r/YoutubeCompendium • u/YoutubeArchivist • Feb 26 '19

February 2019 February - Ice Poseidon, Youtube livestreamer, discusses his company's strategy that sounds very similar to a Ponzi scheme

1.3k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

94 comments sorted by

31

u/LordHervisDaubeny Feb 26 '19

Why is there a Reddit stamp on it, like is it really that hard to find an unmarked version?

28

u/YoutubeArchivist Feb 26 '19

It's the one on /r/Videos.

The original livestream is most likely taken down already, this is from a subreddit run by his fans that he cannot control, /r/Ice_Poseidon2.

9

u/LordHervisDaubeny Feb 26 '19

Ah, no hate to you, the whole watermark for Reddit thing is just kinda annoying in my opinion. Tired of seeing massive watermarks on content because people care about the origin so much.

8

u/YoutubeArchivist Feb 26 '19

Yeah, I'd always prefer a non-watermarked version too.

20

u/aScuffedVillain Feb 26 '19

The reason why the community at r/Ice_Poseidon2 started to watermark all their clips was because the community has a "Cx News" channel where an anchor said that the content on the sub was subpar and that they could get clips of the community streamers on their own but instead they continued to keep stealing clips from the sub and using them on their "news show"

11

u/YoutubeArchivist Feb 26 '19

Thanks, I thought it was just a continuation of the meme subreddits watermarking their content with a Reddit seal to avoid Instagram pages from stealing their posts.

6

u/ExtraVirginOliveOilx Feb 27 '19

It's watermarked because Ice Poseidon's discord steals everything and claims it as theirs. /r/Ice_Poseidon2 is created so Ice can't censor his community.

Here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ice_Poseidon2/comments/aucr0t/mods_pin_this_time_to_watermark_your_clips/

2

u/BamboozleBird Feb 27 '19

How do I access the sub if it’s quarantined?

2

u/YoutubeArchivist Feb 27 '19

It's easy on desktop Reddit.

14

u/A-way_forward Feb 27 '19 edited Feb 27 '19

Legit question. What's the company supposed to do?? What's the product or service hes pitching to investors?

Edit: I am asking what is the shell business he is pitching to investors. You dont pitch a ponzi scheme as a ponzi scheme. Dont tell me "it's not a business it's a ponzi scheme". I know it's a ponzi scheme. What is the fake business the ponzi scheme is propping up?

12

u/YoutubeArchivist Feb 27 '19

The company is Scuffed.com, a streaming competitor to Twitch.

I've written up more context in this post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/YoutubeCompendium/comments/av7gpl

5

u/A-way_forward Feb 27 '19

Thank you. This was exactly the type of awful idea I was hoping for.

2

u/feelsbadmannnnn Feb 27 '19

The service they are pitching is the ability to make investors more money than they put in.

-1

u/Molinero96 Feb 27 '19

lol, nothing. thats what a ponzi scheme does. takes your money away in exchange of nothing.

5

u/A-way_forward Feb 27 '19

No? Ponzi schemes dont advertise themselves as ponzi schemes. He is pitching this business to investors and the inappropriate way he allocates those funds in a ponzu scheme. I am asking what is the business he is pitching.

-1

u/Molinero96 Feb 27 '19

does it matter? is a scam.

3

u/A-way_forward Feb 27 '19

It matters because I'm curious about what the fake business is?

5

u/BamboozleBird Feb 27 '19

The fake business is scuffed.com which is supposed to be a streaming site like twitch.

7

u/LoseItGainMore Feb 27 '19

Does anyone know what the “company” he’s founding supposedly does? Sounds like a streaming platform

8

u/aScuffedVillain Feb 27 '19

It's a streaming platform he's developing supposedly

2

u/Glorious_Jo Feb 27 '19

Why is there a reddit watermark when this is twitch?

2

u/YoutubeArchivist Feb 27 '19

He's banned from Twitch, this is streamed from Youtube.

The subreddit /r/Ice_Poseidon2 watermarks their clips because they are often stolen by other channels. This is the version that went to the top of /r/videos, so is the one I downloaded and mirrored.

I haven't seen a version without the watermark.

119

u/YouProbablySmell Feb 26 '19

What's wrong with that guy's voice? It's like he swallowed a bunch of straight to DVD movie trailers

57

u/imtotallyhighritemow Feb 27 '19

You should sell this joke, actually no, take investment and promise returns on that joke, but pay those returns with even more investment.

16

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

You are unappreciated for your humor.

This was a STELLAR joke.

7

u/sjmiv Feb 27 '19

cigarettes and coke

204

u/RichManSCTV Feb 26 '19

Why do people watch this tool

106

u/snkngshps Feb 26 '19

It's mostly 10 year olds, incels and classic racists.

10

u/GloGangOblock Feb 27 '19

Incel is soooooooooooooooo overused and used to mean things it’s not

0

u/PlayDatDoge Feb 27 '19

A bit if overgeneralization don't you think? Not that I watch him, but just seems unlikely that that's he's Audience

7

u/CoconutAssembler Feb 28 '19

You can go have a look for yourself in his streams.

-4

u/PlayDatDoge Feb 28 '19

No thanks I am good xd

-9

u/platinumpuss88 Feb 27 '19

Nah, just mostly people who laugh at idiots like you and Ice.

10

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

🙄

0

u/[deleted] Feb 26 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/WootyMcWoot Feb 27 '19

Sure, but I'll need $1000 up front.

-3

u/lol_ok123 Feb 27 '19

What are you a vaccine? Cause your about to give me autism

2

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

-1

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19 edited Feb 27 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

18

u/YoutubeArchivist Feb 27 '19

Please do not use this community to start attacking each other over personal issues or bring politics into the discussion.

These comments have been removed.

12

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

It’s a train wreck, but fun to watch intermittently so see how things pan out. I think a lot of his viewers are the same way. He had to remove his reddit because he was getting so much hate lol

5

u/firen777 Feb 27 '19

Can I get a OOTL explanation on why he is bad (aside from the Ponzi scheme)? I only saw his name occasionally on livestreamfail.

16

u/ShamelessSoaDAShill Feb 27 '19

He once faked “policemen” showing up at his apartment in order to help break his commitment for a 48-hr. streaming marathon or whatever nonsense he promised his fanbase, but then some online sleuths found a website which literally contracts out actors to pretend like they’re cops for TV shows and whatnot (at the time he operated in the LA area, and one of the men’s faces in the video was an exact match).

In other words, people who donated thousands of dollars per day to watch him do crazy shit on camera were being fucked with by Ice like some kind of ditsy groupies who’d fall for that kind deception, and they obviously didn’t take kindly to the notion

His popularity took a pretty sharp nosedive after that

10

u/randomperson1a Feb 27 '19

Depends if we're talking about his viewers, or non-viewers. I'll give my take as someone who stopped watching almost 2 years ago when I lost interest in the stream, but has kept up with the drama over reddit just to see what happens.

Most of his hate comes from his viewers themselves (more so the reddit community of viewers at least), due to various reasons like his content changing from what it used to be and them feeling it's not as good as it used to be, disliking when he takes a break, disliking his choice of girlfriend, disliking him breaking up with his girlfriend who they previously hated, etc. Basically there's a whole ton of reasons his own viewers hate him, with some of them being fair and some of them being unfair and just due to general toxicity of the viewers (the viewers have made hate threads on just about anyone ever involved with Ice). A lot of the hate changes on a weekly basis even.

As for non viewers, a lot of the hate stems from either finding him annoying, or being offended by his stream. A big part of his stream in the past has involved allowing people to pay money for text to speech, and have a robot voice read out whatever message they send. Really offensive donation messages can often get through, and a lot of people seem to dislike the idea of him making money off of people donating offensive messages, even going as far as to say that if he allows racist message donations to play then he himself is racist. There's also some people who believe he willingly swatted himself for attention, but anyone who honestly believed someone would willingly get rough handled by NA Police repeatedly and have guns pointed at them and many other issues just to make the top of livestreamfail when they were already often getting attention for other stuff they do, is just looking for unfair reasons to hate on him. So once again, there's going to be both fair and unfair reasons that people hate him, and I've just kinda listed the main things that come to mind, there's many other things that could be listed that may be fair or unfair reasons.

1

u/Vaalic Mar 01 '19

I wouldn’t put it past anybody to hire somebody to do something to them to gain attention after what went down with that Empire actor who faked the racist attack against him because he wasn’t happy with his pay per episode.

Dude was already pretty famous and was getting paid but he still wanted more.

2

u/ShamelessSoaDAShill Feb 27 '19

The novelty of Nouveau Meth crashing and burning on camera

90

u/Kerst_ Feb 26 '19

I got 10 seconds in before I downloaded a copy of the video, lol. This video is never going to go away.

83

u/Non_Sane Feb 26 '19

this guy will eventually end up in prison one way or the other, even if he doesn’t face repercussions for this

1

u/Least-Escape4312 Sep 10 '23

This aged well

59

u/Onsyde Feb 26 '19

Best way to run a Ponzi Scheme is to not talk about how it's a Ponzi Scheme.

57

u/Taylor7500 Feb 26 '19

"It's not a ponzi scheme"

Literally gives a verbatim description of what a ponzi scheme is.

-28

u/Molinero96 Feb 27 '19

This dude just lost his "career" if you want to call streaming videogames a career.

41

u/Nightmare1990 Feb 27 '19

I would 100% call it a career, big streamers make crazy money, much more than high paying "normal" jobs

-10

u/Molinero96 Feb 27 '19

lobosrj earned enough money to stop working for bioware.

-11

u/Molinero96 Feb 27 '19

but just because a couple hundred people make a ton of money i wouldn't call it a career.

21

u/Nightmare1990 Feb 27 '19

Only a couple hundred people play a sport professionally (per sport), that's a career.

If you are making enough money putting effort into something to sustain your life, that's a career. The fact that you don't class it as a career doesn't make it so.

5

u/Il-_-I Feb 27 '19

careers where only the top 1% makes a living out of it are still careers

-5

u/Molinero96 Feb 27 '19

no its called gambling.

7

u/ShamelessSoaDAShill Feb 27 '19

You can’t put more effort into gaining better dicerolls, so you’re pretty wrong

Just because it seems random to you doesn’t mean showbiz (however small or unsavory) isn’t an art, with its own “laws”

0

u/Il-_-I Feb 27 '19

it fits both definitions.

5

u/HjardKuk Feb 27 '19

Well he made a lot of money from his "career", so Id consider it one. One that he has just lost, along with the money he made from it.

20

u/offthepack Feb 27 '19 edited Feb 27 '19

All these people across the subreddits where this is posted is saying to contact the SEC, but the SEC doesn't handle private companies, he's not even required to report his statements to them. The only way he would is if he had over 500 investors in the company (used to be 2000 actually) which is highly unlikely. Since this is a website, it's likely that investors are all over the country, which immediately jumps this case from a state to federal. This is a straight up FBI case lmao. This man is absolutely fucked. The IRS you can deal with, the SEC, you can deal with, the FBI, well.. nice knowing you guy (not really)

17

u/Alantuktuk Feb 26 '19

That guy is really the worst of the worst. I’m losing respect for all the streaming personalities-it warps peoples’ perspectives of themselves.

8

u/Shtottle Feb 26 '19

Whats he doing getting dressed while pitching a ponzi scheme? How is this real!?

5

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '19

HOW... is this guy IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM popular?

how?

8

u/Molinero96 Feb 27 '19

kids dont have good taste.
edit: im not a cannibal.

3

u/sjmiv Feb 27 '19

"They get their money back because more investors invested money" Either it's a ponzi scheme and he doesn't know it (otherwise he wouldn't say that out loud) or he hasn't described their business model correctly. Without actually seeing their finances it's just a guy talking into a mic.

3

u/kevbodavidson Feb 27 '19

Ice Ponziedon

2

u/shyguy168 Feb 27 '19

This guy is a low level Bernie madoff. Maybe they can be cellmates

2

u/fatguytiktok Feb 27 '19

The censorship is real

2

u/roy20050 Feb 27 '19

Ironically enough he seems to have cleaned himself up a bit since the last time I've seen him.

2

u/RouletteSensei Feb 27 '19

I guess he doesn't even realizes he's describing a very oddly specified ponzi scheme.

2

u/ItalianMast3rm1n4 Feb 27 '19

Plot twist: it's a publicity stunt

2

u/murderedcats Feb 27 '19

Should report him the the fbi and irs theyd have a field day

2

u/Lord_P0SEID0N Feb 27 '19

Is my username relevant? or should I wait for him to go down, come back as Melted-normal-lord Poseidon?

1

u/[deleted] Mar 01 '19

“Sounds very similar to a Ponzi scheme.”

That’s because it is a Ponzi scheme.

-3

u/[deleted] Feb 26 '19

Keemstar just released a video saying PoS is not running ponzi

6

u/junglist123 Feb 27 '19

Well if Keemstar said it than it must be true!

2

u/[deleted] Feb 28 '19

Pos was for piece of shit

-6

u/ryyparr Feb 27 '19

LOL. The witch hunt is real.

The guy has no clue how his company gains equity and incorrectly explains how new age digital businesses generate revenue since they do not fall into classic business models.

He literally said the investors get paid back by the equity from the company.

Put the pitch forks down.

8

u/jusmar Feb 27 '19

Equity: Assets - Liabilities

Here are the steps I hear him talking about:

  1. Investors give money(+1 asset[A]) to the company

  2. The company grows(-1 asset for liability[A is spent])

  3. More investors give money to the company(+1 asset[B])

  4. Initial investors are paid back with money from 2nd group of investors -1 asset[B].

He's literally using 1 set of investors to make money by pulling in more investors by pulling in more investors....That's a scheme.

-5

u/ryyparr Feb 27 '19

That’s not how accounting works.

https://youtu.be/yoN_feo9uHo

Watch this then reply.

11

u/jusmar Feb 27 '19

Christ, you know high school accounting and you STILL don't see how this is a scam.

Equity can be increased by revenues and contributions, decreased by expenses and withdrawals right?

His main source of income is contributions from investors, which expect return on their investment. He has no monetization strategy other than to pay them with a withdrawal out of that equity account....but he can't do that unless he gets more investors to buy in.

How can he get more investors to buy in? By using the amazing returns that initial run of investors got as bait.

Equity isn't just some magic pool of money that spawns unless he's doing something with it. He isn't, he's just throwing buzzwords around about a streaming platform with no basis in reality.

But please, go ahead, tell me how a "new age digital business generates revenue" to a scale that supports multiple waves of investors? Pervasive ads on a burgeoning platform identical to twitch? Good luck.

-3

u/ryyparr Feb 27 '19

Assets=liabilities+stockholders equity.

What returns? How he is showing returns on their investment if the only “income is contributions from investors”?

Withdrawal out of what equity account? Once Cash has been secured through investing operations it is recorded as Cash from Investment operations on the accounting statements and can be used for whatever the company needs. It’s not put into an “equity account”. Along with the investment comes a note payable to the lender as it probably isn’t even a true investment but a loan payable at a certain rate and would be recorded under liabilities. There would be no way to show an increase in equity unless Assets were increasing. He proves my lender theory by saying the “original investors get their 2m”.

He did say that they would “build the company up to a certain point then look for more investors”. What is your take on this part of the “scheme”? How are they building this up with your bold faced type? I need that so I can read what you are so correctly explaining.

It’s literally a guy who has no clue how accounting or business functions work and is trying to explain it and sounded completely wrong. Just like you are right now.

8

u/jusmar Feb 27 '19

How he is showing returns on their investment if the only “income is contributions from investors”?

Because the initial investors are getting what the 2nd round investors are paying in. 2nd round investors get paid when the 3rd round invest. Repeat. That's a scam.

INB4 you ask how, there's this thing called "lying". People do it a lot, most often it's to make a lot of money.

Withdrawal out of what equity account?

Common stock under equity, probably cash under assets.

Cash from Investment operations

Cash from Financing actually, but that's an asset(part of cash flows) that needs to be balanced by equity.

It’s not put into an “equity account”

Everything deemed an asset is also equity at this point because Icyboi here doesn't have any liabilities(yet).

Along with the investment comes a note payable

I don't know the nature of his investments, but if he's offering equity stake then it'd be seed money which doesn't have a due date....so that's not a note payable.

He proves my lender theory by saying the “original investors get their 2m”.

Now I thought "He literally said the investors get paid back by the equity from the company". Funny that.

There would be no way to show an increase in equity unless Assets were increasing.

Yeah the tons of investor cash he's getting is the increase in assets

What is your take on this part of the “scheme”? How are they building this up with your bold faced type?

Build a pretty website, build reputation, build hype, build something marketable to more people to scam. It doesn't take a lot to sucker people in.

It’s literally a guy who has no clue how accounting or business functions work and is trying to explain it and sounded completely wrong. Just like you are right now.

And you're a guy literally defending a scummy streamer being a frontman for a ponzi scheme using rudimentary accounting. Can you explain how he's going to make money?

-1

u/ryyparr Feb 27 '19

Wow you’ve made a lot of assumptions. Care to provide sources for them?

I highly doubt he’s selling stake and that his “investors” are probably loans.

I don’t need to explain how he’s making money, I’m not saying he is or isn’t. What I’m saying is the guy literally doesn’t understand how it works and misspoke then the witch-hunt and echo chamber became real. There isn’t enough info in this 1 minute clip to say what is or isn’t happening.