Thursday links: crypto PMF, PM PMF, eBay shocker, Pokémon perps, the price of trust, DATs

Crypto has 50% of the scam market

The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) estimates that Americans lost $148 billion to online scams and crime in 2025, up 26% from 2024. More than half of the losses — $80.7 billion — are thought to have involved cryptocurrency.

The CFA gets to those numbers by using a multiplier based on the DOJ’s estimate that only 14% of financial crimes are typically reported. $20.8 billion of losses were reported to law enforcement in 2025. 7.1x that number is $148 billion. 

“This is the conservative choice,” the report says. “Some studies report rates as low as 4-5%, implying multipliers of 20-25x.”

Using a 25x multiplier would put total losses at roughly $520 billion. Yikes.

“This crisis demands additional bold action through legislation, enforcement, and public education at every level,” the report concludes.

It also hints at a preventative measure we can take right now: Stop using Facebook. Facebook is the venue for an estimated 57% of all online scams.

That might just be because Facebook is where we spend most of our scrolling time. But a Wall Street Journal report puts at least some of the blame on lax oversight: Facebook allows suspicious advertisers to rack up as many as 32 automated “strikes” for financial fraud before it bans their accounts.

32 strikes and you’re out!

A final statistic suggests next year’s report could be even uglier. The CFA’s new category of AI-enabled fraud accounted for $6.3 billion in losses.

Prediction market use case

An anonymous trader spent $44,000 to briefly push Polymarket's odds of long-shot Matt Mahan winning the California gubernatorial race from about 13% to 96%, Bloomberg reports. The odds quickly settled to 36%, so the bet was probably underwater immediately.

But the inflated odds prompted the New York Post to run a flattering headline: Matt Mahan records huge surge in support.

The story also made the front page of the Post-affiliated California Post, a tabloid newspaper.

I’m not sure what the advertising equivalent of those two placements would cost, but it would surely be multiples of $44,000.

Mahan finished sixth in the open primary for Governor, winning 3.5% of the vote.

eBay went rogue

When eBay founder Pierre Omidyar launched the Feedback Forum in 1996, he explained his thinking in a post to the community of sellers: “Most people are honest. And they mean well.”

The sentiment was enshrined in eBay’s founding principle as “People are basically good.”

Not all people, though. Not even at eBay.

This week, eBay and three former executives agreed to pay $55.7 million to settle a lawsuit over a harassment campaign targeting the authors of an e-commerce blog that was frequently critical of the company.

The authors, Ina and David Steiner, had a box of live cockroaches and a funeral wreath delivered to their home. Their neighbors received pornographic magazines sent in the name of David Steiner. Anonymous posts online invited strangers to their house for sex. They were followed around town by an unmarked van.

The Steiners had no idea who was persecuting them or why (which must have been terrifying), until the van used to stalk them was found to have been rented by an employee of eBay’s security department. 

eBay began as a community-oriented marketplace — the anti-Amazon and champion of small-time side hustlers and treasure hunters.

The campaign was ordered by ex-CEO David Wenig, a respected executive with a long history of impeccable corporate behavior.

He went to Columbia Law School, even, but didn’t seem to recognize the line he crossed when he told his security department to “crush” and “take down” the bloggers.

An overzealous security team took those orders literally, escalating them into what must be the most egregious case of corporate harassment in US history.

How could community-oriented eBay be the first to so terrorize its critics?

How could a corporation founded on the belief that “people are basically good” become the first to terrorize its critics this way?

It’s shocking what a slumping share price can drive management to do.

Pokémon perps

On Monday I wrote that the next logical step for the burgeoning market for trading Pokémon cards is an ETF tracking an index of them. I wasn’t entirely serious — imagine the rigamarole of physical delivery every time an ETF of trading cards is redeemed.

But maybe a perpetual future could work?

We should soon find out. Hood Liquid says it’s building a perpetual market for collectible RWAs on Robinhood Chain, starting with an index for Pokémon cards.

Gotta trade ‘em all, I guess.

PSA on trial

A lawsuit against Collectors Universe, the owner of the dominant card-rating company PSA, warns that collectors should not trust their grades.

According to the complaint, PSA does not require its graders to have prior experience, viewing personal card collecting as sufficient qualification. Their grader profiles include backgrounds in songwriting, working at restaurant chains, and in sports stadiums.

PSA allegedly pressures these graders to spend less than a minute evaluating each card, making the grades inconsistent and unreliable.

Worst of all, the suit accuses PSA of knowingly grading cards that, by their own rules, should receive no grade at all. This includes the first card it ever graded, a famous Honus Wagner that received an 8 rating from PSA despite having been trimmed to make the edges look straight. 

Shocking stuff, really.

And a reason to have your prize Pokémon cards graded by the Japanese agency ARS, which limits the cards they accept to maintain standards, encases the cards in display-worthy holders (pictured above), and puts the number grade on the back of the holder to deemphasize it. 

If Pokémon cards are going to become an alternative investment asset — as they should — they will need a reputable agency to grade them.

So here’s some official financial advice: If you have a rare Charizard, send it to Japan.

The fragility of perfectly safe onchain money

A paper from the Federal Reserve describes blockchain gas fees as the price of “decentralized trust.” It then warns that when congestion drives that price higher, blockchains can experience the equivalent of a bank run, with users rushing to move their assets to a rival chain (with lower fees) in a panic. 

The concern is that stablecoins share infrastructure with the broader crypto ecosystem. Therefore, a sudden surge of activity unrelated to stablecoins can disrupt their use as a payments system.

The authors’ takeaway is that regulators are overly focused on ensuring that stablecoins are backed by perfectly safe assets. The paper suggests they should be thinking more about the rails.

The authors argue that regulators, focused almost entirely on ensuring stablecoins are backed by perfectly safe assets, should consider the rails they run on, too.

Even if a stablecoin is fully backed by the safest of assets, a congested chain can still cause a kind of run on the stablecoin banking system. 

In other words, regulators need to learn how blockchains work.

(As do I.)

DAT’s all, folks

A Bloomberg review of the digital asset trading companies that have pivoted away from crypto reads like an epitaph for the short-lived sector.

Shares of K Wave Media, formerly a Bitcoin DAT, have fallen 71% since pivoting to developing data centers. Lixte Biotechnology Holdings, which held Bitcoin and Ethereum, has fallen 33% since agreeing to merge with a battery firm in June. AlphaTON Capital, which held Telegram’s TON token, has dropped 33% since rebranding as Alpha Compute Corp. in April.

The era of stock market investors paying $2 for $1 of crypto — and all the perverse incentives it introduced — is mercifully over.

— Byron Gilliam