Cryptocurrency has quickly become the latest craze and appears to have no end in sight. Supported not by central banks with economies to back it up but instead a collective of interlinked computers, billions keep pouring in regardless of scandals and crashes; creating the perfect storm of fraud and nihilism: beauty contest for lumps of nothing without real value in our reality.
Crypto is more of an anti-humanist philosophy that turns victims into perpetrators, challenges the concept of progress, and normalizes nihilism; therefore, skeptics should remain wary about entering this industry.
Many crypto scams follow an outdated Ponzi scheme model, wherein an individual or group inflates the price of low-volume or low-value crypto assets they own before selling them off for artificial returns before the market collapses, leaving other investors to sustain significant losses.
One common scam involves creating fraudulent initial coin offerings (ICO). ICOs are fundraising rounds for new crypto products that promise discounts in return for current crypto, such as discounts on future token sales in exchange for current coins. Unfortunately, many ICOs have turned out to be fraudulent with criminals going to great lengths to deceive investors – renting office space and creating high-end marketing materials among their efforts to fool investors.
Other crypto scams are less obvious, such as malware that infiltrates computers or mobile devices to gain access to private keys and wallets for theft of coins from users or their entire cryptocurrency portfolios. Criminals may even create fake exchanges and wallets in order to siphon off money that people deposit with them.
Investors can protect themselves from crypto scams by conducting extensive research before investing. Legitimate cryptocurrencies typically feature white papers which explain how their blockchains work and their intended uses, along with listing developers involved and any open-source code repositories available for examination by other programmers. Fake cryptocurrencies will usually lack this documentation; any known developers or project members should raise suspicion.
Avoid crypto scams by sticking with established, regulated currencies such as euros, yen, pound sterling and US dollars. Do not click any suspicious links or send cryptocurrency to anyone requesting it on social media; additionally do not link your crypto brokerage accounts with banks or wallets as this makes it harder for scammers to move your funds around and finally always report any cryptocurrency scams to appropriate authorities.