Li Ken-un I made it a rule of thumb for my family and extended family: if you hear a “limited offer,” “opportunity,” “emergency,” or “required urgent action” with “BitCoin” or gift cards, discredit all of the information you’ve already heard or are about to hear from the person or entity. This is on top of a pile of rules of thumbs I’ve given them over the years. Reply
Shiznizzle Go in there with a bulldozer and scoop up the machine. I would. Then go to work on it with power tools. Reply
cyrusfox Zaranthos said: Crypto was always a bad idea. Use massive amounts of electricity and computing power to make fake money. That energy and computing power would be better spent elsewhere for sure. People used to donate idle computing cycles to decoding the human genome or other worthwhile causes, now more people try to generate crypto. Mine some gold or buy some, at least that has real value. Crypto is clearly being abused in the situations this article talks about, and the scams and losses are awful. But that doesn’t mean crypto itself was a bad idea or “fake money.” Crypto is filling a real market need: unhindered (unfreezable) and uncapped monetary transfer with a public ledger and full visibility. For certain use cases, especially cross‑border transfers or people outside stable banking systems, that’s genuinely valuable. It is one of the most secure ways to transfer value if you know what you’re doing. Its irreversibility is a feature of the system, not a bug. It exists specifically so that no one can arbitrarily reverse or freeze your funds. Because of that, you have to be absolutely sure you have the right party, address, and that you are not being scammed before doing any crypto transaction. There are basically no built‑in safeguards. If you want safeguards, you pay for an escrow service or use a regulated intermediary, just like you would with wires, money orders, or other high‑risk transfers. On the “fake money” point, most money today is just digital entries in a bank database. Its value comes from trust and usefulness, not because it is backed by gold. Gold has real value for some reasons: scarcity, history, industrial use. Crypto has different sources of value: predictable supply, portability, censorship resistance, and the ability to be moved globally in minutes. Whether that matters to you depends on your situation. Regarding the article, I do think it is morally wrong to hold the ATM owner fully responsible for fraud committed by third‑party scammers especially when most atm's already have clear warnings and instructions in place warning about this risk. If this legal approach sticks, bitcoin ATM owners will have to add delays, extra checks, and escrow‑like behavior. That will increase fees and complexity and push the system toward behaving like a bank, even though crypto was built to be decentralized and resistant to exactly that kind of control. The scams and targeting of elderly people are serious problems and deserve strong law‑enforcement and education responses. But saying “crypto was always a bad idea” ignores both the legitimate use cases and the specific properties that some people actually need. Reply
bill001g I suspect the use of gift cards for fraudulent uses is much higher than crypto. Both are very hard to trace but when they do actually catch these guys they get almost no penalty. They caught some scammers of elderly near here lately but they were in a city that will even give murders probation. If they chopped a hand off and probation maybe but all probation means is you have to do what everyone else already does, go to work and pay your way and not commit any crimes. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cryptocurrency/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cryptocurrency/americans-lost-usd333-million-to-bitcoin-atm-fraud-in-2025-fbi-says-there-is-a-clear-and-constant-rise-of-this-scam-and-that-it-is-not-slowing-down#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.