People are acting like this man got conned or like they’re stupid. This was a bribe for a get out of jail free card. If you’re rich and make your money in black market ways this is the best possible decision you can make. Your name is on a list in front of the president even if you didn’t meet him. That means a pardon in the future.

In my experience, extreme wealth is a sign of one or more of: inherited wealth, lack of morality, lack of empathy, lack of humility, lack of self-reflection, or luck. In most cases these people are simply so broken that they'll justify exploiting other people to get what they want in ways that people with morals simply refuse to.

Intelligence isn't a major factor.

Also they're willing to spend millions of dollars on a dinner like this because what's the downside? Losing that money won't affect their lifestyle in any way. Worst-case scenario, they get a story out of it. Best-case scenario, they get face time with the most powerful person on the planet and maybe a sympathetic ear if they get in trouble with the law (since all of them are privately breaking the law in some way).

Despite what rich people want you to believe you don't actually have to be that smart to be rich. You just have to be lucky and ruthless. Being lucky enough to be born into the right family for example has a disproportionately bigger impact to becoming wealthy than your personal achievements. What you lack in luck or smarts you make up by being ruthless and steal and exploit. Your employees, your community, your government and so on.

"Influencer" is the load bearing word in the title.

I guess we gotta be the change we want to see in the world

But I also have no time to moderate so nah

Used to be "honor among thieves" or something like that but these guys are so much lower than thieves

Hey, what is that? I can’t see it very well.

Something to remember when reading these numbers is that they aren't real money, they're the possibility of real money.

For example if we ignore the initial coin launch where it spiked wayyyy up and then crashed hard, the price of the coin was ~$16 per coin at the time of the event and likely the number being used in the article.

However just a month or so prior the coin was ~$8 per coin. So if this person was brand new to the crypto game they only needed to have $180k. Now 180k is still some major money and getting that exact exchange requires some luck. However that's not the point. The point is that this individual never had $360k, they only ever had at worst $180k. (It's possible they bought the coin at launch, lost it all and kept it, so maybe they had $720k and that got halved.)

But remember, crypto coin trading is gambling. If 38 people walk into a casino, walk up to a roulette table and each puts $10k on every number 1-36, plus 0 & 00 guess how much money the winner gets? $360k. We write the article about the person who won $360k. The other 37 people are just "the others".

Now if I risk $10k and win $360k I absolutely cash out and call it a day. I'm a winner. But if I don't cash out... Do I still have $360k? I have chips. What if instead I spend the next few months at the casino? What if I spend years in the casino? If I'm lucky my chip count goes up. If I'm unlucky my chip count goes down.

Don't get me wrong. There is potentially real money here, but only if I cash out. Let's go back to our social media influencer. They had $360k when the coin was worth ~$16 per coin. The coin is down and now worth ~$13 per coin or $292.5k. But you know gamblers. Never quit on a winning streak. Never leave on a loss.

So did this person have the ability to have $360k, sure. Did they have $360k, no. (Also this assumes the crypto exchange you have your "money" in allows you to cash out, which is not a certainty. Sometimes they limit how much you can take out at a given time. Sometimes they don't have the money, remember FTX?)

Roflmao?

Only 200%? I'd expect at least 10×.

Iirc Trump steaks are frozen. Walmart steaks are quite good and never frozen.

Have you seen beef prices in the US? The markup is only 150%

An influencer is not "the elite".

This is the consequence of capitalism and intergenerational wealth

They inherited it from their parents, and because they were rich, they didn't bother getting an education

I've got bad news for you about what that says about the rest of us lol.

It was heavily guarded with armed humans and surveillance robots

How do you expect something to happen?

This is how we end drought, people! Cry those salty--- aw crap. That's not gonna work.