Breaking Omertà
Over the weekend I found myself in a John Wickian universe of sorts, where rules separated us from animals and breaking them resulted in excommunication.
By now I’ve already oversold how exciting the actual situation was so let me just clarify that I didn’t actually conduct business at the Continental. Instead, I exposed a finhack, which some might think is worse than shooting someone in the head in a hotel where High Table rules are fully in effect.
While “breaking omertà” is a new term I learnt recently that referred to flouting a certain code of silence, I’ve known for a while how the unwritten rules work in the world of finhacks: the first rule about finhacks is that you don’t talk about finhacks.
The first rule about Fight Club
Things are kept secretive because finhacks are more often than not loopholes that banks have overlooked, and the widespread knowledge and usage of such loopholes would invariably lead to them being plugged. There is hence an unwritten social contract of sorts to keep your mouth shut when you learn of such things; other people are farming rewards and sometimes cash with this hack and you don’t want to be the one who spoils their fun.
As such, I am generally very quiet when it comes to finhacks – that is until others let the cat out of the bag. When others “break omertà”, there ceases to be a social contract to keep quiet since someone is already spoiling it for those who remain silent. I think I have been consistent with this, such as this hack I revealed in January 2022 only because it was already circulating around:
Similarly, the most recent hack I shared was something I have known for some time now, and it came to my knowledge that it was being packaged and sold. Personally, I am not that comfortable selling finhacks for cash – a seller of goods wants as many customers as possible, while this “product” goes away when more and more people know about it. It is a little iffy for my tastes, but I think others are free to do so if they want to, as they have.
While there really isn’t anything immoral in “selling hacks”, omertà has been broken, so it should be fair game for anyone to do whatever they want with the hack, I thought. You could sell it if you so desire, or you could share it freely on your social media channels. Both are ways one can capitalise on this finhack before it eventually closes when more people know about it, and I initially chose the latter option as I usually do when hacks are being highlighted by other publications.
If you just want the hack
Across feedback from well-meaning individuals and constructive criticism from naysayers, I acknowledge that there is a significant difference between telling a private group of a few hundred people and announcing the hack to basically everyone who clicks to watch on YouTube. Doing the latter would lead to the feature being almost instantly shut down and being useless to everyone.
That is not my intention. This is why I have to share it with a limited group of people so that the thing lives longer, I get more subscribers, and everyone is (mostly) happy.
To that end, if you want the full hack, go to this page.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Is this whole thing a little onerous and silly? Yes it is! By design too, I guess, since the whole point is to reveal it to a smaller group of people. In fact, if there are more responses than intended, the only natural thing to do would be to increase the difficulty of the tasks to ensure that the sharing is done on a more limited basis.
After writing all these, do I prefer the silent treatment of hacks? You bet your last gold coin I do.
But Pandora’s box is now opened so I guess things are what they are. There is even a possibility of a private group to discuss more hacks in the neat future – seems like quite a copycat move, but when it comes to breaking the silence on hacks it is probably better to follow than to take the lead.
Until next hack time …
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