1. Foundational Lie - Here, the scammers create an initial pool of marks who will, after the bubble begins to inflate, take over the brunt of the scammers' heavy lifting by unwittingly duping friends, family and others into buying the scam. These are the few who will, at least for a while, actually make money (for most, gains will never be realized as they hold to the bottom, however) and thus they are needed to lend credibility to the scam during its run-up. LINK's Phase 1 was absolutely textbook: see, e.g., the /ourcoin/ memes, the construction of the "link marine" groupthink/cult-mentality, the non-stop overhyping of an essentially meaningless "oracle problem", and even the use of Sergey/BigMacs as sort-of mascots for the token.
2. Bubble Inflation/False Partnerships/Social Media - The scam begins to generate external hype among its true marks - normies - through a combination of exaggerated stories, false partnerships and spam by core Phase 1 marks. As Phase 2 progresses, Phase 1 marks begin to more aggressively shill on behalf of the "project" in which they're by now heavily - perhaps entirely - invested, and their paper-gains seem to backstop their claims, which massively inflates the bubble. This is where LINK was back in early spring/summer of this year: many were fooled by the Oracle/Google posts (now known to be nothing burgers) as well as by unsubstantiated and obviously false rumors involving Microsoft, Docusign, Facebook and others, not to mention relentless social media, Jow Forums and Reddit marketing.
3. Big Listing; "The Pump" - The scam, having reached critical mass in Phase 2, now opens the floodgates by securing a big listing and empowering normies, who have been chomping at the bit to throw their money away, with the means to blindly FOMO. See the Coinbase listing and the huge pump that took place over the following days.
4. Exit Scam; "The Dump" - The scam is in its terminal phase. Having reached the point of maximum financial return, the initial scammers (often the development team itself) begin to dump their pre-mined tokens on unsuspecting bagholders. Well-constructed scams can maintain a relatively favorable price by function of the sheer delusion of their bagholders (in LINK's case, this evidenced perfectly by legions of "dr;ns" drones who artificially kept the price over $2 for as long as they did), but the end is always unavoidable. In LINK's case, the 700k team dumps ushered in the beginning of this phase. As this phase reaches its zenith, third-parties begin to wise up and articles about how the scam is in fact a scam begin to appear, as is currently happening in the case of LINK.
>you are here
5. Heat Death - Having run its course, the scam has now lost 80%+ of its ATH value, which ATH it will literally never re-attain. Dump velocity slows, and the price begins a slow bleed down to $0, ultimately being abandoned as the team moves on to other projects or "retires" without fanfare. 2-3 years later the final bagholders sell at complete and utter losses. People forget the scam even happened.
Imagine writing all this shit lmao. didn't even read past the first line. Good lord pajeet if you spent as much effort on your homework as you did on your fud you might actually pass.
Jacob Sanders
I made a ton of money on ETH back in 2017 on the recommendation of Jow Forums and sometimes feel like I owe the community something as a result. Sorry you guys won't listen to reason, but these scams wouldn't work if everyone had a functioning brain, I suppose.
Samuel Reed
you're a perfect example of the mark tho
Brayden Lee
give me an email
Charles Carter
ETH is a literal shitcoin compared to link
Charles Gray
Never bought it even when it was shilled in th beginning. Would be nice if I loaded up then, but oh well
Definitely not touching this disgusting piece of shit now though that’s for sure
Even if I was LARPing about making gains in 2017 (I'm not, and I don't know why someone making money in 2017 seems foreign to you considering how many people in fact did), it doesn't change the fact that what I wrote was true. Try attacking the argument, not the person.
William Martinez
>the thing LINK serves is a shitcoin LMAO THE UTTER STATE IF DELUDED LINKOIDS
Thanks for this detailed summary, OP. If deluded linkies won't listen, let them lose their pocket money. I would rather cash out profits now and put it into the next hype and make more money though. Hold is a meme and won't work in 2019 and didn't work in 2018. Chart looks like any other bleeding to death shitcoin. Not my money, so I shouldn't care.
Banks and fiat non-backed currency is the cause of 99% of the world's problems.
Cameron Fisher
Very based post. There will be lots of competition that will be coming up onto chainlink with better technologies. At the current moment chainlink is a complete pump and dump scam and if it is to be used in real world applications it must be able to compete
