this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024

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HyperVerse hedge fund CEO may not exist — Investigation finds no record of identity after collapse causing an estimated $1.3 billion in customer losses (arstechnica.com)

submitted 10 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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HyperVerse hedge fund CEO may not exist — Investigation finds no record of identity after collapse causing an estimated $1.3 billion in customer losses::HyperVerse's collapse caused an estimated $1.3 billion in customer losses.

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[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 76 points 10 months ago (3 children)

This is the real endgame for AI.

Right now, we actually have available at least a path for journalists to follow to find wrongdoing by corporations.

Just wait until a future is filled with corporate boards that are all made up aliases that don't represent who the ownership and leadership really is?

CEOs and the C-Suite have hidden behind customer service and the like for decades now, insulating themselves from ever having to hear a complaint from a customer. The CEOs don't give a damn about the call center customer service workers suffering abuse from angry customers because of the CEOs own shitty decisions.

The second they can get away with hiding themselves behind false personas, they fucking will and this kind of shit is proof.

Inb4: "But these people were clearly scammers and charlatans!"

I think you misspelled "capitalist."

[–] CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 29 points 10 months ago

The real fun is trying to track down who actually OWNS these companies. They hide their names behind shell companies and redacted filings.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 9 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I think you misspelled “capitalist.”

I don't think being a capitalist requires being shady, nor that being some other economic system would stop some people being shady.

Some potential solutions: Governments could decide corporations must have actual named people in charge, ID by say passports or drivers licenses validated in person at an office to be issued an LLC or whatever.

People also do sometimes use brands or other company identifiers when deciding who to purchase from.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I don’t think being a capitalist requires being shady, nor that being some other economic system would stop some people being shady.

No, but capitalism is literally the only system built around rewarding greed, avarice, and shadyness. It literally incentivizes those things and people respond to it, sorry. It's a system that rewards the most vicious at the expense of the most kind.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That might be your framing of capitalism, but I'd argue it's one that takes into account the reality of greed and tries to harness it to run the system.

Government actors - kind of what I think of as a common alternative to capitalism - also act shady and like to hide who they are for many reasons not related to money but instead to power. They have just as much incentive, driven by a potentially similar base human desire, that are orthogonal at best to capitalism if not it's opposite. I suppose you can argue that non capitalist governments, or governments in non capitalist or capitalist societies do not have shady politicians, but that seems like a very difficult argument to make.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Of course I'm not saying greed and shadyness don't exist elsewhere, but that's ostensibly the purpose of governance is to try to create a system where that isn't happening, as much as you can try.

but I’d argue it’s one that takes into account the reality of greed and tries to harness it to run the system.

And if you really want to ignore how out of control the greed has gotten because of that, you do you, man. We're literally at a point where every major corporation has already fully captured the market, so to make any new lines of profit they're just finding ways to squeeze pennies out of consumers instead offering anything compelling. It's just nickel and diming us to death.

So yeah, it worked out fucking shitty and my framing is exactly because of the lived reality of fucking millions. Please stop acting like our lived reality is just a "framing."

No, it's our suffering under the thumb of capital. We suffer under it every day, motherfucker.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yes, capitalism is shitty. I will not say it's a good system, just that it seems to be the least bad a large scale society has managed to implement. Large attempts to explicitly be anti-capitalist didn't work out better than current day late stage capitalism by any metric I'm aware of.

But all of that is irrelevant to the main point that saying there cannot be scammers because capitalism inherently makes all participants scammers is just incorrect.

[–] msage@programming.dev 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Jesus, I hate these arguments so much.

Look at how well this works

The planet is dying, majority of people are hungry, and only the lucky few are living their own utopia, while the rest gets fucked.

And no, the 'current system' didn't help people out of poverty, instead it robbed every developing nations of their future. And everyone else, too.

I get that you said 'we got nothing better to happen', but why? US won the second war and pushed everyone to suck its dick. So like yeah, capitalism for everyone?

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You're not engaging with my actual argument that I know plenty of Capitalists who I would not classify as "scammers". The whole thing that started this was someone claiming that anyone who buys into capitalism is inherently a scammer. Clearly there's a difference between a con-artist and a regular employee at a company. There's an obvious difference between a scammer and a self employed person. Right there are 2 pretty hard to argue examples that people who buy into capitalism aren't inherently scamming anyone.

[–] msage@programming.dev 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No, no no no.

Employees are not capitalist, they are the victims and prisoners, but not 'proud capitalists'. They got 0 choice in the matter and can't escape it for their lives.

Just no.

Self-employed is also a very icky subject specially in current gig economy boom. Ask anyone participating in Amazon, Uber, Wolt etc how great it is to be self-employed. You might also be surprised.

We (as a society) like to pretend everything is going great, but even the on-the-surface rich people are on the verge of bankrupcy. And these are the top 10%. The 90% is just done, they will never own anything.

So the west (your employees and self-employed people) got scammed hard, the rest got walked over, and robbed for everything. That's capitalism.

Only the richest feel great, those who don't have to work every day for the fear of losing their roof and meals. But everyone else got scammed. And even the rich will find out, that you can't eat money.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You seem to be using a different definition of capitalist than I am familiar with. Maybe to you capitalist == con artist, which is an interesting definition but not one I've heard before.

[–] msage@programming.dev 0 points 10 months ago

Capitalist - someone who believes capital is the only measure of wealth and power. Also that capital is more important than people.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Some potential solutions: Governments could decide corporations must have actual named people in charge, ID by say passports or drivers licenses validated in person at an office to be issued an LLC or whatever.

I think the forced "this person is ultimately to be held accountable" would help a lot.

They can break it up if they want, based on company size in that country. Have responsible persons for departments and so on. But only in addition to the one at the top, so now they are jointly held accountable, each 50%, basically.

These people as you say need to be verified with ID and all, and on top of that need to have their finances registered as, like I said, they're responsible. If the company fucked it up, they fucked it up.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This sounds like a good idea, but is basically getting rid of LLCs entirely and going back to partnerships or some other structure. That said, having LLCs kind of lets people just do bad stuff and no-one is responsible. I think the idea of LLCs was potentially OK (hard to get stockholders if every investor is personally liable for what the company does), the people making decisions on a daily basis need to not be shielded IMHO. And / Or we need to get more comfortable with a corporate death sentence where courts just regularly revoke the license / charter if the company is bad enough.

[–] abhibeckert@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It’s not just stock holders. I wouldn’t even hire an employee if I was criminally liable for things they do.

Say I run a restaurant and my wait staff are photographing credit cards and selling them… that’s not my fault, nothing really I can do to prevent it.

LLCs are essential.

[–] Steve@communick.news 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yet people managed to run restaurant's, and all manor of other businesses before 1977!
(1977 is when the LLC classification was first created in Wyoming)

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

In the USA at least, that will never happen as long as corporate bribery is legal. They pay to get what they want.

[–] Evil_incarnate@lemm.ee 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Let's make an AI to run the country then. Can't bribe it, and it will work for the greater good or turn us into paperclips.

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

We are already being turned into paperclips. The machine is a profit maximizer though, not a paperclip maximizer.

[–] erwan@lemmy.ml 6 points 10 months ago

You don't need AI to create a fake person. Scammers have been doing that for decades, or stealing people's identity. Even a video can be made with an actor.

[–] Patch@feddit.uk 27 points 10 months ago

Celebrities and influencers, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, endorsed Reece Lewis as a strong leader for the HyperVerse. ... Wozniak said in a video that he supported "Steven," proclaiming, "I can’t wait for the HyperVerse.”

In 2022, a writer for the British tabloid called The Mirror, Andrew Penman, attempted to raise a red flag, noting that all three of the celebrities (Wozniak, Chuck Norris, and Lance Bass) who endorsed Reece Lewis declined to confirm ever knowing him.

Oh Woz. How the mighty have fallen. Whatever they paid you, it wasn't enough. Also you're filthy rich already FFS.

[–] kambusha@feddit.ch 15 points 10 months ago

Why wasn't the original article linked to instead? The ArsTechnica article literally just quotes the Guardian over and over.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/04/chief-executive-of-collapsed-crypto-fund-hyperverse-does-not-appear-to-exist

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 8 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

For years, rumors spread on social media that Steven Reece Lewis, the chief executive officer of a now-shuttered cryptocurrency hedge fund called HyperVerse, was a "fake person" who "doesn't exist."

Fanning out their search, The Guardian uncovered no LinkedIn account for Reece Lewis "or any Internet presence other than HyperVerse promotional material."

Celebrities and influencers, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, endorsed Reece Lewis as a strong leader for the HyperVerse.

In 2022, a writer for the British tabloid called The Mirror, Andrew Penman, attempted to raise a red flag, noting that all three of the celebrities (Wozniak, Chuck Norris, and Lance Bass) who endorsed Reece Lewis declined to confirm ever knowing him.

None of the famous figures has ever confirmed that they've met or spoken to Reece Lewis, the Guardian reported, suggesting that it was possible that all three may have been hired to do the marketing videos through Cameo.

While his identity remains in question, his pinned tweet has a link to a promo video for the HyperVerse, with a caption that reads, "where reality ends and imagination begins."

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