I'm not sure I follow what you're saying exactly and you may have misinterpreted what I meant.
So you're saying if the ruse of creating dummy transactions is successful in attracting speculative interest[1] and driving up the price, that is no big deal because what attracted the speculative interest, the raw transaction count numbers, actually occurred in a kinda sorta way, if what those transaction numbers are often painted as, genuine utility, is not actually there, well then that's just like 'circular' man..., is that what you're saying?
Consider if a public company 'X,' conducted its finances in such a way that they set up a bunch of shell companies, transferred money to these companies in a non-visible way then had those shell companies send that money back to company X in exchange for some nominal goods or services. Then they repeated this process over and over such that the company's public filings showed a steady increase in revenue quarter after quarter, such an increase that they attracted considerable investor attention, resulting in a stock price that rose steadily on the back of these circular accounting tricks. As the stock continued to rise, the company's major stockholders cashed out their shares.
Would that be 'circular' or would that be illegal? Would that feel "fake" or feel like "an illusion" to you?
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[1] Yes, we are talking speculative interest here, this is a metric that is more interesting to a speculative investor than a non-speculative user/'adopter,' a non-speculative user is just going to use it for what they are going to use it for if they have a genuine use beyond speculating.
Consider if a public company 'X,' conducted its finances in such a way that they set up a bunch of shell companies, transferred money to these companies in a non-visible way then had those shell companies send that money back to company X in exchange for some nominal goods or services. Then they repeated this process over and over such that the company's public filings showed a steady increase in revenue quarter after quarter, such an increase that they attracted considerable investor attention, resulting in a stock price that rose steadily on the back of these circular accounting tricks. As the stock continued to rise, the company's major stockholders cashed out their shares.
What you describing here is dotcom IPO scheme.
Inflated revenues (instead of profits) were enough to be considered IPO-worthy.
So you're saying if the ruse of creating dummy transactions is successful in attracting speculative interest[1] and driving up the price, that is no big deal because what attracted the speculative interest, the raw transaction count numbers, actually occurred in a kinda sorta way, if what those transaction numbers are often painted as, genuine utility, is not actually there, well then that's just like 'circular' man..., is that what you're saying?
Consider if a public company 'X,' conducted its finances in such a way that they set up a bunch of shell companies, transferred money to these companies in a non-visible way then had those shell companies send that money back to company X in exchange for some nominal goods or services. Then they repeated this process over and over such that the company's public filings showed a steady increase in revenue quarter after quarter, such an increase that they attracted considerable investor attention, resulting in a stock price that rose steadily on the back of these circular accounting tricks. As the stock continued to rise, the company's major stockholders cashed out their shares.
Would that be 'circular' or would that be illegal? Would that feel "fake" or feel like "an illusion" to you?
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[1] Yes, we are talking speculative interest here, this is a metric that is more interesting to a speculative investor than a non-speculative user/'adopter,' a non-speculative user is just going to use it for what they are going to use it for if they have a genuine use beyond speculating.