they have knowledge the product is bad/fraudulent in some capacity and endorse it anyways. So no, I don't think I'm judging him on different standards than he judges others. He doesn't judge others who he feels have done literally nothing wrong.

??? Explain why he has gone after phil hellmuth and bitcoin latinum???

I'm not suggesting people hold YOU to Dougs standards, or hold others to his I'm suggesting he hold HIMSELF to them especially after all the videos/tweets he's made etc.

Also I'm more so explaining why he is getting so much backlash, it's because of how he has gone after other people for doing demonstrably less.