Matt Levine, Columnist

CoinDeal’s Bentleys Weren’t Real

Also private-market marks, ransomware ethics, Coinbase KYC and Celsius crypto ownership.

January 5, 2023 at 6:10 PM UTC

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

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Programming note: Money Stuff will be off tomorrow, back on Monday.

The simplest form of investment scam is that you promise people some attractive return on their investment, they like the promised return and give you their money, and you steal it. In this scam, what sort of return should you offer your marks in order to maximize your take? There are two basic approaches, which are: