Crypto And Gold Experts Fight Over Alleged Coinbase Shares Dump

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Getting into a shouting match with author Nassim Taleb (who wrote the Wall Street bestseller Black Swan among many books) is never a good idea.

And thus, when technical crypto analist Scott Melker, who goes by the moniker Wolf of All Streets, chose to indeed do so over a supposed false balance sheet of Coinbase executives who had dumped their shares, he ended up being called an idiot.

It wasn’t a pretty picture in the end and we hope that some egos come out alright. What was it all about? We take a look.

Schiff blasts Armstrong for selling

It all started with a screenshot tweeted out by Dereck Coatney, a trader with no track record whatsoever. He found an excel sheet showing shares of Coinbase held by the company’s board member and their sales on the day of the IPO.

On the same day #Coinbase CEO @brian_armstrong was on @CNBC publicly pumping COIN, he was privately dumping 71% of his shares. Other insiders selling included the Pres., CAO, CPO, and CFO who dumped 63%, 86%, 97%, and 100% respectively. Union Square Venture fund also dumped 100%. pic.twitter.com/C0oqScTYbR

— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) April 18, 2021

This came to the attention of Peter Schiff, the man who touts gold and is known to all crypto fans who are constantly trolling him. Peter wasn’t too happy about all the crypto attention for Coinbase’s IPO last week, retweeted the screenshot and stated:

On the same day Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong was on CNBC publicly pumping COIN, he was privately dumping 71% of his shares. Other insiders selling included the Pres., CAO, CPO, and CFO who dumped 63%, 86%, 97%, and 100% respectively. Union Square Venture fund also dumped 100%.

The gold fan added an excel sheet showing names and share sales of Coinbase personnel to argue his standpoint.

One of the men to chime in was none other than Nassim Taleb, the famous author of books on investing and chance probability. Referring to one of this books, he answered it was all:

Reverse-skin-in-the-game. You package a company to sell it to suckers. Note, when a person with the title of Chief Accounting Officer is dumping shares, you know something is going on.

Imagine not deleting this tweet or offering an explanation when you know that it’s patently false.

An unsubstantiated spreadsheet, taken wildly out of context, showing shares listed and not total shares.

Every number shared is fake news in this context.

Disgusting. https://t.co/UlKciSgdXs

— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) April 19, 2021

It was at this point that Scott decided to call both of them out, by saying:

This is utterly fake news. This chart shows a percentage of the shares registered specifically for sale to make the direct listing possible.

Problem was that Taleb, of whom Scott admitted to be a huge fan, then answered back to him, stating:

You are also an idiot who doesn’t understand the asymmetry / sucker problem.

Ouch. We’re sure we haven’t hear the last of this. No word from Coinbase so far but it sure is entertaining.

grejak / Depositphotos.com