Script
Welcome to Proof of Stupidity, the show where we talk about the most revolutionary ideas and events in the blockchain space. Today we’re going to talk about the recent tweet from Walton that is stirring up all sorts of controversy. Let’s have a look at that tweet:
This came from the official Waltonchain Twitter following a Valentine’s competition that they themselves hosted. Now some folks out there are saying they rigged the competition because of the implicit assumption that they had fake accounts and just forgot to switch prior to making the tweet, but these folks just don’t understand how random number generators work so let me enlighten you.
Random number generators generate numbers pseudo-randomly because true randomness is not possible. Ergo, it’s possible that theoretically the random number generator could have selected Waltonchain themselves because there’s no way to limit the criteria of what would be a valid selection as then it wouldn’t be random anymore right?
This also perfectly explains why most of the winners didn’t follow the competition rules because if we think about the size of sample universe A, where entrants don’t follow the rules and sample universe B, where the entrants do follow the rules, it makes a lot of sense that sample universe A would be larger and since a random number generator can never be made to only select from specific sample universe, it makes sense that most of the winners were from sample universe A where they didn’t follow the rules.
Now up until this point, you might be thinking I’m pulling this information out of thin air but Waltonchain themselves have proven empirically that this is exactly what happened. Here’s a clip from their Instagram which illustrates that (clip shown here).
After seeing that clip, most of you have probably come to realize that there’s nothing Walton could have done to prevent this situation. So I want to imagine if you were in their shoes and your random number generator, against your desired intent (just because it’s random), selected one of your employees who just also happens to have access to the company Twitter. In fact, I want you to imagine if you’re that employee yourself – Do you want to seem ungrateful that you won just because it’s not ideal? The company could fire you if you won their competition and then didn’t seem grateful.
So the PR manager did what any rational human being would do in such a situation and decided to post that Tweet to show that they were grateful for winning that $40 worth of Walton. Some of you might be wondering why the PR manager posted on Walton’s official account rather than his own and there’s really no elaborate answer here, it’s actually quite simple: He only has a Snapchat, but the competition was for Twitter. What’s he gonna do, post a Snap about a Twitter competition? That would be an even worse blunder for their PR manager.
Unfortunately, most investors aren’t sophisticated enough to understand how random number generators actually work under the hood so they hastily came to the conclusion that the competition was rigged. As such, Walton sold off and we saw a loss in market cap of around $100 million dollars at peak.
Now that you’ve watched to this point in the video, you have a better grasp of what really happened. But I don’t this is the full story... I think this was all planned by their marketing experts – In other words, they’re so smart that they figured out that most people wouldn’t be smart enough to understand what actually happened so they decided to stage this whole event to get more publicity for their product and to buy-back some of their own tokens for a cheaper price.
I know that sounds absurd, but take a moment and think about it. What is the likelihood that the general public is going to understand that you can’t limit the sample universe for a random number generator? … I mean that’s such an absurd idea.
I guarantee you they knew most wouldn’t understand this and posted the competition anyway in hopes that something like this would happen. I say in hopes because there was no certainty that the random number generator would pick one of their employees because it’s random, but it did and they were prepared to capitalize on that situation.
I can’t tell you how impressed I am with Walton’s cunning and while it may seem questionable on an ethical front, this is the kind of brilliance I aim to cover in this series. So while this episode may be slightly different from the others in the sense that we focused more on Walton’s marketing department rather than their product, the actions behind this tweet clearly have implications on the overall strength of their entire team and I look forward to the future for Walton.
I hope you all enjoyed this episode of Proof of Stupidity – What should I explore next time?
Truly top notch planning skills in display here by the Walton team. In this crazy market that is crypto, you have to do things differently than anyone else to really stand out.
I mean it certainly broke the suspension of disbelief for a lot of people that were invested in them and will be a dark mark for a very long time, but now they have the added benefit of memedom in the whole crypto community with the likes of McAfee and Bitconnect.
And really is there anything more important than that?
Hold it, are you doing this as a series @cryptovestor? I hope so, not in a cynical sort of way, but it is a nice contrarian way of inherently loving the crytospace but being comfortable enough to cry foul and give people something to think about along the way. A nice little in depth PSA if you will.
Your videos are really quite good/thoughtful. Honestly, with all the other vloggers (and there are lots of both good and shitty ones out there) doing the usual market updates ("uhhhh, well, in today's market update, uh, well....fuckall happened) everyday along with the typical analysis on the good stuff (which is nice to see to), I think people can be lulled into a sense of status quo thinking. It's nice to see the stupid stuff highlighted, lambasted and put in its proper place/context. Nice work :)
I mean... you cant really make this stuff up. I am so looking forward to a really good and funny documentary about the crypto and ICO industry... I can tell my grandchilden about this time.
I have spent too much time on the internet... At this point I can't even tell if you're serious or not anymore
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
I like it how you said that there are no Random Number Generators, only Pseudo RNGs at the beginning of the video and then just built the whole video explaining otherwise.
Sarcasm at it's best.
That's not what he did. Pseudo randomness is the closest you can get to randomness, so once you have a good pseudo randomness you can assume you have randomness. RNG are built on some 'random' event, like processors noise, that in reality are not random but aren't predictable.
Let's say you have 1 car every 15 min on a crossroad, if the car turns left it's a 0, if it turns right it's a 1. You have a RNG, people in the car know where they are going, but not you, that's pseudo randomness.
It's important to always say that any RNG is not really random, that's a mathematical fact, but once one is validated (assume you do not know where the cars will go) you can treat it like random.
Point here is that Walton could :
I think the idea that they planned this failure isn't true at all, without necessarily discrediting @cryptovestor. I think more likely is power abusing employee getting away with it, who no one seems to be able to touch. Either that or a cheap marketing gimmick.
I think that NOTHING in life is worth risking reputation. And if WTC did do it like OP was saying, the next time they even attempt to pull something off like this again, that would be the end of their company. My 2 sats.
Sarcasm aside, is this a critique of WTC as an entire project? Or just the "ethics" of their marketing?
Man, great episode, I am now an intelect , thank you very much
OMG! 😭Cant believe I won ! Thank you Walton team ! ❤️ keep doing the great work. 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻🚀🚀🚀
lol
Really smart one, keep going like that !!!
I really enjoy your series. I can't stop laughing when I read the title.
I invest in Walton but I'm not sure how I feel as an investor about the ethics of this team. What's to prevent other schemes and price manipulation?
They should have run another pick from the pool and not chosen an employee.
They could rerun it and get even more exposure.
Thanks for sharing!
This was truly embarrassing for Walton, I'm glad I didn't invest in this one.
I appreciate all the work you do man, great to see that you're still cranking out good material!
I haven't looked at it this way. I thought that it was a mistake but I sour point quite valid. This was a good marketing strategy and they will be able to ride this for a while.
Thank you for this content! Your video as always was great.
omg, I had to watch the video twice to fully understand it, this is so funny and sophisticated 😆 love it. Proof of Stupidity is actually hard work to swallow 😆
I would like to nominate ethearnal (ICO) for the next round of Proof of Stupidity. They want to provide a solution to a non-existent problem (freelancers need tokens to get more work), claim to have a minimum viable product, and invented the ICO 2.0 by introducing a cap of how much investors can invest per hour during the ICO fund raising process. Brilliant.
So confused... but I needed to think a bit more tonight; thanks!
This is an absolutely amazing video that explores very interesting point of view. I remembered a conversation I had with a girl who was working for SEO company doing backlinks and other SEO work, and we had a conversation about cryptocurrencies somehow because she mentioned that company she works for is actually creating ICO. She jokingly said that she is pissed because everyone who joined that company a few weeks ago got their coins distributed (I would assume pre-mine or distribution to development) I can't remember exact numbers or values but it was a decent amount like 2-3 wages in Lithuania. Long story short and tl;dr is going to boil down to this.
So let's put it in this way, what if their social media manager knows that he can move a market by 10% with 1 tweet.
Why would you say 2-3 wages (like 1200 eur) in Lithuania? Are you Lithuanian by any chance?
How was that not clear, haha? I wanted to just give some context in regards to a place, where it is not silicon valley money and millions spewing around. Sometimes social media manager and someone in charge of these tweets can be just some freelancer and if ICO is successful they would have seen major gains and start feeling greedy because, all of a sudden. It could be that You have 1 year's worth of salary in that coin at this point and writing a tweet...
Which doesn't even hurt them in a long run...just increases awareness about the project overall on top of getting 10% of Coins back during a dip. Becomes scary though in my opinion.
Its sarcasm so good. Got to love this series
This is crazy. But the question remains is why would they want to risk everything just for a buyback? Market cycles would have ensured the price to go down at some point anyway.
If this was a staged plan then I must say they are genius! The way they pulled it off might not have been the best but either way this opens a new realm for new opportunities of taking advantage of purposed and targeted sell offs attacks. Let's hope this does not become a common thing since the whole idea of this market is transparency.
Nice artwork you've been using lately
I just love how people don't get your sarcasm, thank you for the laugh amongst all the ignorance. keep up the great and informative work!
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