Bitcoin Forum

It is no longer news or new to the cryptocurrency world that we saw several thousands of cryptocurrency project in the year 2018 but unfortunately, most of them died before their inception as a result of bad planning and implementation by the project team. Some of the are actually well planned scams prepared to extort fund from the unsuspecting newbies in the cryptocurrency investment.
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) reported that over £27million equivalent to over $32million was lost to such scam in the year 2018 alone.
The purpose of this is to encourage the investors to be extremely careful in making a future cryptocurrency investment.

Scam, exit scam, totally hack and too many frauds has existed. I can't feel it when they keep on highlighting this lose to the crypto market because with the banks, this happens usually.
There are too many bank frauds that happens each day and they are not even reporting it, well who they are because the gov't will alarm the people if they'd do and people will gradually stop using them.

The related links here -

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/12/tokyo-cryptocurrency-exchange-hack-bitpoint-bitcoin (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/12/tokyo-cryptocurrency-exchange-hack-bitpoint-bitcoin)

https://www.ft.com/content/c23930d4-a474-11e9-974c-ad1c6ab5efd1 (https://www.ft.com/content/c23930d4-a474-11e9-974c-ad1c6ab5efd1)


Banks are discreet with such scenarios. They know how to handle such frauds but huge amount of money involving an incident like this will definitely hit the headlines -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery)

We will always encounter such hacking, inside job, scammers in our lifetime. What we can do is secure our money and never leave your holdings in one exchange for long period of time. Better store it in your own wallet. At least you can control your security features.

Fraudsters or scammers have already become smarter since many people already know that more than 75% of startup projects turned out to be scams. They must plan something new to make people not suspect that they are offering scam projects. So, it is a warning for the beginners to do more careful analysis when they want to join new projects.

I think it's more than that. There could be unrecorded scams out there, so obviously we don't know. But the main point is that scammers are making a field day in crypto because there are a lot of gullible people around the community that they can sweat talk and victimised.

Well more has been lost and more will still be lost in the future if the governing bodies and top cryptocurrency personalities do not brainstorm to fix it. Just QuadrigaX and Cryptopia made participants stand on the verge of loosing over $100m

Investors should set up criteria in picking coins to invest, and always watch out for updates or reports about the project that they are going to invest, the coin that they are going to invest in, must be transparent and compliant to the government where they do their operation.

unfortunately this is what worsens the crypto image and can eliminate public trust. investors who are victims of scams are also afraid to return to crypto investment, they will also share their bad experiences with everyone. I think there must be an early education for beginners about crypto and other investments to protect them from scam like this.

There was a time, especially in the year 2017, that ICOs are really booming to the point that a good number of them got their hardcap reached in a matter of hours or days. The ICO was accepted by so many investors that it appeared to be the best way to do a new crypto project. It was also the reason why scam ICOs started to flock the market. Huge investments are taken out of these scams. That was probably the reason why ICOs are slowly dying.

A lot of projects that raised funds from users. But it becomes more difficult to recognize good projects every year, as fraudsters invent new schemes and new users fall into their trap. The only way out of this is the use of smart contracts, since they alone provide at least some legitimacy of investment.

In 2018, many fraudulent ICO projects took place and that's why Binance invented a new way of raising capital, the IEO.
To be safe in investing, I think we should not invest in ICO projects anymore. Look for big exchanges to invest in projects there because exchange's team has checked the project and there will be no frauds going on.

I think the amount will be bigger than has been reporting because not all amount from the scamming was reported. The scamming will always there no matter how good we protect our money because the scammer will find a way to trick people and get their money. We need to always be careful and never underestimate of their skills to penetrate to our data or money. As long as we can save our money in the right place, we don't have to worry to them.

Investors again returned to cryptocurrency with the advent of IEO. It is because investor interest has become huge, we see an increase in the price of BNB.Why waste your time and effort on analysis when there is a guaranteed investment in IEO.I do think that the time fraud comes to an end.Soon it will be very difficult for them to deceive people.

That's a huge huge number but I am wondering where would that number land if we start adding all the funds that were stolen because of exchange hacks.

That's why I have invested in any projects back in 2018. The news have spread that the majority of the projects back then were illegitimate which is really risky for those who want to invest on projects that "seem" to have a high potential. You see, anyone can launch a project which gives the "developers" an opportunity to trick people into putting all of the investors' funds into their project. That's why IEO is a great way to lessen the number of scam projects. It doesnt guarantee a 100% chance that the project wouldnt turn out to be a scam but atleast it is more assuring on our part if we see that the project is administrated by an exchange.

They know how to handle small cases but in my country, there's a rampant reports that you can't even imagine on how it's possible because every single day an account will be reported that has been hacked and lost its balance. And the bank's management will reply that it's not part of their jurisdiction knowing that the account owner never attached his/her account to online banking.

Exactly, never leave your balances on exchanges.

Scams are getting more and more popular and this is a serious image problem of crypto currencies. I have no idea how to make people spend some time by checking website, whitepaper, team members and so on. They are just too greedy and want only to get money.

There are many fraud projects that have high ROI levels such as shittokens that use Low Gwei such as vikky, TOTO, and others. And this is a valuable experience in choosing projects that are serious and clear.

There is a general awareness among the investors now but these scams too are getting better while even the legit projects are encountering problems collecting funds. The number of new ICOs being issued are now limited and people are asking for more confirmation about the team and the project. This has introduced a new way of funding ICO through IEO.

I have always wished that there is a way to prosecute all thos involved in the culprit. But thanks to the IEO which we'll have reduced the number scam projects in existence. Although there is still much work to do so that we can scrub out this bad eggs but I believe with time as the technology advances

These circumstances make us become better investors, and makes us developed an insight, now we do not have to take it easy we have to use more time and exert a lot of efforts, you will be late, and you will be left behind if you cannot keep up if you do not upgrade and educate yourself .

i think its not only like that amount as there are so many projects last 2018 that scammed people.. some earned almost 5 to 10 million dollars in their ICO's.. its not kinda surprise now as we all know that these fraud/scammers are everywhere

this number is not an accurate - just think how many "slow scam" projects (that just lose 95% of ATH but do fake activity)

This why we must learn first before decided to enter the cryptocurrency industry, knowledges are required to everyone. Don't think when you're an investor, it will be easy to get return of investment. Many bad people have ideas to steal another person's money with give them promises profit when they buy the ICO.

I am sure majority of the scam should be via ICO scam, I can remember a lot of projects that launched their ICO in 2017 and today are no more and the accumulated Millions of dollars and disappeared eventually, some investment programs too.

People get scammed in this cruel business. Especially a newbie, and these projects will continue to find new ways to lure people in and scam them. We just have to make sure to be thorough in our research and not give in to this endless fight.

What about the scam which has been done in online with other payment method? Or with the traditional banking system? I don't think it's necessary to highlights the scam with cryptocurrency.

Phishing scams cost businesses half a billion per year and it's not related to crypto but we're not talking about it. Scams will continue to exist as long as there are people but I think bigger thing is what it teaches the system and how it protects itself from it in the future.

This is huge and disheartening, in the last few months, cryptocurrency enthusiasts recounted losses from quadrigaX and cryptopia. Sometime I think the cryptocurrency community is not doing enough to curtail these hacks and protect the itself from it which is totally wrong

I think the figure could be higher than that and it's not the final calculations because many more newbies are coming without prior knowledge on  how to invest properly and many more scam coins are coming, they are getting better and can make their projects look legit, even old investors can get scam.

Most of the time, while people get scammed is that they get dragged into FOMO rather than using their head when it comes to investment decisions, this is very bad because as an investor, you owe it to yourself to thoroughly research a project before ever investing into it.

I think the figures stated is a bit under stated because research have it that 80% of ICOs in 2018 were scam, which means that they took a whole lot of money from investors. The best way to solve this is ico regulations which will protect investors.

So sad to hear that. We can see the prospect of some coins. However, it is likely normal losing big amounts in the crypto world. However, of the curse, it must not be twice or more than once because it will influence bad in our fund. So far, scams become a big problem for all crypt holders. And we must be careful enough to avoid being scammed. It is difficult but it must be.

Scam projects are more than reported here. Some projects aim to leave the market after raising a few millions but recognizing these projects is not hard as way back to 2018. Investor confidence is not going up because of the shady history of ICOs. New IEO model is more desirable than ICOs but it also doesn't guarantee any possible leak. 

I believe this number must be much larger than what this research points out. Here in the forum for example every 10 projects 8 are scams.

Most of the victims of this scam projects are those who are new to cryptocurrency world. There are some good actors they even exist on blockchain conferences take photo with their CEO on popular crypto enthusiast making false hype, fake partnership to fool new investors, so as an investor we need to be critic and dig more info.

Losses due to fraud do exist in all fields, not just cryptocurrency. That is why we have to do an in-depth analysis to minimize the risk. Knowledge and experience, as you explained, are very necessary as a fortress of fraudsters who are increasingly smart to take advantage of opportunities and cover up their ugliness. My advice, never invest money that you can't afford to lose.

As you know various ICO was scams and now also launching new ICO that are scams, so investor should invest in IEO other than ICO and should check all the ranking before investment.