Bitcoin Forum

https://icodog.io/analysis/top-5-crypto-exit-scams/

Note: The exit scams are not in any particular order.

BitConnect – $2.6 billion
If we had to list the king of all exit scams, then BitConnect would be the king. BitConnect was a Ponzi Scheme where the investors are attracted with a 40% return promise. That’s not all, they have lucrative money back schemes divided into a four-tiered system. Overall, the investors are pulled into the project with a one percent gain per day.

Even with experts calling out BitConnect, it managed to garner a huge $2.6 billion from the market before it decided to do an exit scam. The process started when they closed their internal exchange platform and also depriving investors any money.


PinCoin token – $660 million
PinCoin is undoubtedly one of the biggest ICO exit scams in cryptocurrency. It is executed by a Vietnamese company, Modern Tech. To raise money, they started their ICO where they would give investors PinCoin token in return for investors’ money. They managed to raise an astounding $660 million from just 32,000 people.

The twist arrived when they launched another token iFan and started offering iFan to the investors of PinCoin. iFan was a token for celebrities to be used on social networks.

After that, Modern Tech company completely vanished. The team behind the whole scam left the Vietnamese company and settled in unknown places. If you want to know more, we recommend reading complete coverage by TechCrunch here.


Pure Bit – $30 million
Even cryptocurrency exchanges are into exit scams. Pure Bit, from South Korea, a cryptocurrency exchange carried out an exit scam. They got away with $30 million of user funds. The first sign of the scam came when they started to delete their social media accounts. At the same time, they also started to kick out their users from the famous KakaoTalk chat groups.

The final nail in the coffin came when they renamed their chat group to “I’m sorry.” It was evident that they had done an exit scam. The scam took a toll of $30 million, i.e., 13,000 Ethereum(ETH) at the time of the exit scam. They also moved $10 million worth of ETH from the Pure Bit’s address.


PlexCoin – 15$ million
PlexCoin exit scam took place in December 2017 when its ICO came to a halt by the US Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC). The action by SEC took place after the found Dominic Lacroix was found to be defrauding Canadian and American investors.

So, what went wrong? Lacroix advertised that PlexCoin would give the investor a return of an astonishing 1,354%. This caught the attention of the SEC. Even experts didn’t approve the ICO due to its exuberant claims. Another reason for the red flag was Lacroix’s idea to push fake experts to give PlexCoin an excellent rating. Ratings are important, and are used to convince novice investors.

SEC then froze the $15 million funds and the company was fined $100K for the scam. The CEO Dominic Lacroix was also jailed. This is one of the biggest attempted exit scams which was stopped right before the tracks.


Prodeum – $0.5 million to $1 million
Prodeum was an interesting project that aimed to provide a fruit and vegetable coding system. They advertised themselves to use Ethereum blockchain and asked investors to invest using ETH.

However, their exit stunt was one of the worst. After raising money, they updated their site with one single word, “penis.”

At the time of the website change, all the social media accounts vanished. They also removed their white paper. This didn’t end here as one of the project founders came forward and said that he was a victim of identity theft. He also mentioned that he never heard about Prodeum and trying to figure out who used his identity. Nevertheless, Prodeum successfully scammed somewhere between 430 ETH to 970 ETH which at the time of the scam ranged from $500k to $1 million.

I only know about bitconnect and I’m not sure why anyone should totally trust it
Because it was a ponzi adventure
And always likely to end up in fraud

There are more exit scams
If we consider the case of kwTt tokens

Bitconnect had been running for a few years and that's why so many people are thinking if that was a real one but the creator of bitconnect was trying to lure these victims and scammed him after it was getting big market capitalization.

from the Crypto list above what I know is only BitConnect, because the coin became a trading topic a few years ago but I didn't join in it. many fools who have lost their money and realistic assets when investing in BitConnect.

Among the 5 scams on your list, I only know Bitconnect, and I am one of the many people that actually got some profit from Bitconnect, and I feel bad from however come last and loss their money. Bitconnect is clearly a ponzi scheme and I don't even think it will last more than 1 year. I also know other crypto scams like OctoinCoin one of the most infamous crypto scam in South East Asia I think.

I hadn't heard of the last three on the list. Such events damage the development of blockchain technology, but somehow people will be more conscious to invest in the right way. There will be fraud cases where the money is. Those who want to gain easy earnings are always doomed to fall into these traps.

Thanks for the information. You are right about some of these companies who took advantage of the greed of people and their lack of education on the blockchain technology. There are still some scams but they are less now. Thanks for sharing.

I've never been involved in any of these projects until today but I only heard about the Bitconnect project. It's a pity for investors.

These were the biggest scam but unfortunately they are many more and with projects that seem legit.
Who invested in Bitconnect was really a newbie.. it was a declared scam and ponzi scheme.

Bitconnect is now closed since everyone found out its a scam but while it was still working a lot of people invested in that coin and i am sure they were not all newbies. I saw dozens of people with years of experience in trading and cryptocurrencies wich recommended others to invest in bitconnect. I honestly dont know if the project was really so good to trick so many people or the people were so fool to invest in such a big ponzi scheme.

#1 StackCoin (2014) - 69.5 BTC Stolen

This is my personal #1 bcs scammer was courteous & upfront with investors posting update detailing distribution of stolen funds to Bitcointalk.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=457575.msg5302869#msg5302869

now there are too many coins that will eventually scam, conditions like this that make many investors lazy to buy coins in ico and finally many projects that do not reach soft cap

The Prodeum scam story is really a sad laughter. Updating their site with "penis" wow, really wicked. And just like one of the team members, I have not heard of the project too  ;D but I have definately heard of bitconnect. That was so popular.

Oh man, what can I say about Bitconnect, before they have pulled one of the biggest scams out there, a lot of people in this community has been calling them out as pure scam, but I guess no one really listens because months after that they stop paying and disappear.

I still remember that because I was almost fooled to invest, but luckily due to this community and my vigilance, I was not victimised by the people behind. Anyways, I've seen threads saying that the FBI has the person behind already, but I don't know if they can be fully compensated.

There are many coins that exit scam without these 5.  Now a days most of the ico scam people by ending ico and some of them scam slowly after ico. I also want to say about bitconnect and I want to list bitconnect on the top. Because this coin is the biggest scam ever I seen. And if we keep an eye on  coinmarketcap then we can see many coins that are inactive after journey a year or two years.

So be Careful to your hard work money. Don't invest any high profitable coin because that have chance to scam. Anyway thanks

Some of the scams you offer are not the biggest, "Bitcoin Savings and Trust", have scam hundreds of thousands of BTC

I'm not much a follower of the project but i think i once read an article which says BTT have something to do with torrent. However, i'm surprised that the BTT project turn out to be a scam project despite all the hype and the trust people had in the project. This why some people choose STOs instead on ICOs

It hard to know what to believe in this days but we still to check closely before making conclusion.

Nice selection of large crypto scam stories. From all the mentioned I was only aware of Bitconnect however I didn't take part in it, thank God. I do know some people who lost a lot of money in this scam story because of their greed and desire to get rich quickly. I think such scams are being created exactly for such people to give them a lesson otherwise they won't change and understand anything.

Wow, there are even much more that you haven't mentioned yet but the 5 you mentioned are actually the main exit scam that has been seen in the crypto space all in the name of ICO and creation of investment opportunity for users.

I was also part of those who were affected by the bitconnect scam, also regal coin did same by dumping huge amount of coin on the exchange which make the price of the coin dip from about $5 to about $0.2 in 1 week which made the coin next to worthless.

Very interesting, but why calling them exist scam they're strong enough to draw in people attention and made away with their money. They really made moves for them to get to that extent, but can this people really be caught the answer will be No.

It's sad to mention scam projects. We cannot do anything with these evil people. We only look forward to police investigations and court decisions. I hope the wicked will be punished soon.

The most know among this 5 is Bitconnect,
I never heard of it when it was still operating but when it become scam,
Most of the post in my social media newsfeed was about Bitconnect,
Luckily we didn't know about it so we didn't get a chance to be part of it ,
But I think they really did get a lot of investors because it was been a trending topic for a long time.

I myself came across such scammers. This is not a pleasant one. Thank God I did not contribute my money to them, but I was a bounty participant. It is not very pleasant to spend so much time on empty!

I remember bitconnect when It turned to 1 $ from 200$ , It was a ponzi scheme and proved that Ponzi schemes would not last for a long time and eventually they would die , I was joining to one of them 2 years ago and I lost money because of that , and gave me an important lesson .

The wrong way when you reveal that you can't do anything to avoid the case. If you intend to invest in cryptocurrency then you must have a concern because investing in cryptocurrency is not as easy as you think, for example you have money and buy some coins that you think are potential then this is the first mistake you make, the risk of losing your money that you spend out is considerable. Better, you have to do an investigation about the coin or exchange that you choose as an investment place by yourself or at least you are looking for some reviews about the coin or exchange. Eventually, the cryptocurrency market can be spared from several project scams.

This is more prove on how risky crypto Investments are and how we ought to be a step ahead in security and safety.
For example one should never leave their coins on an exchange, anything is possible and in mess than a second everything could be lost.
Also proper understanding of an ICO before investing is also necessary, there have been many exit ico scams and it's caused by investing in a bad project.