the difference here is that he is actively doing something that lowers the price of the coins the customer wants to mine...that is next level fucked up
Sure, and he might even possibly be colluding with Charlie Lee. If you pay attention on twitter you know for sure they are both in that "Dragons Den" group. Which, sounds to me like a racketeering group.
Cryptocurrency is a fine demonstration on why the stock market became regulated. Over time some regulations might have been worked around but back when they were first implemented large corporations were outright colluding with competitors, creating monopolies, price fixing, and so on.
Finally, I'm not all that convinced that previous asic retailers didn't do something similar in manipulating prices to give the impression of profitability before crashing the market. It wasn't quite as overt, granted, but it was there.
