On May 22nd, a crypto finance project called DeFi100 posted a message to its website: “We scammed you guys and you can’t do **** about it. HA HA. All you moon bois have been scammed and you can’t do **** about it.”
Screenshots of the message immediately went viral on crypto Twitter (always anarchic, easily risible). A popular anonymous crypto-tracking Twitter account called Mr. Whale estimated that DeFi100 had run off with $32 million. Cryptocurrency news outlets, as well as Yahoo Finance, ran with the number. The project owners denied any foul play, and it soon became clear the message was a website hack rather than a serious warning — but by then, it was too late. Panic had set in, and the price of the underlying coin was in free…