HomeCryptoBitcoinBitcoin Scams 101: the latest frauds

Bitcoin Scams 101: the latest frauds

Since its birth, Bitcoin has been the subject of one of the biggest speculations of the last decade: the more its value increased, the more public attention it received. Meanwhile, scams on Bitcoin were also growing.

The attractiveness of the most famous crypto helped increase its trading volume by attracting a growing number of investors looking for substantial returns, also driven by the general market sentiment that was enjoying a state of euphoria, taking Bitcoin to its historical highs in December 2017.

Unfortunately, however, there is also a negative aspect of this exciting story: in fact, part of it has been and still is characterized by countless scams, such as fake ICOs that were so much talked about in 2017, such as BitConnectX, and countless individuals who still try to set up fake websites accompanied by captivating fake news in order to attract less experienced investors by promising them big profits that they will never receive.

The method of engaging the poor users who end up in these traps is more or less always the same model that all scammers use; first of all they try to manipulate people so that they feel emotionally attracted by exploiting a momentary weakness to get them into the system, often leveraging people’s economic problems.

In order to do so, they make use of fake news in which they claim that many, for example, Italian VIPs, such as Vasco Rossi, Silvio Berlusconi, Giorgio Armani, Antonino Cannavacciuolo and Jovanotti, just to name a few of those most used, have earned millions or even billions using the most famous cryptocurrency trading system, Bitcoin. This is usually a first wake-up call that should indicate the presence of false information.

After that, when they have succeeded in attracting the unfortunate individuals they ask for a minimum deposit, which usually ranges from 200€ to 250€, in order to receive access to these miraculous software or innovative systems that for some reason are not on the market.

They often invite people to make additional deposits to take advantage of their automated trading systems to the fullest, reassuring them that they will soon be rewarded with even bigger and faster profits. 

Finally, they move the proceeds obtained into offshore accounts to make them disappear from circulation and make them invisible and unassailable to the local jurisdiction, which cannot exercise any power in these tax havens.

There is no need to go into the details of each of the fraudulent operations carried out with attractive and well-targeted marketing campaigns aimed at the uniqueness of the system. It is good, however, to report some of the most famous ones to make everyone aware of these realities and inviting anyone to stay away from them. 

The following list includes the names of the best known and most successful scams: 

  • Bitcoin Era, 
  • The News Spy, 
  • Bitcoin Compass, 
  • Bitcoin Rush, 
  • Bitcoin Lifestyle, 
  • Bitcoin Loophole
  • Bitcoin Circuit. 

In less than two weeks Bitcoin will go through the halving event. What should the cryptocurrency market expect from this important event? Will its value and that of many other cryptocurrencies rise to new historical highs as has already happened in the past? 

If this should happen, it is very likely that the fraudsters will exploit the situation again by attracting new economic players who are entering the crypto world for the first time, thus taking advantage of their initial naivety and lack of knowledge to make the right investment choices. These are the people who are at risk of running into new forms of fraud.

 

Eliano Martellucci
Eliano Martellucci
Eliano has a bachelor's degree in Economics and a master in Finance at the University of Trento (UNITN). He got hooked on the crypto and blockchain world during the summer of 2017 and has not left it since then. He currently works as editor & SEO specialist at Cryptonomist, writes articles and invests, both in Blue Chip and early stage assets. In his latest work, he combined his first love with his passion for AI and large language models (LLM), developing his thesis research entitled: “An evaluation of the performance of GPT-4 Turbo and Mixtral 8x22B in studying the relationship between market sentiment and Bitcoin returns".
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