Bitcoin Forum

A while back I stumbled across some information online about a tech company using blockchain in a way that was revolutionising the consumer electronics market. As someone who takes an interest in new and exciting developments in the crypto space I looked into the project. At the time there was a massive marketing hype about this particular coin. It was not an ICO but a coin that had been around for some time but with negligible value (ie. even a sizable holding of coins was worth just a few cents). During the next few weeks the hype grew, although the price didn't move much. I decided the time was right to invest and, given how amazing the project sounded, actually invested a significant sum of money.

A few days later the coin got a listing on an exchange. The price actually shot up. When I looked it was up by around 3,000% from the average price it had been in previous months. My investment was worth about twenty times the amount I invested. I believed I had made a great investment. The price started dropping about four or five days later, but by small amounts at a time. I didn't pay much attention. I knew that the market was overpriced anyway and that prices were due for some downward movement. The price drops were more or less inline with the price of major cryptos anyway.

I decided that my strategy was a long term investment and forced myself to stop looking at the prices of my investment every day. I looked again last Friday. I was horrified. The price was back to almost zero and the value of my investment was about 2% of the amount I invested. The withdrawal fees would be more than the actual investment itself. What on earth was going on I asked myself. I spent the weekend digging around to try and find out. It seems that the whole thing was a scam, and a very clever one at that. The initial price rises on hitting the exchange were manipulated by the team behind the coin. They used the hype that they manufactured to build the interest which in turn produced the hype. It was very cleverly done.

As the team themselves held a significant amount of the coins, from their ICO that they had done much earlier, I think it was a year earlier, they then took advantage of the price, dumped their coins, but did so in a way so as not to raise any suspicions, and made an absolute fortune from this. People who invested during the hype, like myself, essentially created the opportunity for the team to cash in using money invested by people like me. They have now vanished. The coin is no longer trading, is worth zero, and I am left with nothing.

It's so easy to be fooled by a team whose aim is not to produce a blockchain-related product or service, but rather, create the conditions to create wealth for themselves by conning other people out of their money on the basis of fake promises that they have no intention to realise. I am not going to be able to say which coin this is, although a few people in the community may know or be able to guess, because there may be legal action going on and I don't want to be party to jeopordise it. Having said that, even if there were to be any form of legal recourse we all know it is highly unlikely that it will be successful.

Sometimes, despite all one's due dilligence, even the most careful of investors will get scammed from time to time. I'm not sure if there's anything I would, or could, have done differently, but I am nevertheless putting the whole episode down to a very bad experience that has simply led me to make a substantial loss. I will continue to be involved in the space and will continue to do the fullest amount of due dilligence, but on the understanding that scammers really are getting cleverer!

It is the norm now. Coins who got pumped very high are always falling very fast. It is just a pump & dump coin.
The problem is to be fast enough to sell before it gets dumped. If you bought at the top, you are going to wait for a long time before another pump & dump scheme.
But yes, holders are always afraid to sell their coins too fast, that's why a lot of people just hold their coins in hope that the coin value is going to grow bigger.
But sometimes it doesn't move like that or it moves like that after a few years. Or it goes to 0 and nobody are interested to trade it.
That's the risk of trading cryptos.

The pump and dump game has always been a great strategy to test the patience of the investors, many are stuck with this game, does all altcoin work this way? it's like a repetitive trap, if all altcoin works like this, then crypto will lose the interest.

In such cases, you need to feel when you need to sell coins. I'm on this one myself, only with tokens from bounty. I did not sell it in time and lost a lot of money, although I did not invest like you.

Unfortunately, without this, anywhere, scammers have always been and have been .. Already more than once wrote that it is better to sell coins immediately upon entering the stock exchange, the exception is only if it is a very serious and promising project!  Such unfortunately is not enough!  My strategy is to sell immediately, so that later do not be upset when the price falls to the bottom.

Well sorry for your loss. I think you lost all your fund because you didn't follow the market circle.  You were suppose to sell at the time the price was high since you saw it and buy back later after the correction. If you had done that you loss would have been minima.

You're right and the safest thing to do when you get your stakes on bounties is to sell it if it hits the ICO price, on that way you can minimize the risk of not getting anything from your investment.

This story serves as a great lesson to most of us in the cryptocurrency business. That's to tell you that there no safe ground anywhere in the crypto space. We will continue to do our due diligent search always to ascertain the validity of any project before we dive in. I am very sorry for this heart breaking experience.

input from me .. for the next I hope you have to be more careful "again in investing an ICO .. do not be too easily hooked with nonsense ..
when you want to invest the initial step is to see the ICO baground. see trending market. make sure the ICO you trust can bring you a millionaire ..

Sooner or later we realise that is too easy to get burned. All I can say is that apart from a great due diligence, invest moderately even if it look like a lifetime oportunity.

In such cases, it is very difficult to guess the intentions of the coin developers. I myself have faced this many times, it happens to sell a coin - and it will be much more expensive, and sometimes you will not sell - and it is very cheap, it happens and versa.

Why not mention the project you are talking about while you are at it? Are the developers anonymous? If they are, then the risk of fraud is higher, since they aren't putting their reputation at stake. If they aren't, then it would be a warning to not trust these people again. For instance I heard some people involved in Blocknet have former scam accusations and that is why I didn't invest there. But in any case with altcoins it's always a gamble and I assume I can lose 100% of my BTC invested in there. My last success has been XSN, im loving the gains on this one and will keep ridding it for as long as it seems reasonable to do so to me.

PS: Satoshi was able to get away with anonymity because back then crypto was not a get-quick-rich scheme.

Yes, cheaters always find new ways to cheat people.
I always wonder how creative cheats can be.

Yes, scammers are getting more clever and are building a very attractive project with enticing whitepapers and graph to interest investors and even get good marketing but I think this can be reduces if only we can help spread any fraud/scam as soon as we notice to help other investors from being victim.

Yes The Scammers are getting cleverer. Many of people are in a panic because they do their work honestly but still they can't take the advantage of their work just because of Scammers.

Yes, everything is upgrading now, not only is our investor familiar with the market, but also the fraudsters' fraud is also updating! I've come across this situation you mentioned! But I saw it grow too fast. I took out tokens after holding it for 3 days. I think a token worthless can't have such a large amount of money. The result is 3 weeks later. The price has fallen by 50% within one day!

of course they were gonna wild and do anything to cheat or rob our money, even with the clever way or the bad way because they are the bad person from the start.

Of course they are, this is the same in all world things. Viruses became smarter and endure against all the medical treatmants, scammers became wiser to get you scammed, lol.

Can you tell us what token (ICO) we are talking about. It's not like you are protecting their reputation or anything.

Scammers are getting smarter, but investors are not stupid. Another thing is that there are no methods to combat them and control all of this and one must rely only on their own strengths and knowledge.

Completely true. Scammers and hackers will always exist in the cryptocurrency world and they will always come up with ways to prey on innocent individuals and steal their hard earned funds in creative ways like the one you stated above op. There are many pump and dump groups in this market luring investors in devious ways which is why we need to always stay cautious and never invest in anything without proper research. Newbies especially need to be extra careful.

everyone is looking for ways to develop and scammers are also no exception, but investors also do not fool with time

Why did you go against the market when you knew it was going downward? You never win if you fight with the market and if price goes down by that much it's a telltale sign that you need to exit the market, specially when it comes to new coins that no one is familiar with. What was the name of the coin if you don't mind sharing?

You know what. Scammers are aleays clever. You cannot scam people if you are not. Thst’s we need to be clever too to avoid such people. Always think of your safety before doing anything. Even your friends can scam you either.

Nowadays, we have to be extra careful and clever in choosing the coins to invest. Best thing to do also is to monitor the price trend to see any indication of a massive dump and check out any update about their project especially in their telegram group. By the way, what's the name of the coin? Similar fate that happened with Centra.

I think that the IQ of fraudsters is very high, so newcomers are not advised to participate in ICO. It's normal for you to be deceived. I think ICO is gambling. Because you can't monitor team work.

that why peoples in here always say most of icos are shit. they not gonna live even for a year. that why you need to search more carefully with this icos. i dont really trust at icos cause most of icos i see will be death after their tokensale are release. better than sorry i would buy token after their sale or sale fast after i earn some profit.

There is no such word as "cleverER," it's simply "clever."

In any case, i completely agree with you though. I believe that even the most intelligent analyst or blockchain researcher can easily be scammed by a well-planned and executed scam project. It's amazing to sometimes see how much thought and effort these scammers put into their projects which could have instead been put to good use. I pray that these scammers instead channel their efforts and energies into doing something good.

I would also like to know what was the project and the team developing it. Of course they are probably hiding their identity, but in case they aren't, it would be good to know so that we could stay away from other projects from them.

I also didn't understand why you didn't sell after getting your profits 20x higher than your investment. You said it yourself that you knew the coin was overpriced at that time, so it would make perfect sense to sell some coins. You could just protect your investment, so that you wouldn't lose any money, or maybe even get some good profit from it, and keeping the rest for the long term.

Marketing strategy has always been the key to affecting coin prices. There are too many speculators in the market. Due to the existence of these speculators, new scams will continue to emerge. The purpose of everyone is very simple. For profit, if you can become an early participant, you are likely to make money. If you only participate after the price has risen many times, you are likely to lose everything.

I think novices should thank you for your reminders. It's true that fraudsters are getting smarter now. So I didn't participate in ICO this year, perhaps because I have no courage. I prefer to invest in coins.

They add work experience. There are always people who think not standardly. They take already checked up options and finalize them. Often they try something new.

I'm sorry you lost money. This is truly the model that happens with many ICOs and it's very difficult to predict. The only thing is just to research the team as much as you can, but that also doesn't need to be enough sometimes..

true story. day by day they are become smarter. investors cant identify whether this project is a scam or not because the do every possible things to hide their scam icos and projects. i personally have experiance of the project Benebit as i remember.