Bitcoin Forum

Exit scams have affected many people in the cryptocurrency world. In this article, we've gathered a comprehensive list of exit scams, and some tips on how to avoid becoming a victim. ❌ https://selfkey.org/the-ultimate-list-of-exit-scams-how-to-spot-one/

Did you experience being scammed in one of these?

I am not a victim of any of the scam projects in the article, but I have an acquaintance who is a victim of Bitconect. The sad thing is that he knew it was a scam but still engaged in the desire to make a profit before it collapsed, I believe a lot of people have the same thoughts as him.

I almost invested in bitconnect but somehow managed my self no to invest on it. I have been in a lot of projects who had their excuses and disappeared like a bubble. A project with no working product will not survive. Almost all of the lists that are in the article is true, I've been in a project who promises a good ROI in a small span of time is obviously too far from reality, no business or investment will double your money or will let you earn easy not unless it is not legitimate or scam. Be aware when investing, do your research, your money is your responsibility.

That was the saddest part of most of the investors in Bitconnect.
They knew that this is a scam but they still continue to invest hoping to get an easy profit from their investment.

This should have served as a lesson to him that if ever he knew that a project is a scam, he should have left immediately to avoid more losses.

i remember MapleXchange, i never lost there tho, i lost my major coins to QuadrigaCX haha
owner "died" and took the keys with him  :o
nice article, scored you a merit

I was almost a victim of Centra, almost but not. Nice list you have there but too few in a world mostly made up of scams. There are more than you can count actually. Have you heard of Titanium of Michael Stollaire? It was a quick sold-out as well. But, just like most of the ICO projects, it also ended up a scam.

I've never been a victim of the scams listed there, but one of the most popular scams is Bitconnect. Even my friends have been victims of this scam and have lost a lot of money here in our country.

I did not experience getting scammed but almost engaged some of it. During Bitconnect’s popularity way back 2017 I was almost tempted to invest in that ponzi stuff because of my ignorance but fortunately the scam was exposed early I consider myself lucky also teach me a lesson to do a research first before I invest in any project.

Great article to enlist exit scams that existed in the market. New people in crypto could learn about these scams in advance to further prevent having bad image to cryptocurrencies and related projects. This is one of the reasons having a central institution regulating and implementing policies to these services and ICOs would be beneficial in consumer's part. Scams would lessen since they someone would punish them if they're promises never made, or when consumer's rights are violated.

Not literally a scam, but a project with not yet listed on big or trusted exchanges for a long period of time been in 1 exchange that is hard to trust with, though teams are still active but finding it hard to be listed in known exchanges. The only way to get the earning in bounty rewards is to withdraw it as as fast as we can. Since two things might happen, the exchange closed or the ICO project exit even if their project seems interesting. We should be updated more after in projects we are investing with since chances are they will escape when things went down like our today's market.

I was Bitsane costumer because they list a project that I am working with, to spot on an exit scam we can identify it by looking at their service and customer service.
when some people have a problem with their service and their customer service does not bother explaining what happens with them, we can be sure that they are trying to put some act by ignoring the complaints while on the inside they are thinking how to make an excuse to solve this problem. One of the most used excuse was a hack, Bitsane claimed one of their internal did something behind their back caused a loss to their costumers assets and their service.

"No team details" ? I do not agree.
Showing team photos should be optional. Insisting that developers have team photos is probably why some are using fake photos.
There are other things you can demand for in place of team pictures.

Am referring to "no team details" on your article: https://selfkey.org/the-ultimate-list-of-exit-scams-how-to-spot-one/

Haven't experienced any scam project before but have experienced much project yet to list on any exchange but they keep promising year to year that they will list soon. It's a painful feeling to have such altcoin token in your portfolio

About working poduct being important but often forgotten by potential investors, and the working product is closely related to point number 2 imaginary projections, no working product will be launched if the project is far-fetched or absurd.

Honestly no team details and no working products are the fastest way to detect bad intent projects, imagine a scam project exiting with 30million dollars this is enough courage for scammers to keep evading crypto space

I remember maplexchange, centra and bitconnect very well, its a big shame that the scammers exit and no arrest was made, these are reasons why scammers first aims are crypto, with the help of tokens they create many will fall victim, and it seems OP is not aware that today scammers comes out with real photos and addresses, they always have full team details now

Anyone heard of the wework scam now? That is another example of how everyone who should have spotted the exit scam as early as 2017, did not.

And now when the house of cards came apart, everyone is acting so shocked.

I think more and more as things happen in this space, we all deserve to get scammed, if we all continue breathing life into the obvious scams that are populating the space.

No, that a victim of anyone of those scammers because I don't just invest on some projects with a big hype. The problem with those victims are they are thinking of big returns, huge ROI in short amount of time that's why they fall for this kind of traps.

Just like Centra, wherein Floyd Mayweather and other celebrities did endorsed it, so many irrational buyers jump on the bandwagon and it's too late that they found out that it was a scam.

FOMO's really attract investors who are not carefully doing their research, hoping that they will get something big in returned they just quickly follow those hypers and become a victim of those scam developer.
Good thing to read and examine all those information about how to quickly spot scam projects, by seeing one of those in criteria you can easily stay away.

Not a big thing and presently we have many more scam projects that will surely exit scam soon, they keep building them from time to time ,each and every investors need to look very sharply before leaping, always remember that scammers are around the corner

I was one of the victims of Centra buying at a high price and after that there was an article about Centra fraud where I suffered a huge loss, and since then I had to be careful in assessing the project because the product and project objectives were very important.

in this article, there is no mention of ico projects that raised a lot of money and then disappeared with them. I invested in Athero - they even entered their token on mercatox but then they just disappeared.

I haven't heard all the names, only Centra and Bitconnect. I used to want to put my money in Centra because the price soared, but fortunately, it didn't happen. Not long after that came the info that they were a scam. For bitconnect, I was suspicious from the beginning, this is just a fraud because the price is not reasonable as a class of coins that are only for lending.

The scam list just shocked me. Every year billions of dollars are going into scammers' pockets, this is insane! Scammers always a drawback for crypto. I knew some good projects scammed this year, but I haven't any idea about Plus Token's 2.9 Billion USD scam!

I hope you will be updating the scam and semi scam lists. But I am not impressed with your 'How to spot scam" section. There should be more words to know which is a scam project

Well at least he knew what he was getting into, and all the risks that come with it. There are lot's of clueless people that will live on denial long after others have left and believe every promise that comes from the mouth of the CEO of the scam project. My belief is that after these people realize that they got scammed, they still lack to read the signs of a liars and every time that the price is crashing they are the ones screaming SCAM! Because price the only signal they are familiarized themselves with.

I invested in Envion that wasn't on the list but luckily left early and lost only some of my investment. Come to think of it, i have been very lucky with the timing of all scams. Anyway, i didn't have the time to invest or at the time even study those on the list so maybe that's why i didn't get scammed by them.

I think some of information about Centra was missing, Im not directly scam with centra since im not participating in their ICO, But i was an early believer of its project when it was listed on Binance i bought  and hold CTR token on Binance, Since it was good project the whitepaper details are also good and even they are schedule to launch its own Blockchain The Centra Chain, but i was surprise with the news about its fraudulent way of raising money during and ICO, and base of the result of my own information gathering back then, there was a two sides of the story, Between the SEC and the so called celebrity indorsment and Visa,Mastercard lies. including its Team! I believe that there was a hidden agenda in both story and i dont know were to believe.

oh my god there are really a few known names there.
nice listing you have there! and basically also generally a very nice website. continue so.
i didn't check the team members in detail but if all this is correct then you are a big pile of capable people. :D

I've read the article. Fortunately, never experienced exit scam before and I don't even want to experience it. It's also not base on the poorly written whitepaper. Some may have an awesome whitepaper but  ended up as a scam. When it comes of joining a legit project, a team's responsibility to show some progress is very important.

Here's additional info how to know if it is a legit ICO project or not.

---

https://hackernoon.com/how-to-spot-good-ico-how-to-spot-scam-ico-f0f57c1a4c38

Humans are naturally like that. Majority of us want quick money no matter how the money is made and that is why most scammers too are taking advantage and coming up with all sort of ponzi schemes just to lure people into it and later run away with their funds. Its good to make money though but let's try to earn it in a genuine manner.

I have also been trapped in the SCAM project which made me lose, but it is not one that was explained in the article. I joined a lot of bounties to become a novice investor. Often not paid and the coins that I invest are useless and left by the developer. But that experience made me learn how to be a smart investor so I wouldn't be fooled by the SCAM project and had to do research on the project that wanted to be followed.

Most of us here got caught in scams so everyone remember this one ? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=920272.0. This project disappear with all the funds in 1 days without any reason besides the fake one they posted on the thread. Its sad that we're loosing money in projects who simply their goal is to scam investors as soon as they launch the project so another reason why I don't invest in anything below 50 on cmc or in new ICO's or IEO's.

To all of those scam projects that are featured on that site. Bitconnect is the most popular in the cryptocurrency universe. Actually they made memes about them. That bald guy makes me laugh. Was that the CEO? Actually they're not scam. The project just lack of preparation how they mitigate their problem. If I'm not mistaken it's a lending coin. That happened to be abused by so many. And got bankrupt in the end because of small amount of return. So lesson learned. Never invest on lending cryptocurrency.

Carlos Matos was just an investors maybe the one who made big money from this scam.

I am really thankful to creator for sharing this article of exit scam by the 2018. I was just amazed when i see a Bitconnect project was one of the exit scam. This project was actually my preference to participate in there bounty because of a huge investors involved.

Awesome! Thank you :D

We're glad to share something valuable here.

Surely many people are trapped in ICO scamer in 2018, I myself experienced when investing in eCoinomic (CNC) by generating funds of around $ 45M is really big, but the project ended in scamm, where I think again I no longer invest in ICO prone to risk ,

Researching the project to be invested is very important and check the project as much as you can and don't be trapped again by scamer.

You wrote in the article that scams do not have working product. Please show me at least one ICO that has working product. Some ICOs have MVP, but in most cases it is hastily created product that can't be properly used.

The lists is consist of scams that happened with large amount of money being taken.
I dont see one of my invested scams there.
Maybe you should identify that too. It is not an ultimate list because there is just 5 listed there if I am not mistaken.
It is 5 ultimate scams of all.
Somehow it became a click bait.

Anyway, I learned my lesson. Stay with the trusted ones. Bitcoin, Ethereum and lot of there in the top of CMC.

We can avoid many scammers now because of all wiser users that are gaining knowledge. but we can't avoid unsuccessful project. even they have quality whitepapers and products if this not gaining interest of the users its very useless. maybe you should list one of those unsuccessful project with low quality products and services. with this we may saw the uniqueness and creativity of the developers and how they could bring it useful for all users. 

This topic deserves a pump to warn this community.

Thanks for the article it maybe useful to anybody. Actually i was not scam by those projects from those list, but the two projects that include in the list was familiar to me it was Centra and Bitconnect. actually i was almost convince by my friend to invest in Bitconnect but it wasn't push through because of personal reason. 

What does it matter if I have become a victim of scam in any of those sites or not, it still should not change the fact that I have been scammed and it still would not return my money back, so why would I continue to discuss on projects that has been purely scam to me. Getting scam is virtually my mistake and what I need to become expert on now is how to exactly identify that a project would be a scam before I even put my money into it and not after they must have already scammed me first.

Many investors are so confused about project selection because virtually most methods that has been advised for us to use has been exhausted already, and none of them seems to have a perfect solution, although the ones like researching on projects and the rest way advised has been of help to some extent, but has never been a satisfactory method which they still eventually fail.

I doubt anyone right now can get their BTC back from those scams.
The list of coins like PlusToken, Bitsane, Pure Bit, MapleChange, Modern Tech and  Centra I think are not very well known projects that were hyped. I'm wondering if the funds they claimed to have collected are real data.   $2.9 Billion is really big I wonder how it was promoted. Didn't invest to any of it but almost try that Bitconnect back 2016 except that I listen to the warnings from the users who said its a scam.

No, I have never joined those kind of ICO's or whatever they are.
But, I do joined one which at the end got bankrupt. It is sad for they have like 5k supporters in telegram and I dont know how much more outside that application.
Forgot the name of it for I did let it go easily. How? There is nothing to claim anymore, although they say they might be back for something better.
Most events now have the same thing. I don't really know if it the truth but who cares. I believe in bad karma afterwards.

This is not really a comprehensive list about exit scams and projects that did not do what they promised. To me the, largest list of exit scams in the industry will be found in ICO. There are many ICOs that raised millions of dollars and they are no where to found again.

I have took part in bounties that refused to pay for hunters work. At the end, we have lost our time and investors have lost their money. Regulations is the only way to defeat such an insane amount of scam projects in our industry.

I was never a victim of any of the coins mentioned in the article but i was a victim of few bounty projects, the details of any project team must be top notch, and they must be ready to show their real faces on videos as well but this won't stop them from scamming either

I am grateful that I did not participate in or spread the project. this is very useful for me to be more careful in participating in the project.
the link tips above are quite easy to understand.

Pointing out a useless coin is not too difficult a task if the individual holds a sound knowledge of crypto coin market. Glad to hear that you were able to keep yourself safe from the listed projects. Before making any move, the investors must look at reviews from others and ask about the stuff on forums. Anyway, scamming is the main issue with bounty programs nowadays. Be smart with them too.

It depends on the person itself because even if some of them have enough understanding, they chooses not to look for some information that can help them just because its a bit laborious. They don't realize that something like this needs a little effort that is the reason why some of them end up feeling remorse. People nowadays should be cautious because you can't easily tell the intention of others and you have to understand that sometimes you are the one who needs to adjust. You can't just rely on what you think because it might be wrong that is why you need to make sure, you have to be a good observer to avoid falling into some sort of scam. Actually, its not easy because some of us keep on experiencing it. Sometimes its not about the knowledge, its about being resourceful.

I was a victim of centra and it's hard to admit that I totally can't believed that they are scamming since the start, they was able to get support from Mayweather and many popular celebrities that's probably their plan from the start. So we need to be smarter than ever since scammers were too good at hiding and making us believe even when were joining bounties.

In fact, I have also been victimized by exit scams, such as the bitcoinnect that stole millions of dollars. I am one of the victims of this and my friends whom I encouraged to invest. So now that I've learned that I know how to avoid this one here is to not believe in their unbelievable return of invesment that really attracts you because they pay for it.

If you want to recommend a friend to invest in a project, you should give the right direction. like their choices or opinions that are recommended. I once also recommended my friend to the bounty project, and it turned out to be a scam. until finally my friend was a little disappointed, at that time my friend was still new to crypto and the answer was to waste time. until now I no longer dare to recommend a project, let alone ICO. if you want to recommend to someone that is by way of trading or top 10 investment in CMC, even though it is risky but at least it is real.

Lol, you are not wring about this, because some ICO project has been a disaster this year as it seems like ICO market now is full off projects that just want to scam people and go away with their fake technology and the way they even do that now is so professional that when you see the project from the whitepaper, you could swear with your life that the project will be the best in life, so you rush into investing and then they enter one fake exchange that does not have value, tie your money down for long till the project becomes a shitcoin that people no longer recognized.
 
We also need to be very careful in the next bull run, because this project will want to come to the market during the season to dump the last coins that they have and then exit permanently.