Topic: Something Fishy about Steemit and Steem? - page 6. (Read 6184 times)

Man, you are easily impressed.

Read the Vice Magazine article:

"Atlas Mugged: How a Libertarian Paradise in Chile Fell Apart"
http://www.vice.com/print/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10

that I linked in my original post on this thread.

You just posted an article by the guy who was Jeff Berwick's partner in the land deal in Chile where 30 people lost a total of 7 million dollars. He, Jeff and the third guy all blame each other for making the money "disappear."

MWD

This guy has some realistic blogs on Chile:

https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@escapeamericanow/escape-america-now-is-on-steemit

I take a lot of heat for going after people like this, and for doing it over and over and over. But I do it over and over because there are always new people who haven't heard about it.

If I can keep one person from losing their life savings, or even from wasting a bunch of money / time / effort, it's all been worth it.

MWD

Thanks for the link about chile, it is a very interesting read. i thought about going to chile and maybe hooking up with some libertarians out there. Now i guess ill keep myself to myself, all utopias end up rotten.

Digital alchemy? Yes. I could see them getting VERY excited.

Jeff has always been into "get rich quick" ideas. Speaking of which, whatever happened to his Bitcoin ATM company? A few years back he was VERY excited about that, and looking for investors and then he quietly jumped out of it without much fanfare.

Everyone remembers when this type of person gets it right (stopped clock) but less people point it out when these folks have failure after failure.

Jeff did make a few million in the dot com boom years back in the day. It was a very "right place, right time" thing, and he has been playing the part of millionaire playboy since, even as he's hit "almost broke", as he described it to me. (A real multi-millionaire probably wouldn't bother with "blogging for dollars" either.)

He's still looking for another "easy money" payoff like he had in the mid-late 90s.

He also talks like he got into BTC when the getting was really good, but did he?


I wasn't implying my dad invented it. Just that I heard it young and it made an impression on me. My dad was also fond of saying "it's a poor workman who blames his tools." He didn't invent that either, but I use it all the time. It is SO commonly applicable.



I also doubt that. I was talking about Steemit.


Jeff Berwick loooooooooooooooooooooooooooves Casey. Doug Casey is genuine long-time multi-millionaire and an actual financial advisor whose opinion is valued by smart people.

Casey is who Berwick wants to be when he grows up.

So set aside the Larimer thing for a minute. Steemit's poster boy, Jeff Berwick, wrote this:

"How I Made $15,000 in 12 Hours on the New Blockchain Based Social Media Site Steemit"
https://steemit.com/steemit/@dollarvigilante/how-i-made-usd15-000-in-12-hours-on-the-new-blockchain-based-social-media-site-steemit

Now, first of all, if you got an email with a subject line of "How I Made $15,000 in 12 Hours....", you would delete it without a second thought, right?

Yup.

(By the way, when people address Jeff with "that sounds too good to be true" he says "people said that about Bitcoin at first." Which is true, but is also what EVERY SCAM COIN AUTHOR SAYS WHEN CRITISIZED. LOL.)

Now add to it, JEff Berwick, the author of that blog post, I'm not saying he's a scammer, but I did 600 dollars worth of work for him a few years ago, and he still owes me 200 bucks of it. When I asked for it, he said he forgot he hired me, then reluctantly paid me 2/3 of it. When I said to him "you millionaires never pay your fucking bills" he said he was "almost broke."

He presents himself as a jet-setting playboy millionaire though. That's why people pay him for financial advice.

He's also been doing FUD for a decade. Every other word that comes out of his mouth, forever, is about how the US is going to collapse next week and he has the solution to save your money. Including those passports.....

He was one of three people behind this ALLEGED land grab / scheme / plan / whatever....7 million dollars of investor money went missing. But Jeff Berwick and the other two principles all blame each other:

"Atlas Mugged: How a Libertarian Paradise in Chile Fell Apart"
http://www.vice.com/print/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10

Jeff been accused of scamming people out of 30,000 US per person to sell them passports that allegedly never arrive:
https://www.google.com/#q=jeff+berwick+passport+scam

One of those^ is actually video someone obtained that sounds like Jeff actually doing the passport deal thing over Skype with someone. ALLEGEDLY.

etc. etc. etc.

I am NOT saying he's a scammer, but a lot of people say he's a scammer and present evidence. But hey, they're probably all wrong. I know there are a TON of posts on bitcointalk praising his "vision" (a lot from accounts that were new at the time. There are also new accounts praising Steem HARD on here.)

SO.....here's my question: Berwick says he just heard of Steemit and Steem a few days ago and is crowing about it as a lowly user who has no involvement beyond that, but made five figures in a day. HOWEVER

I SMELL INDICATIONS THAT MAYBE JEFF BERWICK IS A SILENT PARTNER IN STEEMIT.

Ian Freeman, another libertarian somebody (who's actually a great guy, and also is the guy who introduced Bitcoin Jesus, Roger Ver, to Bitcoin back when it was easy to mine)... Ian has been on Steemit for a week
https://steemit.com/steemit/@ftlian/steemit-just-got-discussed-on-national-radio-for-several-minutes

Ian is about as popular as Jeff Berwick. Ian said he (Ian) has made about two dollars in a week on Steemit. And it's in some kind of "company store scrip" that he can't cash out for a while until it reaches some threshold.

Speaking of company scrip, I did some work for Bitshares about 18 months ago. Was offered "all now in Bitcoin, or all in Bips" (their "company store scrip", basically sort of stock in the company used early on to pay contractors).

My distant recollection is that I said "how about half in BTC, half in Bips?" and got paid about 200 bucks in BTC, and the other half in Bips. The Bips, I"m told, are now worth about 100 bucks. I wrote a guy there and said I'd like to be cashed out, and they can't remember if I was paid or not.

You could say it's my responsibility to remember, but really, shouldn't a company know if they owe someone or not?

Daniel Larimer, can you please find out if y'all still owe me a hundred bucks, and pay it out of your large share of the premine worth a quarter of a billion dollars if you do owe it to me? I think you do.

We talked about all this and more on the second half of our show tonight, starting 49 and a half minutes in:
http://www.freedomfeens.com/?p=12373

Jeff Berwick will be on Free Talk Live today (Monday August 8th) pimping Steemit. Free talk Live takes calls. Not sure when he'll be on but the show is live from 7pm-10pm Eastern time.
Toll Free: 1-855-450-FREE    Skype: LRN.FM

If Free Talk Live is not on the radio in your town, you can listen here:
http://lrn.fm/
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I think one reason people don't speak out about Jeff more is that he has a history of threatening people who irk him on the Internet.

It may sound petty to some that I'm complaining about a few hundred bucks that millionaires owe me for work I did. But I think it's important to share some first-hand experience with these folks.

My dad always said that "People behave with large sums the same way they behave with small sums."

MWD
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Edit on Aug 8:

After 90 minutes of hearing Jeff Berwick just now utter complete and uninformed bullshit about Steem on the radio, I'm revising my thought on Steem. I think Jeff might just be a useful idiot and the whole thing might be more of a Ponzi scheme. Investors' money pays in to pay out initial well-known writers to get them talking about how great it is, which brings in more investors, ....you know the rest.