this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2024
177 points (97.3% liked)

Technology

59575 readers
3259 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

CNBC spoke to a dozen customers caught in the Synapse fintech predicament, people who are owed sums ranging from $7,000 to well over $200,000.

all 41 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 1 points 8 minutes ago

Isn’t that what they signed up for when they put their money in a nonFDIC insured account?

[–] Cheradenine@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

People relied on accounts powered by Synapse for everyday expenses like buying groceries and paying rent, or for saving for major life events like home purchases or surgeries.

Gotta love US healthcare

[–] Dremor@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

I'd be broke a long time ago if I lived the US. Good thing I'm French and a surgery for a life threatening condition, plus 4 month of rehabilitation, costed me a whopping 0€.

[–] Cheradenine@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

That's some kind of communist talk. In the Land of the Free you are your own man. No nanny state telling you what to do. You have options. You can be rich, you can put all your money into a scam bank, which is de facto sanctioned, (and die when they do a rug pull because you no longer have money for life saving, much less preventative care), or you can die. But this was your choice, and you can have a huge truck (N.B. the bank actually owns the truck, but in 5 years you'll have it paid off).

🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲

In reality I left the US years ago and don't miss it, I do fear for friends though.

[–] Steak@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)
[–] Dremor@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

I wouldn't call them dumb. Masochist, maybe, but not dumb.

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 21 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Risky investment turns out to be risky. No one could have seen that coming.

[–] booly@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 minutes ago

This isn't about shareholders being wiped out. It's about account holders of what they thought were bank accounts losing everything because their accounts were powered on the back end by a company they'd never heard of or directly dealt with.

[–] clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world 10 points 6 hours ago

If you see this as investment, the consider that investors were lied to (the startups claimed to have FDIC coverage) and didn't have accurate information to assess the risk.

[–] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 30 points 8 hours ago

when a bank is described as a "savings startup", you should run the other way screaming

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 76 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

The government should mandate warning labels on companies like that, maybe "fintech" would be a good word to force them to use, similar to the way large companies have to use the "enterprise" warning label and games companies have to be labelled "triple A" to know their products and services are low quality and have a high risk of failure.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 59 minutes ago

Dont they have to write in the footer WE ARE NOT A BANK

Usually that's what I look for

[–] perviouslyiner@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 11 minutes ago) (1 children)

Do you not have banking licenses (someone mentioned FDIC)? Over here, that's how you tell real [regulated and insured] banks from pretend banks.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 58 minutes ago

Yes. I guess the problem is that people aren't reading the small text st the bottom of the website that says they're not a bank

[–] CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 18 points 14 hours ago

I like your style

[–] 2001aCentenaryofFederation@fedia.io 48 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

I'm not from the US so unfamiliar with any of this, but having followed the link to the Yotta website from the article, it is a... gambling site? What leap is missing that people would entrust their savings to gambling?

[–] Iheardyoubutsowhat@lemmy.world 37 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

There was no interest on Yotta accounts. Originally, when you signed up, you were given a lottery ticket everyday for every 25$ in the account. There was a lottery everyday where you could win up to 25000. Then they switched to games where you essentially gambled with the tickets that were given based on your amount.

I was once a member but pulled the money when interest rates started to rise. I was lucky.

I'll also note, when signing up, I was given the impression this FDIC insured.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 57 minutes ago

Why did you think they were FDIC insured?

[–] comador@lemmy.world 43 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Might as well be a gambling site: It was a startup bank with no Federal backing (FDIC) that appears to have promised greater returns than traditional banks by investing your money and giving you some of the profits back from dividends.

Still, it was a startup that wasn't fully vested nor backed federally to secure people's deposits. Sad.

[–] clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world 5 points 6 hours ago

Wow. Stochastic interest payouts. Another lamentable perverted contribution coming from irresponsible MBA schools

[–] schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business 60 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The lie was WORSE than that.

A lot of the fintechs invovled actually told people their money was safe, because it was subject to "passthrough FDIC insurance", because their money was ultimately put in an insured bank, and thus was safe.

Problem is that's not how it actually worked, so basically everyone was straight up lied to.

Basically the whole thing is that the bank keeps track of who owns which account and how much money they have, so if they go bust, you just have the FDIC come in and use that data and write checks, basically.

Except since they're disrupting banking, they also decided to just fucking not bother, and so even if there was going to be a payout, nobody has any fucking clue who has how much and in which bank said money was.

Absolute clusterfuck, and about what you'd expect from silly-con valley types.

[–] thesohoriots@lemmy.world 19 points 12 hours ago

“Hand us your money and us MBAs promise it’ll eventually get somewhere safe” is not reassuring even before the lie.

[–] BigMacHole@lemm.ee 33 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I can't wait until TRUMP Dismantles the Protections that PREVENT this type of thing from Normally Happening!

[–] shoulderoforion@fedia.io 19 points 14 hours ago

Yotta Savings, the fintech that all these people deposited their money with, first came to my attention through this YouTube video from CoffeeZilla a couple months back, seems Yotta was a huge sponsor of really an astounding amount of YouTube creators, who while hawking Yotta to their subscribers also deposited their own money with Yotta as well. Huge mess.

[–] MyOpinion@lemm.ee 10 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I am from the US and I have no idea what they are talking about here.

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 minute ago

Me either, it sounds like it was a gambling site that encouraged large deposits and offered some sort of benefits for doing so. This seems extremely unethical, and should probably have been illegal based on gambling or banking rules.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 13 points 14 hours ago

Goddam I'm happy to live in a place where these things are well regulated!
This is an absolute horror story, people chose a saving account they thought was super secured, and instead it's a total scam.