Bitcoin Forum

Familiar Bitcoin Scam Defrauds Dutch Investors of $1.9 Million and Counting

A Bitcoin scam that has been tried many times over the last few years appears to be having a lot of success in the Netherlands. It has so far, it is believed to have racked up at least $1.92 million since the start of 2018.

The premise is simple. Create a legitimate looking crypto investment platform website, claim huge returns on investments, and advertise it will a celebrity’s image. Easy.

https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/04/12/familiar-bitcoin-scam/

These HYIPs' success always lies to the ones who are referring it to other people and there is no doubt it had claimed a lot of victims in Netherlands because of how it gets free marketing from this fools. The victims are also partly at fault here on losing their own money from such obvious scams, they always see the "gains" but not the truth about it being an obvious fake. It doesn't matter how much celebrities you put in it or how big the potential returns are if you know its too good to be true you should step back from it as fast as you can.

I'm not sure who's more stupid, those who still believe that people will ever learn from their mistakes, or the people who keep investing in these scams thinking that things are different this time....

Thus far every investment platform that I know of turned into a scam. With that in mind, how likely is it that the next platform will also turn out to be a scam? It's just a matter of logical thinking, but that's clearly too much to ask for.

News outlets use these events to once again point out how dangerous Bitcoin is, while this has nothing to do with Bitcoin at all, but that's unfortunately not how the average person thinks. It's always Bitcoin to be blamed.

Seems like that's the credo of most media nowadays. Blame the tool, not stupidity. I've found several instances of news like this across my local media site. Still, a mystery how it becomes a worldwide narrative.


I personally know some legit investment that born in this field of business, but yeah the number is so small compared to how many scams lying around out there. As long as potential investors use some basic analysis to judge them, I believe they can filter out which one is a scam and which one isn't.

As far as I can remember, no one had ever blamed USD or any other currency when yet another scam was uncovered. We can't even imagine such titles as "Infamous US Dollar Scam ..." in regards to Bernard Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scheme or "Villainous Rouble Scam ..." regarding Mavrodi's MMM financial pyramid.

So Bitcoin shouldn't be blamed or even mentioned, at least in the title, either.

It's always stock market scam, insurance fraud, tax fraud, etc. I legit doubt they are doing this on purpose, because the USD is seen as money and the goal is always to obtain more of it. With Bitcoin it's more speculative where Bitcoin is the actual scam according to them. USD goes in and USD goes out whenever they are satisfied.

Bitcoin needs more time to mature in that regard, but I am quite certain that we will be there eventually. Gold is the main target, sound money the next one. Sure, it's annoying for us Bitcoin enthusiasts reading through these articles, but we are the ones who actually have to prove them wrong, not vice versa.

Bitcoin = hot = clicks = ad revenue. :P

I have to admit, it's the first thought that entered my mind too. Except that when the internet first came out to my town, some relatives close to me fell for an email scam. They had no idea you shouldn't trust emails, spam was only just making its appearance. Wasn't even a get rich quick scam, but something that convinced them they needed to send money to someone... basically preying on goodwill.

By the time they told me about it, was too late.

I imagine it's a very different thing from investment scams, where greed blinds people and a sense of delusion from being "on the ground floor" of technology prevents people from thinking rationally.

They should probably assign a term to it. The use of tech fads + celebrity.

This isn't limited to the Netherlands, this happens all over the world. Some celebrities actually do get involved even though they have no idea what they are promoting!

some celebrities should check what product are they putting their face on before grabbing the money
but since people never learn that in the economic realia of nowadays it is nearly impossible to get 10% monthly interest , not even talking about 20% daily or other retarded figures
and I don't have any sympathy for them either , its greed and stupidity - a deadly combination
ignorantia non est argumentum
and if you decide to "invest" (read donate) your money in a scam project , there is none to blame

I believe that at least 30% of the Brazilians who at some point said they had traded Bitcoins were actually participating in some HYIP. And the number of people who said they were mining Bitcoins, but were actually part of a HYIP, should reach 80%.

There are only a few, very few who have a real idea of what Bitcoin was all about. Most want to invest fiat into something that will give you great returns in a short amount of time.