yeah i was actually intending to say "and then if lincoln produces a faulty car that kills people it's absurd to then blame the spokesman and say he should have known and prevented it"

Ehh, I don’t think it’s an apt analogy. Doug had the CEO on his podcast multiple times. I imagine Doug’s audience was exactly the type of customer CoinFLEX wanted (i.e. poker players/gamblers who have money but maybe aren’t that knowledgeable about the space. It seems that marketing was one of the aspects of their business CoinFLEX did well). That CEO suggested that people ‘put all of their money into crypto and stable coins.’ on Doug’s channel. There’s a significant difference between your example even if the liability is the perhaps the same (zero).

Yeah this can hardly be considered passive endorsement, it’s not like he only lent his image to coinflex for a couple of advertisement campaigns. He was pushing this hard, had the CEO on his podcast and put out a bold 100:1 bet against exactly what’s happening now. Not sure what he did with negative comments in regards to coinflex on his YT channel, but on social I heard people say he was policing them.

Again I would like to reiterate that I think Doug didn’t screw anyone willingly, but with all of the above I’d say he vouched his reputation for it.

Poug Dolk is what he is.

I don't really see any hidden character traits or something. He's an intelligent, talented, opportunistic twat.

This is absolutely the best summary of what is going on.
Well done.

As if corrupt companies show they're corrupt in their public financials and quaterlies

Ever heard of Enron?
They fooled literally every financial corp and bank in the world to the point they were one of the top 5 largest companies on the planet and it was all built on lies.
No one knew until it was over.
For a tiny crypto company to hide problems would be infinitely easier

I'm sick of crypto.

Read what Warren Buffet has said about Crypto.

It was *also their tax firm, I believe Arthur Anderson that did the fooling. That’s why Arthur Anderson doesn’t exist anymore. Lots of people knew they just lied.

CoinFlex has entered the chat....

The amount of Doug Polk finesse in this thread is too damn high.

I've watched enough American Greed on CNBC to know that when someone offers you a "Stable Investment" w/ double digit returns and they imply that you can't lose money, you're getting scammed.

That's the bottom line here. If your due diligence on this never went past Doug's endorsements, you really can't be upset about losing money.

Even Doug's due diligence was garbage. There were people on Twitter telling Doug this would collapse and Doug's response was to offer them 100/1 odds that it wouldn't. If I were a Doug Polk fanboy, and I saw Doug offering people 100/1 that he was right and they were wrong.

I'd back up the truck and load up on Flex "Because Doug's rich, is well versed in crypto and he knows what he's talking about." /sarcasm

But as evidenced in this thread, Doug Polk can sell sand in the desert successfully. When you're selling poker education, that's an amazing skill to have.

I'm surprised Doug is answering questions here.

If litigation ever comes of this, I can only imagine what attorneys would do with some of his responses if Doug were ever deposed.

Ok - my advice to Doug would be to hire SrslySirious to make a parody video of Doug. That would restore my faith in his impartiality and would be very on-brand. I know one guy here did it already but we need a proper one :]

a PROPER one?!?!

Doug, as a casual listener to your podcasts for years, when I heard you advertising a company by essentially saying invest your money here for guaranteed 15% returns (obviously not a direct quote, just the gist of what I thought I heard you saying), I immediately asked myself, is he a crook, or is he so naïve and/or stupid that he really believes what he is saying?

It sounds like a scam, but on the off chance it isn't, on the off chance that it could really work, there just HAS to be a huge amount of risk for that return; there is no way it should responsibly be pumped up and promoted to the masses.

Is there any way in a million years Daniel Negreanu could start shilling for easy 15% returns on something with no barrier to entry, and you wouldn't call him out for obviously conning or actively scamming?

It's a pretty useless summary since everyone already knows this.

The problem people have, is him shilling, and it comes to light because it backfired badly. It really just depends on what morals you embrace. Doug's responses in this thread have confirmed these firmly. The 'absolute best summary' has also confirmed that poster missed the point, thus has different morals, as the analogy is flawed concerning context /product / dynamics / consumer input (crypto = / = buying whatever Lincoln sells)

Nothing wrong with having different morals, people tend to have different views on these things.

But to some, those who I would consider the ones with better ethics, they will find Doug behaved like an opportunistic shill, the responses in this thread included, no matter how stupid other people may be.

I would agree with said people.

Super easy if the company is publicly traded yes. If private such in this case then almost zero chance you'd be able to view them unless you're taking an active investment in the company. Stop living up to your username and posting pointless words in this thread.

Simple to me. Doug either understood 15%+ per year was a scam in which case he was knowingly pushing a scam. He did not understand it was a scam in which case he is too foolish/ignorant on financial matters to ever be trusted in that field. Given he seemed to have no problems seeing other crypto scams were scams when it was others getting paid the shill money but claims he was unable to see it when he was the one getting the shill money I know which seems more likely to me. YMMV

To Quote Doug Polk in this thread he says ``The sick thing is, I cant think of a single sign along the way''.

Lol, if you could get a 15 percent return on coinflex why would anyone ever buy a stock or leave their money in their bank account or buy property or treasuries.

This guy is a complete *****ng coward, who refuses to own up to his mistake like a man, because he's now sh*t scared of being sued.

I am not a lawyer; but I wouldn't be surprised if Doug is exposed to civil litigation. Whether Doug has any liability here, I'm not sure, but it's clear he has not talked to an attorney about this matter because he's in this thread trying to finesse the poker community. I feel like most attorneys would tell him to button up, direct any questions to counsel while he and his attorney devise a way to minimize his exposure to this.

That's just my 2 flexes.

You will never win an argument with a narcissist. Doug will come up with an answer for anything, regardless of anything. Always.

Yep. You can't feign ignorance in the face of something so obviously dodgy. Unless you want to concede you are an absolute moron.

Doug, will you now know go on a Doug Polk Apolkogy tour?

Well, “I am not at fault here” is simply untrue no matter how you twist it.

You leveraged your influence to profit and people trusted your word and invested because of it. Your knowledge or complicity of wrong doing is erroneous to your fault in that aspect

The fact you can’t cash out your profit is erroneous

my 2c,

i think for as many days as doug had to put this together, it wasn't polished.

not having equity or being able to see into the goings-on was dumb.

i am personally super disappointed with all of it from a philosophical perspective. crypto and defi is about self custody and yield in a transparent beautiful free market. doug chose an opaque shadow bank with roger ver as an investor. i know doug more than most here (looking at all the angry 20 post NVGers), and i think he made an honest mistake, but it's an egregious mistake that will tear him a new @sshole and he will learn from it.

i am not a lawyer ldo but i reckon plenty of people will challenge the notion that doug is not at fault. i've been interested in this space for years and didn't know about coinflex til doug. i'll leave that one up to law experts tho.

You fail to realise that when presented with an obvious scam, your due diligence should have been to reject it. If someone approaches you to promote a new ointment that cures cancer, you think your due diligence will just extend to asking them questions and getting a bunch of answers before promoting the product just because they convinced you it worked? You must a be a moron to think so. You are nowhere smart as you think you are. These guys saw you coming a mile away.

You don't even know what the term 'due diligence' means. I will give you a clue, its far more than simply asking a bunch of people if those guys were 'cool'

The vast majority of average people off the street would know that gtd 20% return annually sounds like total BS, and is a huge red flag. Yet you swallowed it hook line and sinker. (apparently)

You think these guys come up to Doug looking like used car salesman scammers, but the truth of it is they come looking like really sharp crypto-savvy nerds, no different from a lot of poker players.

Doug’s fatal flaw was he trusted and didn’t verify. He had a lot of shared connections vouch yet never knew how the sausage was actually made. They said “we are collateralized”, Doug said “ok”, then they aren’t actually collateralized.

Doug can say he’s not at fault for this, but there’s a degree of fault in stapling your name to something and not actually knowing everything about the company. Certain UltimateBet and FTP pros come to mind!

Again, leave it to lawyers, but the lesson is if you put your name behind a brand you better know how that brand operates. This is ending up one of the worst case scenarios.