Bitcoin Forum

Here in the Philippines, there's a rise in ponzi scams by using bitcoin to attract potential victims and it gives bitcoin a bad reputation. Many people are easily fooled by this scams because they are promised of a big return of investment when they invest on some people. I REPEAT, not on bitcoin BUT ON PEOPLE. Here a sample link:

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/money/content/649487/more-bitcoin-scam-victims-surface-claim-billions-in-losses/story/ (http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/money/content/649487/more-bitcoin-scam-victims-surface-claim-billions-in-losses/story/)

#From GMA News Site (Legit News Agency in the Philippines)

I think we should start compiling all the list of crypto scams and cash grabs. That way people can keep track of the scammers and cash grabbers out there. There are a lot of fake institutions as well.

Even if you do that there are still too many people that can scam you without knowing their identity and the only time you know you are scammed is why you realized that your money is already gone. Scammers are learning new ways to scam people and specially people who do not know entirely what the cryptocurrency market is or any other market that the scammers present to us and the only way we can avoid being scammed is through being meticulous in every information that they provide.

There has always been a lot of ponzi scams running in 3rd world countries like the Philippines. It's right up on their faces and people doesn't give a damn. Especially the #1 ponzi scheme, Frontrow. I couldn't even count how many friends I have on social media that are into these schemes.

A lot of newer investors get confused on what bitcoin is and the ponzi schemes that uses bitcoins are as a means of payment.In the end, it gives bitcoin a bad reputation for those who cannot distinguish the fact.

for that tread is made to find ways that we can minimize the risk of fraud.
I think this is a shared responsibility, in order to make the reputation of bitcoin no longer bad in the eyes of the world...

Yeah you are right, some people are making bitcoin looks a ponzi scheme because of scammers that are roaming around, not only in the Philippines but worldwide. They make use of bitcoin to scam others by means of investment. Me also had been scammed before by sites that promise to double your bitcoin/money for short time.

Yes many ponzi scams are now starting so scam people that don't know about in this like ponzi scheme. Some of it is using crypto to get people to invest in their investment scam. Then after a few days this scheme will spread and will get so many people. And after they collect a huge money they will be gone and all the people that join is gonna be cry about their investments.

Bitcoin is only used by these swindlers. I think bitcoin is good. This is not a problem.

yes yes yes, this is true as more and more scams are coming alive every day and this is a bad sign.

This is true. I've seen lots of adverts promising of a stricter method and stuff. Lol and funny enough some people will fall again for these scams. Wish there were ways to ban all these from duping innocent victims.

Yep. A lot of the targeted victims here are lured by a big income. At first they'll be given let's say 600usd stating that it's their earning from a 20,000usd investment. Then nothing will be followed.

This could result for bitcoin banning in the country if it continues to be used for scamming.

the people who were deceived are guilty of it. so do not worry. they will still return to bitcoin

It once with fiat currency. The bitter truth about this is that, it is the first joiners that will benefit the most from the platform while the last comers will greatly be doomed. I just want the lesson that most of us must have learnt from fiat ponzi scheme to be used for this bitcoin ponzi as well.

Btc this time is Gold to loose not

The first joiners do not benefit from Ponzi schemes. Those who manage to get out before it crashes are the only ones who benefit. And legally, they may not benefit too, because it still will be possible to claw back returns.
The only ones who truly benefit are the ponzi operators, who usually disappear overnight.

There are ponzi schemes in fiat as well as Bitcoin, people are gullible and will always look at schemes that promise that you will get rich quickly (rich being relative) the oft repeated mantra, "if it looks to good to be true, then it probably is". Don't fall for the hype and lure of quick riches. Crypto, especially bitcoin is just the bait to catch the unwary(and very good bait too) as it's easy to show spectacular rise in value of bitcoin over the last year.   

People are getting scammed by HYIP daily and yet failed to learn. High Yield Investment Platform (HYIP) has been on the increase for some time and so many people have been attracted to it buy the outrageous interest promised. The people who get trapped by this planned scam are the ones looking to get rich overnight.

Ponzy has been around for a long time on the internet. I think Ponzy made people mistake with Bitcoin. As far as I can see, Recently some Ponzy sites have added a new form of payment and that is Bitcoin. So many people think that Bitcoin is Ponzy

Recently, i increasingly notice that when the phase of the market is changing, more and more new scam projects are starting to appear. When the ratio becomes 9 to 1, the market begins to change and grow again. I think that we will see this every time, because it is logically correct. Growth will be only when most people stop believing in further positive events, but meanwhile we are witnessing a new wave of growth and earning tokens.

Part of the reasons some people are sceptical of cryptocurrency. When these set of people are scammed now, they won't say it's a ponzi scheme again, but, they will be talking about crypto further denting its image. Something urgent needs to be done.

Talking as a victim of a ponzi scheme myself,i will not advice any body to take part in any ponzi scheme or get rich quick platform. There are no winners in it except the admin of the site. U should avoid it like a plague. It's just unfortunate people will always fall for it.

I have seen some of them lately coming up with different ideas and tricks. I believe this schemes doesn't have anything to do with the Bitcoin value and price.

All in the guise of making quick returns on investment, some people believe anything said or thrown at them just like this.  This is serious giving the cryptocurrency as a whole a bad name and publicity as the imminent failure of this scheme would be put on cryptocurrency and not the people's greediness.

It's not starting, we are already in Ponzi financial scheme :) Euro, dollar, everything is a Ponzi scheme. This schemes started long ago before our birth.

There are many such scams using bitcoin. And finally, that kind of thing that eventually led to a negative perception for bitcoin. This negative perception arises, especially from people who are still unfamiliar about bitcoin. Very sad  :'(

Thisn schemes have been in existence for long and has been the woes for many but i still wonder how people still buy the ideas of ponzi. M y dear just be vigilant and dont be at the mercy of them. They are on the increas and bet you is first come first served amatter.

there must be a solution to overcome this problem, this also has a bad impact on bitcoin. people who deliberately bring the name bitcoin to deceive others then make money. I really hate that (all kinds of fraud).

This will be very rampant because some people are  not patient enough to stand what is happen they will be looking for way out and they will enter into wrong hand which will maximise their weaknesses and use it to make more more from them

This can lead to the banning of bitcoin in water if it continues to be used for phishing. The bitter truth about this is that the first participants will benefit most from this platform while the last ones will be severely compromised. BTc this is the gold to lose no

This is very sad to hear and actually i know it from last 6 months.. I started to work with ICO's bounties in 2016 and that time everthing was fine. There were not many scams and the ICO's usually got the softcap at least and start their plans. But when i look today it is horrible, most of ICO's can't reach the soft cap and more than %25 is scam. I feel very uncomfortable with it..

it has always been on. ponzi isnt going to die. everytime new one emerges, it has a way of bringing in people to come and participate. people are the ones to decide whether they will participate or not so it isnt by force.  this isnt new. particpate only if you are ready to risk what your money. the word is enough for the wise. 

I don't think there is such a thing as a ponzi scam rise anywhere in the world, Ponzi schemes exist since Charles Ponzi pulled the first highly profitable scheme in 1920 for which he was arrested.
For a long time, there was the $ USD as an investment method and it didn't make a bad name for the USD.
Therefore I don't think it is giving Bitcoin a bad reputation but a bad taste in people's mouth that want to get rich fast but get scammed instead.

It is too easy for these schemes to start up and dissapear at will. They are targeted
at newcomers to crypto and to a lesser extent gamblers. The operators know that
many newcomers dont have economic and/or education because crypto can be
accessed by anyone.

The rewards in the schemes are very attractive and for the newcomer very alluring.
The design of the sites are very proffessional with all sorts of tools to make them
appear legitimate.

Its a pity that not all people can see through the scam and high rewards.

Where is your proof that Bitcoin is “definitely” a Ponzi scheme? Bitcoin is not a fraud, there’s no real evidence to prove that (if you have, please share). Ponzi schemes, by definition, are built on fraud. Bitcoin introduced blockchain technology, an open ledger, which the U.N. and major global banks are copying now to create their versions of tokens/currencies. You might have confused bitcoin with pump and dump ICOs. Bitcoin is not one of these.

If Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme, then it will be the greatest Ponzi Scheme in the history (especially if you factor in the amount of money people investing in building the mining or farm for the Bitcoin). Hence in the future it won’t be called PONZI scheme anymore.Any Ponzi scheme will be called SATOSHI scheme.

Nah, I don’t believe Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme…

Ponzi scam have been a major challenge to the growth and reputation of bitcoin because most of the ponzi scheme have drive the mean of using bitcoin in other to evade being trace and that have made people to view bitcoin it self as a scam, this happening have contributed to the fall in price of bitcoin became many potential investors are chest away due to fear of losing they money in bitcoin.

This is the truth. Ponzi scam are everywhere, that's why we should be careful

When the rate becomes 9 to 1, the market starts to change and grow back. Growth will only be when most people stop believing in more positive events, but meanwhile we are witnessing a new wave of growth and card income. When these people are scammed, they will not say it's a ponzi program anymore, but, they will talk about the crypto continue to fake its image. Saying as a victim of a ponzi program myself, I would not advise any body to participate in any ponzi program or have a rich background. You should avoid it as a plague. I have seen some of them recently come up with different ideas and tricks. All in the guise of making a quick return on investment, some people believe anything said or thrown at them like this. It did not start, we had in Ponzi Smiley Euro financial plan, dollar, everything was a Ponzi scheme.

Exactly, every bad news was taken a toll on the market specially if media are going to sensationalised it. Mostly, investors tend to shy away and government are highlighting it to make a case against crypto because its being abused and used to victimised a lot of innocent people.

Not many people can realize that. High ROI is a signifant fishing rod of all scams

People will always fall for ponzi scams, they say a new sucker is born every minute.  The allure of fast money is too strong for most people and they can't resist.  Also a lot of people participate it ponzi scams knowing that it is a scam but they still hope to make money off the new suckers.  No one is safe, Bernie Madoff was able to trick wealthy people with high education.

While I agree scams are increasing day by day, but we can take some precautions to prevent them. I always recommend find recent history of the person you're trading with, is he trustworthy or not. Then always use escrow on this forum, and never take PayPal for cryptos unless that member is a old and known member. Last but my favourite, if it's too good to be true it's a scam till proven otherwise.

Fraud will always be there, and it is well utilized by some professional fraudsters, and this happens a lot in the crypto world. This is what makes a bad image of crypto and of course influences someone's confidence in crypto.

This is why many will never get in to bitcoin or have anything to do with it cause many have used this bitcoin to scam so many noobs due to it popularity and it potential to get high return , most especially the Asia side like you mentioned , I have known that region for scam and ponzi and nothing more they are the same set that used to post all sort of things , and it is all greedy and they are giving bad reputation to crypto and block chain but those who follow right channel will surely win .

I agree with this, and sadly those scammer were also a filipino, they use the name of Bitcoin and its potential to attrack possible people they can have to give some information regarding these things, and here we all know that Philippines were not as the other country and up to now Bitcoin was not that very popular which may be use by the people to scam other and using its potential as a key to gain profit for themselves and run.

So it is our job to educate people, so they not jump into ponzi scheme or fraudster that can make them loss their money. But the problem is, some other people only want to get money faster without do hard work, that can make ponzi scheme still a lot.

I agree with this, given that Bitcoin is starting to gain popularity again since the currency price is slowly taking its place now. Speculating 2019 will be a great year for everyone,  we are very aware of the things that happened in Bitcoin this 2018, and sadly it wasn't desirable thing that we are expecting, and scammers were also updated they were just looking for some prey to attack.

But this isn't only a problem for Philippines, we can find Ponzi all around the globe. Some local friends (in Mexico) told me they were investing in bitcoin, but their broker told them to better invest in OneCoin, he say that's better than bitcoin. If you go to google and search one coin you will see how it's a clear ponzi. Even wikipedia says it. So, the first rule to not fall into ponzi is to understand the easy money doesn't exist.

sad to hear...we should create some awareness about bitcoin and their working so people should educate about bitcoin....so many ponzi scheme started ruining the bitcoin reputation

Well too bad but it is really true and i can attest to it because i myself came from Philippines. it is really indeed a bad reputation for bitcoin here in our country and this is not the only news that came out about bitcoin scam accusations. There are huge money involve like 900 million of Philippine in a one scamming activity that uses or involve bitcoin.

well this is not the first time we are seeing ponzi scams which promises huge returns. we just have to be careful with what we put our bitcoin and money into

Its happen in my country too. They inviting people with no knowledge about cryptocurrency to invest and they scam them. Its hard to stop this, because most people interesting with gain they promise. We should give knowledge to people about cryptocurrency because people will think crypto is a scam

As of now that the market is at falldown ,the Ponzi scheme is now active to invite investors while the market suffer so much price value of coins , they are starting to divert some investors while the market is quiet because of this dslldown season of the market.

I was still surprise that some people are still victim of fraudulent activities of ponzi scheme or Hyips who uses all of sorts of tricks and gimmicks using bitcoin to scam investors using a large percentage of interest on investment on daily basis, once they have collected funds they will disappear into thin air and carting away investors funds its really sad that some  people still fall for subtle way of scam that is why this forum has a zero tolerance for hyips

I think the old users are getting smarter, can distinguish between ponzi or not and know the risks too, even though the more ponzi it
will not affect to them. but for early users they need to know more about ponzi, because they might be mired in it..

They're probably staying in a wrong platform for finding an investment program, social media account can be faked so fraudsters took advantage on it by making a real looking accounts and fool people in many social media sites. This can surely affect the image on Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency, some might stop using it after buying the first time.

That's a pretty sad story... I guess the victims didn't know that coins.ph doesn't pay "interest"? A few months back I noticed on Facebook there was a flood of groups using variants of the name "Coins.ph Users" and so forth that were all just places where scammers could promote their telegram bots / cloud mining programs / ponzi schemes.. And you had loads of people commenting "Paano?" (how?) or "Still paying?" or "Legit?" It's like no man, none of them are ever "legit." People are tripping over themselves to join up with the next scam. Why can't people learn?

A lot of them have been shut down but new ones pop up in their place every day.


Sounds like an awful "broker"! How could somebody be a professional money person and not know how to recognize a Ponzi?

Writers of those articles are ignorant about Bitcoin and blockchain, I am a follower of GMA news agency, they do give us transparent news but when it comes to this kind of news they tend to deceive people about this technology, they are so one-sided.

These Ponzi scheme operators just shift their operation into other countries, when the market gets wind of their actions or when the market gets saturated. Once the influx of new capital are dwindling, they just perform a quick exit strategy and they shift to a new country.

Ponzi schemes need a continuous influx of new capital investments to pay the people who entered the scheme first and once that stops the whole scheme collapse.  ;D >:(

I don't know why people are so interested in this ponzi scheme. Even though they are given a lot of benefits without doing much, the end of this scheme is to do a scam. Usually this scheme does not last long.

People getting interested due to greediness, as this ponzi scheme comes with sugar coated , that this greedy peoples dont see the clear logic behind this scam and just get scammed and then cry of getting scammed.

Ponzy scams are to rise with drop of the market as ponzy schemes rise with rise in market and the naive investors are trapped by giving them the  false promises of higher returns and money collected as soon as the market drop these scammers pretend for it and money grabbed. Such type of incidents should be stopped by spreading information and education to naive investors it would be better to take initiative at individual level.

I think it's our job to fish them out and make a list of them on here ? At least some members might be saved ,ponzi is like a virus that spreads once the investor got paid from it,for me any high yield investment is red flag

All these ponzi scheme are not good for the development of the blockchain industry .  many are been deceive in time past and lots of victim who uses bitcoin as a mode of payment for this scheme see bitcoin as scam and these set of victims make publication on the social media that people should avoid anything that have to do with bitcoin and blockchain industry . l think is high time we start to educate the public what bitcoin is all about and why is it different from ponzi scheme. this will go a long way if we can achieve this .

I believed that Ponzi or whatever you want to called had been with this industry since those scammers discover that they can make a lot of money here because people are too gullible to trust blindly. Specially if someone would offer attractive returns. So the only way to fight them back is not to fall for the trap. Just used your common sense and I'm sure that you will be fine in this market.

People here in the Philippines can easily be fooled in investing money its because of the bigger profit we may get through and since those scammers have an experience about bitcoin, people who don't actually know the flow on how to earn in bitcoin can easily be fooled or as you say it's a trap.

i do not think the era of ponzi schemes can hold water any more in this current generation owing to the recent occurrences in the ponzi scheme industry as they have all proven to be false and fraudulent. this generation is too conscious for such, it can come after this generation and recolonise the people in the next generation without the experience of it.

well they can rise but there is manipulation everywhere you look. Even Trump became president because of manipulation. You must just make sure you ride it correctly. There will always be manipulation in everything and I say be more afraid of the manipulation you are not aware of going on under your nose without you knowing it.

Ponzi sechems are every where in the world. Problem is people are greedy they invest blindly. They never check the earning source just invest seeing fake roi and profits. Another shit is mlm people offer you and invest your thousands dollars to gain few dollars of referal comission which is resulting bad repute of bitcoin. Bitcoin only a payment method.

ponzi scam is always booming in the digital era, like on bitcoin, PayPal, and another digital currency, it uses the people who don't know about Ponzi to join with their schema and trick them

There will always be ponzi scheme because people want get rich quick, it's all about being the early bird who makes a profit first and the last one losing, now they have to find away, for this operator to escape without getting caught because of using cryptocurrency.

We should be aware of this and if necessary, we need to tells people to not join in that programs. I am afraid that there will be many people get scam like the old times and they can judge bitcoin and cryptocurrency with the lousy opinion. It was happening before, and I see many people got trauma to come back to bitcoin again, and it will prevent the adoption spreading in many places because people are too afraid to lose their money in cryptocurrency.

All this scammers needs to be dealt with,they are only making bitcoin looks bad as they using it for means of payment,this can't continue,you should info your people over there to stay away from ponzi scheme ,they never have good endings

After bitconnect it shows that people will invest in anything where high returns are proven, even if they know it is a ponzi scam. Newbies of course do not realise or know what a ponzi is so we need to keep these threads alive to ensure scammers are not fed with our coins