Bitcoin Forum

In our place a networking scam had been introduce aiming to help individuals to earn profit using cryptocurrency (ethereum and bitcoin). Their activities is to introduce cryptocurrency, their products, and how to access their products using cryptocurrency. They have basic products that could really be helpful like paying bills.

The problem is that one may need to invest first with certain amount then invite also others to earn high commission rate profit from the invites. This is purely the way of a networking scam. I cannot name the networking scam but it has been reported already to proper authority. Still, no legal actions has been made instead the agency had only provided public announcement about the netwroking scam.

Cryptocurrency had made lots of issues because of these abusers to which it will take negative impact to this technology. Sadly scammers had evolve and cryptocurrency were being target as medium of scam.

What can you say of the integration of cryptocurrency to scam activities? What could also happen to cryptocurrency in the future? Will it became worst?

Cryptocurrency is not the cause of scam. Scam is an underlying problem that has existed long before Bitcoin was created. Pyramid and Ponzi scams have been run multiple times using fiat currencies, but the mainstream media does not report it as a flaw on legal tenders, with Bitcoin however, it's painted as a network issue to draw traffic and for negative publicity.

The short-term solution, people should stop falling for the greed trap used by scammers.
In the long-term, I think we may witness a system where coins could be flagged, sort of a blacklist for funds that had been involved in criminal activities. Newly minted and coins that had not been previously used for criminal activities would be higher valued for daily transactions. While the other could be used in the darkweb.

This is the reason why many countries ban bitcoin, which is also considered a dark side of bitcoin. All transactions on the blockchain system cannot track the identity of the recipient or the sender. Scammers always use this to cheat newcomers' money and there's absolutely no way this can be prevented when the law doesn't support the crypto market. These are the dark side of the decentralized market that we need to accept, be alert when transferring money to others.

Networking scam version 2.0. That is what I can say to it :D.

I know that these investment scams are meant to scam people but I think that I can see one benefit of these projects and that is they are introducing different cryptocurrencies to different strangers/investors. Its just that they are introducing it in a wrong way. Instead of just introducing it, they are attracting people to invest into their company which involves crypto (in this case BTC and ETH) which will turn up to be a scam in the end.

Integration of cryptocurrencies to these scams have been there for a long time. Its just the investors aren't that knowledgeable enough and they will fall and fall into this kind of scams. Can't blame them though but in order for them to learn, they must face mistakes like this. For sure after the company they invested will turn up a scam, they will learn from it and will be cautious into the next company they will invest their money with.

Definitely agree with you here. With or without crypto, these scammers can operate their illegal activities.
And since crypto is one of the latest technology that many users don't understand about, they now see it as their playing ground.
So if you are a newbie to this field, don't be attracted by offers that are way beyond the reality.
If people will educate themselves about crypto, we will lessen the instances of people being screwed.
Just like how ICOs/IEOs are dying, because people learned their lessons from all these crap crowdsourcing projects.

This is why it became advantage to be here in this forum. Knowing already what is cryptocurrency all about one may able to find wether to join or not in the networking scam investment scheme. In this case cryptocurrency was only being made as a tool for scamming or been drag to the scammers illegal activity.

This is somehow I see the weaknesses of cryptocurrency despite of its good purpose to ideally be use in a good way with its great feature includes blockchain tech but due to these scammers around cryptocurrency gone bad to others especially to those who are not educated.

It gets just involved because crypto would make a lot for them easier to go global. Cryptocurrency market is hurting every time there is an even containing crypto with illegal activity just like what happened yesterday to twitter, bitcoin was used to scam people after hacking into famous twitter accounts. It is foolish to think that bitcoin was the root of crypto scams, there were never a thing that made a reason before the effect.

As I said, just like yesterday, as twitter has been hacked, there are still people who actually for on those scams I didn't think there will be people who would believe that they will receive double the amount they sent. Cyber crime operatives should be more wary of these kind of scam, they don't need to focus on a certain thing, Imagine if we could just tag a cyber police on the internet.

Where there money is scammers are always around, they are only luring poor victims with promises of having big profits aka quick rich scheme.

Some people don’t learn their lesson, even if scammers  are already exposed or too obvious they still fall to them because of their greed. Scammers will not exist if people stop feeding them hard earned money but thats close to impossible, we will be dealing scams forever regardless of the medium.

The only way I see to stop scam activities is through education. You can have a thousand rules and laws, but if people are dishonest they will always find a gap on these rules to play their scam scheme and if people around aren't educated, they will fall for this scam.
And in fact, I think it's going to get worse, as scam schemes are becoming more sophisticated and people aren't being educated on the same proportion. The consequences to crypto currency are more regulations and centralization.

At the least, they are offering something before they go on and scam others. For me that's lesser of an evil compared to those full-on ponzi schemes that have nothing to offer but promises of unbelievably high returns guaranteed by just investing to their shit. A lot of these networking scams are again parading on the bitcoin scene, with one certain Forsage ravaging the Philippine soil as of late.

Honestly, reporting it to the proper authorities do some kind of help, but that isn't enough. If there are lots of people still into these kind of investment scams that are willing to put their money on the line without doing proper research, scammers would continue to do this type of thing until their pockets are full of money that they get from scamming.

I certainly agree with you. It's one of the major reasons why lots of people don't trust cryptocurrency. Scammers always hinder the adoption of crypto in most countries. Most people think that the problem is with crypto but it's with scammers who ruin the trust of those who are just beginning to learn things about it. I just hope that the authorities could do something to catch these people who are taking advantage of newbies who are trying to invest in cryptocurrency.

 I can say those scammers are desperate to earn money I wish karma hit to them. Cryptocurrency is the easiest way to tricks people who are want to have easy money nowadays you usually see them in social media. I wish authority will take action on this situation, particularly soon that people are gradually adapt crypto and educate people of what crypto could do. and Also, crypto is untraceable that's why mostly scammer uses crypto as there tools to scam people.

Did fiat became worse when criminals were using it for their drug deals/weapon deals etc.? No. In fact, fiat is still being used till this day no? So I see no reason why crypto should be labeled as a weapon for scammers when the word "scam" involves two PARTIES, not METHODS. A Scam is basically someone exploiting others' ignorance of a certain subject, making money out of them due to that.

No no, it's the other way around. Abusers have made a lot of issues to Cryptocurrency due to them using it as such. And in the end, there's nothing wrong with it imo. Government use taxes to secretly stash money right? Does that make taxes wrong? No. It's the government that's wrong. It's simply a misaligned conception, especially due to the fact that crypto is a new idea that just came up a decade ago. Still, such scams of investment have long been here imo, not just through crypto, but rather through other means even with using fiat.

It will grow as crypto is slowly getting the noise lately, and specially with the twitter hacks, bitcoin searches could go big around the world. We can't really stop scammers using the name of bitcoin or crypto in general. This are criminals, then won't change a thing, they will reinvent and get innovative. And the only way to fight them back is to educate our selves so that we won't be the next statistics on the growing list of victims.

Some people wanted to have easy money, that is why those networking crypto schemes still convincing other people and promise to double the money they will gonna invest. I had a friend who fell for this. And the one who invited her is also her long friend and is educated too. Even scammers has legibility and has a strong convincing power with flowery words.
 
 Seems that they are using cryptocurrency saying this is the new way to earn, preferably trading. They will create a team to make it more convincing saying their manager is a good trader and we need to invest to earn some big interest if he wins. My friend fall for that and cried at the end. That's how most of the people look cryptocurrency as a scam.

Because there is no regulation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in some countries, scammers have used this kind of technology to steal people's money. There were lots of reports about scammer using multi-level marketing combine with bitcoin in my country 2017,2018. Since the laws were passed, the percentages of these criminals decrease significantly, but it has made bitcoin become more susceptible to people in my country because cryptocurrencies become 90% illegal. Most people don't trust bitcoin as they used to in the past and some of them are afraid of being caught and forced to go to jail

Everyone goes innovative, even criminals. If people want to use bitcoin appropriately, they need to have proper knowledge and information in order to avoid being scammed. Veteran bitcoin users know how to handle these scammers without losing money

Cryptocurrencies are not the reason of it.

There are a lot of scams going on even before cryptocurrencies was created. Those scams are also innovating as people get familiar with their moves and what they say. Then they developed it more with the use of the internet and then cryptocurrencies came. Scammers are getting innovative, that is for sure but that is not because of the cryptos but because they want more people to scam and get more money with new scams.

If they will repeatedly use the same method, they won't be taking any money from it.

they only tried to be innovative and use crypto instead of other digital payment methods . before , networking uses paypal and then local payment methods and now they use cryptos . we should be happy for that because they are spreading the word crypto to non crypto users in the form of thier business.  i knew many non crypto users that are interested to join a networking business and most of all not all of them are scam .

LOL, it sounds like publicity wether it is good or bad for crypto.

So scamming is already been there using other system also to integrate their scam activity. So sad that there are many scammers trying to get fast and easy money. If there will be an easy way to target and caught these scammers to stop lossess from these investors who had believe in them. Not all people are knowledgeable about cryptocurrency so it would be easy for the scammers to make money and fool someone.

Before Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies were born, these networking scams and ponzi schemes already exists for decades. Even until now, stubborn people never stop gambling into this scheme by being the “first in lines” to join and recruit others. Only the ones who joined early or at the top are winning, but the latecomers would suffer losses.

Cryptocurrencies nowadays are used as “front” to implement these networking investment scams and ponzi schemes, which destroys the image of Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. Like Forsage’s case, they are destroying Ethereum’s image in the form of smart contract decentralized matrix cycler system.

These scammers would never stop. As role models, our goal is to keep educating the masses (whether physically or virtually) about the real and positive use cases of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, so that they would finally understand it rather than generally calling cryptocurrencies as scams.

When something becomes a new trend, some bad people will try to scam people by using that thing, and they will offer such big rewards to people.
That is for getting many people to join with them so that they can get their money. Unfortunately, people are following them without search for the other news if that is a scam or not.
If people can research for more, they can prevent the scammers from attractive offers because people will know if that program is a scam or is real. But the scam will still be there to get the chance to steal people's money, so you need to be careful to decide.

When people get more knowledge related to crypto currency they can differentiate which is true and scam schemes so by the time passes the cryptos will get better from now but scammers also will get evolve for sure so there will be in need of clear guidance about crypto usage from every integrated payment system.

I am very sure that scammers will always be in the world of cryptocurrency, maybe in the future it will get worse. The main problem is with
ourselves why can be victims of scam. We must be able to control our emotions, so that we are not greedy, the beginning is usually indeed
started from greed wanting to get instant profits in large quantities. If it can be avoided, we should safe from scammers, therefore education
related scams must be done often. So many people will be more alert and avoidable fall victim to scam.

One way or another, cryptocurrency is very beneficial to scammers and other criminals, as cryptocurrency is a valuable asset that cannot be traced to who it belongs to. But before looking for an excuse to accuse cryptocurrency of being abused, I believe that everyone should be careful, since scammers always use the naivety or greed of people to get their money. In addition, if we are talking about more serious crimes, then for this you need to contact the law enforcement agencies, and not pay fraudsters from your wallet.

See there is one thing that everyone needs to know about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoins :
Only 10% of the Bitcoins are used in illegal activities.

This do mean that what you said about cryptocurrencies being the problem here , it's not cryptocurrencies it's the people since cash is used more in money laundering and stuff as compared to cryptocurrencies + at the same time the government is making it harder for people to follow up using cryptocurrencies. KYC and using all the personal information is actually something that the government is using to parse your personal information therefore eventually if you do attempt to do anything you will be caught since cryptocurrencies are actually very transparent !! , so these scammers should know better.

It have not actually created any issues for sure.

I do think that networking problem and scams are as likely to occur using your bank account and stuff , I do believe that I heard that someone was asked to transfer like 3000$ in BTC using BTC ATM to someone and the problem is people need to educate themselves about all these situations , if it's too good to be true it's definitely fishy .

All we need is good education regarding the scams other than that I don't think blaming cryptocurrencies is any good.

I still think that the only reason why scamming is so rampant in crypto world is the lack of regulation and laws around it. I understand that people want to be a bit more free when it comes to crypto and do not want governments to meddle, but the idea that "governments should jail scammers but do not touch my crypto at all" is not valid at all.

If you want governments to actually do something about the scammers and catch them and put them in jail, they will also tax your crypto as well, that is how it works. That is why I think there should be a middle level where we are not giving up everything, bitcoin is decentralized after all, but also do get some help from governments of the world to protect us from the scammers. If you end up jailing bunch of scammers, the number will go down significantly.

I Think you just made that number up.  On this forum alone, I'm sure the number is higher than 50%, just due to the volume from a couple ponzi scammers.