Sales of Solana Phone Surge As Traders Chase BONK Arbitrage (coindesk.com) 42
Solana Saga smartphones sales are surging after arbitrage traders realized every phone comes with an airdrop of BONK meme coins valued at more than the cost of the hardware. "Saga sales have >10x'd in the past 48 hours, and are now on track to sell out before the new year," said Solana co-founder Raj Gokal in a post on X. As a result, Gokal's counterpart, Anatoly Yakovenko, said they'll need to raise the price. CoinDesk reports: The euphoria around BONK -- Solana's dog-themed equivalent to Dogecoin -- has led to a turnaround story for Saga, which just one week ago faced dimming prospects amid forgettable sales figures. Saga is a blockchain-enabled smartphone with special features for storing one's crypto securely on the phone's own hardware. The Saga Discord server exploded on Thursday with newcomers declaring they just bought the phone and wanted to get the airdrop.
According to posts on the Discord server, the BONK airdrop is available to those who download the BONK app from Saga's crypto-forward custom app store. "When you physically have the phone you will be able to mint 'Genesis token' through the 'dApp store, [this] token is eligible to claim the bonk drop," said a user who identified themselves as an employee of Solana Mobile in the Discord server. "The bonk drop is NOT forever, at some point that promotion will end," the user, whose screen name was Jax, said in the Discord. "As of right now the claim is live and is up to the bonk team on when they'd want to close it. No end date yet."
According to posts on the Discord server, the BONK airdrop is available to those who download the BONK app from Saga's crypto-forward custom app store. "When you physically have the phone you will be able to mint 'Genesis token' through the 'dApp store, [this] token is eligible to claim the bonk drop," said a user who identified themselves as an employee of Solana Mobile in the Discord server. "The bonk drop is NOT forever, at some point that promotion will end," the user, whose screen name was Jax, said in the Discord. "As of right now the claim is live and is up to the bonk team on when they'd want to close it. No end date yet."
WTF is this doing here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Solana Saga smartphones sales are surging after arbitrage traders realized every phone comes with an airdrop of BONK meme coins valued at more than the cost of the hardware.
You have GOT to be kidding.
"Saga sales have >10x'd in the past 48 hours, and are now on track to sell out before the new year," said Solana co-founder Raj Gokal in a post on X. As a result, Gokal's counterpart, Anatoly Yakovenko, said they'll need to raise the price.
Oh well that's okay then, if it's sourced to someone with a financial interest in selling this crap then it must be true. I'll buy a million! No, a virtual gazillion!
I mean seriously, even if this wasn't based on "meme coins" how could anyone mistake this for anything other than marketing crap?
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Well, their web site (solanamobile.com) is bemusing - "Web3 like never before".
I never knew I needed a blockchain runtime in my pocket. Are NFTs still a thing in 2023?
Re:WTF is this doing here? (Score:5, Funny)
This is totally different this time.
You see, it's a dog, not an ape. Totally different.
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... even if this wasn't based on "meme coins" how could anyone mistake this for anything other than marketing crap?
Are you new here?
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Solana Saga smartphones sales are surging after arbitrage traders realized every phone comes with an airdrop of BONK meme coins valued at more than the cost of the hardware.
You have GOT to be kidding.
As they're paying for the (less expensive) phone and getting the (more expensive) coins for free, this says something about the *actual* value of the phones or coins... As P.T. Barnum said, "there's a sucker born every minute."
[ And, this is /. -- we *never* kid about stuff and things. :-) ]
The Hoover promotion all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
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People bought Hoover vacuum cleaners so they could get flights that cost more than the vacuums themselves back in the 1990s.
Good comparison. Customers were basically scammed resulting in lawsuits against Hoover. Sadly no criminal charges although it was a disaster for the company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Polaroid cameras famously had a similar promotion [nytimes.com] in the 1980s. As the linked article explains: "Purchasers of any Polaroid camera or a certain amount of film are eligible for 25 percent discounts on TWA flights, even those that have already been discounted. For instance, the purchaser of a Polaroid 600-series camera for about $20 can save several hundreds of dollars on discounted international flights or fly coast-to-coast for less than $90."
Travel agents and corporate travel departments went on bulk buyin
Re:The Hoover promotion all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
This current promotion, with the phone, is smarter than that: package something worthless with your real product, at a cost of free, as a "promotion." And then, not only are you selling more of your real product in exchange for real money, you're also promoting your imaginary product at the same time. And if your imaginary product catches on, that's just more free money to you. And if it doesn't, then no loss.
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Crypto has a huge stink to it, and that has to have an impact on sales.
For instance, there was a small commuter electric vehicle being made in Toronto. Looked good, specs were within the range you could believe the low price... except the guy running the show was a cryptobro and 'every car runs a free cryptominer!'. For some reason presales didn't happen and the project died.
The moment you attached 'crypto' to something, you're targeting those who fall for crypto scams.
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So I guess I should reorder my series of events from above:
First, say the word "crypto" a lot and get a bunch of VC funding.
Second, find an OEM product or something that someone else built. So that you, being incompetent, won't have to do anything important yourself.
Third, attach the word "crypto" to this product to satisfy your
Re:The Hoover promotion all over again (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't seem likely that TWA lost any money on that. That was a paid promotion by Polaroid in order to get cameras into peoples' hands so that they would then go on and buy film.
It did become a real problem for TWA. There was an Associated Press article that explained it well, but I see it's now a dead link. However, the gist of it was that TWA seriously underestimated the take-up of the promotion. They thought that individual travelers would buy a single Polaroid camera and claim a single discounted ticket; the airline would sell some extra seats and get some publicity as well. What happened was that corporate travel departments and commercial travel agencies bought literally thousands of cameras at a time, simply to get the TWA discount vouchers. And the sheer volume of heavily discounted tickets being claimed meant that the numbers didn't add up in TWA's favour.
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I can't say that I understand why TWA thought that this would be a good promotion
Because they thought they could rig it and make it so difficult to redeem that they'd only have to pay out a few tickets.
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further, they can "honestly" claim that they sold "over $foo units of their breakthrough cryptophone~!", and just not mention the gift-with-purchase...
this is basically how ghostwritten books ostensibly by famous people sell so many copies. if an institution books the famous person as a speaker (and they will be promoting themselves heavily as a speaker so you will have a chance if you're in the biz), they need to pay a speaking fee and buy a lot of copies of the book, to be given away at the event or whate
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TWA is also getting publicity out of this deal. I am sure Polaroid and TWA shared the cost of the discounted tickets since both would stand to benefit from increased market share.
Did someone say web 3.0? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pass the sick bag.
Stupid is going to stupid and so stupid people are going to shell out a premium price for a lacklustre smartphone that just happens to have some cryptocurrency related features, with the promise that maybe, just maybe, the "airdrop" of a shit-coin may be worth the value of the hardware.
Hmmm. Of course, any total "newbs" to this god-awful space (I pity anyone getting into this now), will really struggle to do the "minting" part, when they realise that if they've never had a point of entry into crypto by way of a FIAT payment, they'll have to go through the entire cryptic and confusing process of getting a wallet setup with another token in it, required as a fee in order to mint the NFT in order to get BONK.
Welcome to the insanity.
And as for web 3.0 - it's not even a glittered turd, any glitter thrown onto it is immediately absorbed by the sheer depth of the turd.
It is infinite in its turd-like qualities, which is about the only way it will ever scale.
You know, it could, maybe, possibly just about scrape by as being a reasonable passing thought of a plan, if it wasn't layered with the turd that is blind human greed.
Everything that gets sucked into the vortex that is cryptocurrency, is tainted, covered in shit.
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It is infinite in its turd-like qualities, which is about the only way it will ever scale.
Thank god, for a moment I thought it wouldn't scale!! whew
What a great idea! (Score:1)
Given how many companies, people and things I've never heard of are mentioned in this story, I must run right out and give a vendor some of my personal info to get such a device, then bring it home and put it on my WiFi, and... er, how about no?
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As I remarked below,
"When you physically have the phone you will be able to mint 'Genesis token' through the 'dApp store, [this] token is eligible to claim the bonk drop,"
Lol, what the fuck did I just read?
Slashdot - a marketing forum for shit (Score:3, Interesting)
Look, we all get spam. We get ads. We get spamvertized. But /. isn't supposed to be part of that shit-chain.
This "story" is about a "phone" where if you buy it they "give you" crypto and there's a dog meme and.
Seriously?
It's a stupid piece of shit phone with a stupid piece of shit cryptocurrency and if you're stupid enough to want
to gamble on cryptocurrency WHY would you dilute your gamble 50% to waste it on a stupid phone?
You think you can make 400% on crypto? It's your gamble. Don't waste half your principal on a cheap phone!
E
p.s. Don't use the word "invest" wrt crypto. It's valueless. Use the word "gamble" because you're gambling
the next idiot will pay more tomorrow for what your stupid ass paid today. Nobody but the cryptobros running
the parties and "getting in on the ground floor" gets rich. If you aren't sure who that is you know it not you.
(Queue Matt Damon Rounders quote.)
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Look, we all get spam. We get ads. We get spamvertized. But /. isn't supposed to be part of that shit-chain.
That's literally why the current owners bought it. They have their own cryptocurrency and they call themselves "A business to business modern digital barter exchange". This site now literally exists to promote crypto. Anything else it does is just to keep people around in pursuit of that mission.
Valued? By who? (Score:2)
Is there a market full of buyers for this crypto shit?
Without sufficient number of sucke-- buyers willing to buy those crypto units, their value is zero.
Which is the proper economic value of all crypto.
Valued by money launderers and tax evaders. (Score:3)
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Ah, I hadn't considered this is a tax fraud scam.
Good call on that. I wonder if they "sold" most of their phones to a single or small number of buyers.
Really?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok (Score:2)
Buy a no-name smart phone so I can get free imaginary money called "BONK"?
Sounds reasonable!
Where are all the cheap phones on ebay? (Score:2)
But there are only a few of these on ebay and they're all grossly overpriced. I'm sure there's some explanation for that, maybe this story is out of date.
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How liquid are the coins? (Score:2)
Meme coin as financial advice loophole? (Score:3)
So, it's a think that simultaneously "JUST A JOKE BRO, DON'T TAKE IT SRS LMAO" and "Bro we just say it's a joke so we're not demonstrably "giving financial advice" and liable when the rug is pulled" applied to a Ponzi where no valuation rises without greater fools buying in, is that about right?
The meme coin is ponzi scheme with a bugfix.
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Cryptocurrency itself is nothing more than a decentralized Ponzi scheme.
Im gonna guess (Score:2)
NOT arbitrage (Score:5, Interesting)
People use the term arbitrage without understanding what it actually means. Purchasing a phone with some crypto that is worth more than the phone + crypto is worth is not arbitrage, If you own the asset at all, for any period of time, then it's not arbitrage.
Arbitrage, by definition, means you never own the item or commodity during the transaction. The item or commodity flows directly from the buyer to the seller, while you pocket the profit.
The purchaser of this phone is adopting financial risk by purchasing the phone, and the assumption that the value of the crypto is stable.
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Sir, this is a Wendy's.
Crypto bros have redefined common terms for their owns purposes. Because without FOMO you've got nothing.
hot potato (Score:3)
So BONK is like a hot potato, you want to pass it off as soon as you get your hands on it so you don't get burned. Someone is going to end up with a cold worthless potato, better make sure that is not you.
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So BONK is like a hot potato, you want to pass it off as soon as you get your hands on it so you don't get burned. Someone is going to end up with a cold worthless potato, better make sure that is not you.
People didn’t listen to your warnings. The Saga phones are now sold out.
Is this now the end of the Saga?
Sounds a great idea ... (Score:2)
So, having your financial assets (or a meaningful proportion of them) tied to a piece of hardware that can fail by either getting lost, stolen or broken.
Well, that sounds a wonderful idea. The wonder being that they could find VC people dumb enough to fall for financing this.
What the (Score:2)
"When you physically have the phone you will be able to mint 'Genesis token' through the 'dApp store, [this] token is eligible to claim the bonk drop,"
Lol, what the *fuck* did I just read?
Is "tokens mint bonk genesis airdrop phone" the new "person woman man camera tv"?
So I buy the phone, something something, profit? Help an old befuddled guy out here...
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Let me break down how this likely works:
Company mints own crypto bullshit coins, worthless. Company buys OEM phones from factory in China and starts selling them, with free bullshit coins included. Company then raises price of bullshit coins real fast by wash trading. It doesn't cost them hardly anything, but now their coins are trading at high value...but no one has any coins outside the company...but there's these phones they sell that include bullshit coins. People see bullshit coin price raise, see phon
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Thank you.
So, a crypto scam tied to a free shit-phone, artificially hyped and inflated until they run out of suckers to milk. Scamtastic!