Bitcoin Forum

Many beginners into the bitcoin world have probably "invested" in ponzi sites and lost some coins in the process.

How should veteran bitcoin users in the community do their part to alert beginners about ponzis?

In my view such awareness programs gives a stepped procedure to use bitcoin, so its not needed. Let them earn from their own experiences. If they follow certain written procedure with bitcoin you can use it securely but can't earn as predicted.

Not a public awareness about the ponzis but an awareness about the trusted websites and their own flaws should be given. People tend to try out the things they are forbidden, so a positive approach is better. Also, there are such websites listing scams and few users who keep on updating these lists on scams. However, it depends on the user to be safe. Users must learn about the related terms before jumping into action.

Absolutely, I think there should be awareness campaigns which will warn newbies and will save their coins at initial stage, if they get cheated in beginning then they will start taking bitcoin negatively.

Yes its a good idea of course and if i am correct i have seen few topics around this forum telling the same thing. the problem is newbies don't really care reading a page long post and even after reading after that they tend to invest for their curiosity. There is no way anyone will not invest in ponzies until they have been scammed atleast once.

Even though this would definitely be beneficial, it would not come close to completely 'preventing' losses. It really comes down to the individual; as an example, I've been here for three years now and have avoided scams completely and will continue to do so.

In other words: Let scammers get money and continue their practice on each wave of new victims?

Maybe adding a Warning within the investor-based games section would be a decent start, but that is a discussion for Meta.

Most importantly never baited or investing to sites that provide a Bonus for every deposit you make, because the site was certainly using the Ponzi system and never use Cloudmining because 90% of the site cloudmining using the ponzi system. If you want to retain your Bitcoin then investment or play market bitcoin

This is very good idea but not realistic.
Beginners will always do things their own way, will not listen anybody and will make the same way as we did.
After that, they will become ''veterans'' and experienced users as we :)
young people don't have wisdom, patience and experience and wants to do everything in fast way, can't wait.
You can try to put some info in public forums and sizes but it's question if others will read and accept it.
It's always easier to believe in some crazy ponzi schemes and promises that to accept that there is no possible to get to rich over night without hard work and effort.
It's human nature, I guess.

It's really a very general issue,  not something specific to Bitcoin: Getting people to understand that no one is going to throw money at you for free (or shouldn't, in a fair and sane world), no matter what their advertising promises you. And no, random people on the internet are not seeking to give way secrets to make you rich. If they really had such secrets they'd be using them to make themselves rich.

You can earn money by investing in a new company. That new company takes your money and buys manufacturing equipment or hires a programmer, etc., who creates something of value that can be sold. They earn a profit, and as an investor you share in those profits, hopefully earning  back your original investment and then some.

By contrast a Ponzi typically doesn't even pretend to be creating anything of value. It is just shuffling money around, with greedy people imagining that they will be luckier than others doing the same thing.

If people understood the distinction between these two cases it would save them a lot of grief. Whenever someone promises you a return on some bitcoin "investment" ask yourself: How exactly are they making money with the bitcoin I loan them? If you don't have a very solid answer, walk away.

What??Beginner is not take care about Ponzi's risk, So some beginners even dark eyes about it. The beginners need to take a more caution about Ponzi and their need to be an active person to talk and searching more news about it. They can think,not only to rely on people's alert. so they will get more experience to walking alone after this.

Maybe a database of possible ponzi sites would be good. Of course beginners will take their lessons in a hard way. But still this awareness approach should help to some newcomers.

i just want to be honest and revealing the fact that some new potential bitcoiners were getting attracted because of this ponzi scheme,most of my friends in real life know bitcoin because of ponzi,and endup leaving bitcoin with bad experiences on it,just see MMM a PONZI site which recommending their member to use bitcoin and it's give affect to bitcoin image in my region,teaching the beginners about how to get away outta ponzi is a must i do say,maybe in beginners section a thread which explain about ponzi should be stick in the top of thread list

Thats the choice of every beginners in bitcoin joining in ponzi scheme to earn fastest and easiest way.
You cannot dictate them just let them what they want to do.. They will only figured it out when they have no more money to invest.

No, people just need to use common sense and just stay away form sketchy situations like that.

Greed overrides common sense and logic.


There is badbitcoin list but how effective is a single site going to be useful? There should be more community effort.

Apparently, there's quite a small effort put into this. We definitely should have a campaign that helps inform the beginners to not invest in ponzi sites. Maybe we should make a pinned thread here in the forum on the list of possible ponzis. That's probably a good start.

we always give newbie a warning about scam site and people,scam acusition should most important sction for newbie to know what site and who are scammer on here and outhere. but newbie look like doesn't care about thatw warning.

Nice idea. But tell me, who would you trust to say this is ponzi, and this is not? Your government? A central bank? There are plenty of folks saying that BTC is a scam. And the US dollar is a ponzi scheme, don't you know?

There are users alerting about ponzi schemes on investors based games subforum, but users don't read the warnings, they only read "double your bitcoins". Others only read about the warnings, when they understand that their bitcoins are lost.

Best learning experience is loosing some money in a Ponzi scheme. I doubt that public awareness campaigns would have any significant effect, since people tend to be easily blinded by greed. Many successful Ponzis are exact replicas of previous ones, the only difference being the visual design and wording employed.

Another problem is that an awareness campaign simply can't cover the whole variety of Ponzi constructs out in the wild. Sometimes it is very difficult to determine without insider knowledge if an investment is legit or an elaborate Ponzi scheme.

Also, Ponzi schemes are just one segment of the financial fraud landscape. What about traditional fraud, which I think is even more common? I think that as long there is something as desirable as money, crimes related to money will happen. You can tell people to be careful when dealing with money in general, but I doubt you can really prepare them for the constant innovation within the "fraud industry" through an awareness campaign.

Another question remains: Who will pay for such a campaign?

ya.ya.yo!

Here's an idea:  Why don't we nuke sections on the forum where it's necessary to warn people away from?  Makes sense, doesn't it?

From my experience of all the time spent on this forum is very few users pay attention to what you say, mostly they do what they feel like, they're always warned about dangers of storing bitcoins in web wallets, not using escrow, using paypal and staying away from Ponzi schemes but did that ever made any difference? You can go ahead and try OP but expect very little/no change.

It probably won't do much good. However I still think it's better to put a SURGEONS GENERAL PONZI WARNING  on things that need it. Most people still smoke with such warnings, but when they die of lung cancer. They can't blame anyone else, but themselves.

highlight it by all means but the staggering blindness to the achingly obvious isn't going away any time soon. it does make you wonder about human nature sometimes.

Trains coming towards the tracks and the gates go down to block traffic,some yahoo decides he can navigate through the gates and make it across. Do you need to put up more warning for people like that or just realize that no matter how many restrictions you make their will be dumb people that are suckers!

Its getting old relying on more warnings because some people think these people need more alerts to the issue.

Guy pulls over to get serviced by a hooker,not realizing said hooker is a dude. Does he need a warning?

Not everything in the web are reliable even if you make random public awareness about Ponzi. So, for me, let beginners learn their thing.  :)

if you start telling newbies about ponzis
people may start to think thats all btc is used for, scams

instead inform newbies, btc is like any other currency, so protect it like you would money.

anything else they need to use their own commen sense

Im veteran in my group in facebook and advicing that dont invest in ponzi sites but they dont follow, they all investing now in many different ponzi and hoping that their bitcoin will double. So Now i dont want to warn them because they didnt follow. When Im newbie i invested also there and i dont know what is ponzi, hyip site and now i know what is it after i lose many bitcoin.

Bullshit.

If you believe that then you believe bitcoin is rife with pedophiles and terrorists. You can not control image,it is something that comes about naturally or is not authentic. So shutting down ponzis because you are afraid it will reflect poorly is a slippery slope into more restrictions and control over the members in how they act and what they do. That is not bitcoin.

i don't think it would be effective at all. because those who are investing in Ponzi schemes are not really thinking clearly and are mostly delusional so even if there is someone telling them it is a scam and stay away they wouldn't listen.
it is really not that hard to know when a site tells you "give me your bitcoin and i will pay you back twice in 24 hour" there is something shady going on about it.

This is a good start.  But requires more consensus from community members.

Bitcoins have come a long way. Time for a image cleanup

The main target of ponzi sites are the newbies that has lack of knowledge about bitcoin, We need a campaign that creates an idea on how to invest properly, to scammers not able to take others bitcoins

idea for main content of a scam warning pinned post

"if you dont know enough about the other person, to slap them with a wet fish should they do you wrong.. dont give them the funds upfront"

"there is no such thing as guaranteed returns, doubling bitcoin. dont be sucked into a scam"

"once you hand the funds over and they have confirmed... there is no way to get them back"

Been there done that. I was foolish enough investing in 3 high yields and lost all.
I would really appreciate if some one warned me before.

All 3 hyi has review in this forum ...

that would be great, although i am a little bit skeptical about how effective it can really be. but it is a good effort and even if it saves one person from losing his money on these kinds of scam that would be a great achievement.

But I foresee there will be resistance to raise the ills of bitcoin ponzis.

Bitcoin can be adopted for the masses but some ponzi operators are likely to have links with the underworld.

Simple thread might  be helpful for furom users to raise some awareness to people who see in the threads here but the truth here mostly ponzi scheme sites are flowing in crypto related fb groups evthothough we rise awareness here we cant do nothing if the ponzi scam site are spreading in fb groups and mostly of them dont post in bitcointalk because many people here is already aware for the help of those some furom busters in investors-games section its very helpful to the furom members to save their money.

There were attempts before of a thread created by some scam buster wannabe that adds and update the thread with sites that turned scam but most of them don't last. Some can stay updating the thread 2-3 months then gone. Thread's like that can surely help as long as the OP will be faur in judging which one is scam and which one is not.

I think we need some influential, fair and reputable member in this forum to spearhead this public awareness campaign.

On another level, perhaps a semi-formal working committee can be formed to lead this.

There are members who have been in this forum for a period of time but yet could not distinguish ponzis! Perhaps veteran members here could discuss how more could be done.