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Stock-Tracking Tokens Debut With Price Chaos, Amazon Token Spikes 100x (msn.com) 44

Digital tokens designed to track popular stocks have suffered extreme price deviations since launching two weeks ago, with an Amazon-tracking token briefly spiking to more than 100 times the underlying stock's closing price. The token AMZNX hit $23,781.22 on crypto trading platform Jupiter on July 3, while Amazon shares had closed the previous day around $200.

A similar Apple-tracking token jumped to $236.72 on July 3, representing a 12% premium to the actual stock price. Companies including Robinhood, Kraken, Gemini and Bybit launched these blockchain-based versions of U.S. stocks in late June for non-U.S. customers. Robinhood is facing scrutiny from Lithuania's central bank after launching tokens tied to OpenAI and SpaceX without permission from either company, prompting OpenAI to disavow the tokens on social media.

Stock-Tracking Tokens Debut With Price Chaos, Amazon Token Spikes 100x

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  • by kwelch007 ( 197081 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2025 @11:29AM (#65524716) Homepage

    Basically by definition. The SEC should and almost certainly will crack down on them.

    • Basically by definition. The SEC should and almost certainly will crack down on them.

      And based on what they did to prevent it, I’m guessing they started as SEC company perks**? Shouda, Woulda, and Couda their legal team?

      Next weeks headline: SEC Integrity Enforcement Agency Christens New Corporate Yacht, the Ponzi Fonzi.

      (** - American lawmakers enjoy Insider Trading as a job perk now thanks to Pelosi. After all, who can survive on that $175K/year pittance.)

      • Like the current Administrator or not, I think their direction on legitimizing Cryptocurrencies is pretty clear. The GENIUS act is the prime example. Allowing non-regulated Securities like in TFS/TFA would be counter to the initiatives they are pushing.

        • Like the current Administrator or not, I think their direction on legitimizing Cryptocurrencies is pretty clear. The GENIUS act is the prime example.

          It’s quite difficult to envision the benefits of a new beautiful apple hanging in an orchard rotten to the core. This is well beyond appointed scapegoats. A summary of The Act of GENIUS:

          The bill mandates stringent standards for reserves, audits, and transparency for issuers and establish a dual federal and state supervisory system to mitigate financial stability risks and protect consumers.

          Sounds good, doesn’t it? Except when you realize this market-speak is coming from a financial system that created the infamously un-auditable Federal Reserve that abandoned the gold standard decades ago, in a nation $35 trillion in debt. We expect THAT to define the standard of stability in shitcoin successfu

      • American lawmakers enjoy Insider Trading as a job perk now thanks to Pelosi

        Yes, due to Nancy Pelosi's single-handed actions.

        Wait, what?

    • by jythie ( 914043 )
      Are they securities, or just outright gambling? You don't get any actual stock, just betting on a stock going up or down and keeping a slip.
    • We are the level of corruption that we haven't seen since right before the great depression. The last thing the SEC is going to do is crackdown on crap like this. We are so fucking screwed...

      Assuming Trump doesn't back down, and honestly he very rarely does anymore despite what the media will tell you, then the entire economy is about to collapse.

      Every single system designed to protect you has failed. Every check and balance is gone. Stay safe out there people. Unfortunately it's every dog for himse
    • there seems to be a trend of financial products being offered to users (at various levels- personal, institutional) without SEC oversight... there is a period of abuse and fraud... then a few years later, SEC or other regulatory bodies "crack down"... then, slowly, things are somewhat regulated in certain jurisdictions for years until there is a cohesive regulatory framework... by then... billions have been swindled with little to no recourse for those that were screwed.

  • Looks like a great scam. I wish it were mine.

    Sure, pay a premium over stock price because it's a crypto token or something's

    How fucking dumb are people?

    Scam away!

    • Looks like a great scam. I wish it were mine.

      Sure, pay a premium over stock price because it's a crypto token or something's

      Yea, it's just another derivative; and something you can already do with many available choices. From TFA, it says the company selling the tokens is buying shares, but that could mean a lot of things beyond holding the actual shares. TFA goes on to say since tokens are unregulated you have no idea who is buying or selling, leave it rife for manipulation; although no one would do that ever...

      How fucking dumb are people?

      There is no bound to stupidity, just ask Einstein.

      Scam away!

      They will and laugh to the bank.

      • What are the supposed benefits over buying the stock itself?
        • by paiute ( 550198 )
          You don't have to go to a stuffy old stockbroker. You can buy these babies in the alley from the same dude who sells you meth.
        • Re:Scam (Score:4, Informative)

          by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2025 @01:55PM (#65525092)

          What are the supposed benefits over buying the stock itself?

          A number of derivatives allow you to control many more shares than if you bought them outright, thus giving you the opportunity for more significant gains than if you bought stock. For example, if you buy a stock at 10Euros and it goes up 2 Euros you make 2 Euros, if the same money bought 110 options you make 10 Euros (20 from sale less 10 spent). Of course, if it doesn't go up enough or drops you lose 10 Euros when the options expire. The TFA wasn't clear what the token actually had as the underlying assets so it's hard to say what is the benefit and risk exposure.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Yep, more gambling brought to the marks. Just without the limits and the safety-measures. People really are, on average, morons.

    • by zlives ( 2009072 )

      not a scam, technically money laundering.

    • by jythie ( 914043 )
      Reminds me of that brief period in crypto where you could buy tokens of various influencers and essentially bet on how popular they were going to be. No actual connection to the person,.. just a 3rd party token with their name.
  • Plain Bagel (Score:4, Informative)

    by lazarus ( 2879 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2025 @11:43AM (#65524770) Journal

    This guy is pretty dry, but he does a good job of breaking down [youtu.be] what these are, how they work and the challenges with them. TLDR: You don't own the security, the token creator does (Robinhood, etc) with just a promise to pay you if they sell their positions. You don't get to collect dividends of any equity, etc.

  • Why the hell can't someone tell me of this kind of bullshit ahead of time so I can profit and retire? WTF?

  • Tell a programmer the crypto is logical.
  • yeah no regulation (Score:4, Interesting)

    by migos ( 10321981 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2025 @12:00PM (#65524828)
    Which means no audit on underlying security. Like the tether scam in the early days. If it's on Solana, it's probably for money laundering too since it's harder to track. It's the same reason Trump released his tokens on Solana.
  • by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2025 @12:37PM (#65524910)

    This is beginning to make me wonder. Exactly how many massive scams is society able to absorb before it all starts collapsing on itself? It's starting to feel very much like our entire economy is, if not outright built on scams to begin with, becoming so entangled in scams that all it would take is the right pieces falling at the same time and the whole thing will come tumbling down all at once. How many scams and outright fraud-based "currencies" are we capable of supporting without a safety net? Is there anyone driving this ship? Or are we simply careening the economy around wildly until we slam into the shore of reality?

    • I give no shits for anyone losing money to this kind of stuff.

      It's like I keep telling someone I know who keeps coming up with various bullshit ways to make money: "there is no quick and easy path for people like us. You just have to work for it."

      • I give no shits for anyone losing money to this kind of stuff.

        It's like I keep telling someone I know who keeps coming up with various bullshit ways to make money: "there is no quick and easy path for people like us. You just have to work for it."

        It's cool and macho to say "you do you, bro"...but the economy is an ecosystem...some TOTAL MORON may do something stupid with their money...but here's the thing...morons have a bad habit of breeding and having families. So the MORON loses his life savings...should his kids starve? Nope...as a society, we don't allow that, so you and I have to pay for their kids....and they have a bad habit of having loving parents who bail them out...again...it's easy to say the parents are MORONS, but the alternative i

    • by Rinnon ( 1474161 )

      How many scams and outright fraud-based "currencies" are we capable of supporting without a safety net?

      We'll find out when the next market crash happens.

      Is there anyone driving this ship?

      The invisible hand of the market; which is just code for a collective of individuals who are all trying to get rich quick at the expense of anyone else (IE: some fool will buy for more than I paid.)

      Or are we simply careening the economy around wildly until we slam into the shore of reality?

      Economic history is punctuated by market crashes that are mostly predicated on something careening out of control. The USA instituted a number of guardrails (regulations) after the great depression to help prevent that from happening again; but those have since be

      • The USA instituted a number of guardrails (regulations) after the great depression to help prevent that from happening again

        The biggest and most important isn't so much a guardrail as a fundamental change in what money is: The shift from metal-backed currency to debt-backed currency, AKA fiat currency. Because fiat currency is backed only by contractual obligations to repay it, the money supply can expand rapidly when times are good and contract gracefully when times are bad, preventing the credit crunches that used to cause frequent crashes and the deflationary cycles that made it take long years to recover. That plus the Fe

    • This is beginning to make me wonder. Exactly how many massive scams is society able to absorb before it all starts collapsing on itself? It's starting to feel very much like our entire economy is, if not outright built on scams

      This has nothing to do with "society" or the economy. It's just fools who will be parted from their money. I suspect the prices are driven up primarily by crypto-asset "whales" swapping "traditional" crypto-assets for these stock coins, with just as little understanding of the value of a stock coin as they have of the value of BTC, etc.

  • through this little "oopsie. teehee" but it wasn't the investors.

    Crypto and de-fi. By all means, if you want to play in the cobra pit, be my guest. You first. I'll be right behind you. Actually, maybe in a few minutes. Or later this afternoon. Or tomorrow. You know what? I'm gonna pass. I'll send someone to collect your corpse after it's all over.
  • How is a crypto token "tied" to anything?

    Are the providers of the token buying the stock in real time when you buy the token and holding it in reserve?

    Who actually owns the stock? The trading platform that you bought the token from? Can you exchange it for the actual stock at any time?

    This just sounds like smoke and mirrors to me. But, then, I suppose we are talking about crypto tokens so...

Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash. -- Lazarus Long

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