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With steadily increasing prices, the number of Bitcoin scams is also on the rise again. Both Peter McCormack and Andreas Antonopoulos have warned their Twitter followers recently of some different approaches taken by the crypto scammers.
With fresh money coming into the market, many newcomers to the space are completely unaware of how riddled with scams the space is. With early investor tales of ten thousand percent gains ringing in their ears, many are unfortunately likely to succumb to such schemes.
Guard Your Bitcoin: Snake Oil Salemen Return With the Bulls
When Bitcoin prices go up, more people get interested in it. The ears of the mainstream media, institutions, retail investors, and unfortunately, scammers all prick up at the mention of consistent high percentage gains. Although the bear market of 2018 still saw a huge number of questionable ICOs and outright fraudulent investment schemes, their number certainly rockets when prices also head skywards.
Providing the most recent evidence of this is Bitcoin advocate and the presenter of the What Bitcoin Did podcast, Peter McCormack. The popular crypto personality who has recently been involved in ongoing legal wranglings with the infamous Satoshi Nakamoto claimant, Craig Wright, took to Twitter earlier today to disclose a scam that uses his own standing in the digital asset space to defraud naive newcomers to the space:
https://twitter.com/PeterMcCormack/status/1142052313936408577
The post shows an email, supposedly sent on behalf of McCormack’s podcast, that shills what could become the reader’s “‘biggest’ investment ever”.
Most of the email is missing from the post but various red flags such as the brazenness of the shilling, along with the poorly worded copy, indicate that those behind the scam are going after the most naive of new market entrants.
Elsewhere in crypto, beloved Bitcoin evangelist Andreas Antonopoulous has brought attention to the number of projects that have started contacting him again to promote their coins and tokens for a fee:
I'm now getting 10-15 requests A DAY for "influencer marketing" bullshit.
I block anyone who sends these to me.
When your favorite CT "influencer" starts endorsing or promoting something beware: they're being paid for every tweet.
— Andreas ☮ ? ⚛ ⚖ ? ? ? ? ? ? (@aantonop) June 20, 2019
This prompted him to post a PSA of sorts, warning newcomers hungry for the huge percentage gains many early investors in projects realised of potential red flags with regards crypto projects:
FOMO is in the air. Newbies are joining the cryptocurrency space and falling prey to scammers.
Please educate your friends and family:
– Promises of profit are 100% ponzi
– Request to "recruit", "affiliate" etc are 100% pyramid schemes
– ICO/IEO are 99.99% pump-and-dump— Andreas ☮ ? ⚛ ⚖ ? ? ? ? ? ? (@aantonop) June 20, 2019
In the post, he not only decries investment schemes guaranteeing returns but also all but the tiniest number of ICO projects that have been and will be launched going forward.
Judging by some of the posts appearing on both the Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency subreddits, there is plenty of new money for scammers to take advantage of at the moment. The sheer number of questions relating to taking up a position in Bitcoin, safe Bitcoin storage, lengthy transfer times, and other such basic topics highlights that there are once again large numbers of potentially naive crypto newcomers enticed to experiment with crypto by the appreciating Bitcoin prices of late.
Related Reading: Crypto Analyst: We Are in the Early Stages of a Bitcoin Bull Run that will Shock People
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