Bitcoin Forum

I learnt my own lesson about some useless use cases in crypto Projects through Airdrop hunting. I have something against the following use cases like

1. Artificial Intelligence projects
2. Gold backed tokens
3. Deflation tokens

Why? They hardly survives because they are mostly based on lies, these use cases are scammers favorite tools to deceive

Scammers uses catchy and popular concepts to get easy money from gullible investors. They don't do much work and just copy pastes others work with some slight change. Other popular scams except the ones mentioned by OP at the moment are
1. Masternode coins - 90% of them are just scams.
2. Exchange coins - Don't believe any exchange coins as good exchange would always bring their exchange first and issue the ICO on their own exchange.

Main problem isn't the use case of a coin. It's the fact that most coins don't even get to fulfill their main purpose and so get dumped and abandoned before they even start being developed properly, if at all.

Scammers won't give a damn about the utility of their coin; the only thing that matters to them is that the price rises enough to be able to sell a large quantity and abandon the project with a big bag of $.

1. Masternode coins are scammers favorite too.
2. Real Estate projects are scammers favorite too.
3. New exchanges are also used by scammers too

Anything that's very easy to fool investors will be on scammers list for sure, it's easy to detect fake masternode projects because they promise huge ROI, mostly too good to be true and do not trust new exchanges too unless they are transparency

Most staking cryptocurrencies are also used by scammers. Anything with more than 90% of its circulating supply staked with no real use case for the token is almost certainly going to fail.

I'd also stay away from anything offering staking rewards of more than 7-8% per annum—even this is quite high. Something like 3-4% is good, but 1-2% is ideal.

Anything yielding more than 8% or so has much too high inflation to survive as a cryptocurrency, given that the most popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, etc all have gradually reducing inflation (halving events).

When something is too good to be true in crypto space or in real world don't just think it twice, it's a scam, scammers are very fond of giving investors attractive offers, if the offers aren't attractive how will people build interest? Greed lives in all

Scammers are good enticing the investors, creating good and attracted projects that based from whatever is trending from the market,
they can easily gained attentions since they really understand the emotions of every target venues that they'll going to offer.
The common mistake of the investors is being move without doing proper research especially newbies who thinks that investing is as easy
as it is.

not only that they are always copying the idea of  a successful projecy so they can also feel the success when they are the one who launch it.


Like exchange or gambling website they also have this idea its depend to them what they think will work so they can easily have money from investors.

Scammers are indeed smarter than the investors. They have a lot of techniques that they can use on tricking the investors to encourage them to fall on their scamming schemes that's why as an investor or trader we should double check the background of every person we are transacting with to avoid scams and casualties.

You said it well "projects" "tokens"

BTC XMR XLM ETH POWER

What about gambling platforms in crypto space? They are almost complete scam projects and even those that works today have team that are dubious and they can rob you of your jackpot rewards, I've seen such claim where someone earned 1 BTC and the team sent him 0.5btc telling him to manage it. Lol

That sounds strange as fuck, there are indeed sketchy casinos out there but most crypto casinos that passed the test of time are legit WAY more legit than any physical one. Even some new ones are cool.

Not that strange to me, even few popular online casino projects on this forum turned scam and cheating their users too, some legendary members and hero members once wore the project signature on this forum, new online casino projects can't be 100% trusted

Agree about masternode coins. The majority of them soon become a fail project and their coin price becomes very low to the point your masternode running under a loss because of hosting fee. The team knows quite well about it but they don't care since they already got a lot of money of the pre-sale masternode.

You know what they will try next? Probably decentralized finance concept. Because its the new trend now. What you mentioned are not actually cacthy on some investors and traders eye.

None artificial intelligent project survive in the long run, and can you give example of this? Also gold backed tokens are pure lies at all. None of any of these projects really are backed by gold as it stated that its not inder any provision of approved sector to fully backed tokens by physical gold.

I have no idea on deflation token and nor care. I think its just a waste of money for investment.

True, it's presently happening with IQ Cash project and they introduced bounty campaigns two month ago, the problem now is this masternode coin has less value now, from 0.33$ down to 0.03$ and I heard it was more than 0.33$ before, masternode coins are such a failure

The next scammers tool will be DeFi projects, I personally is waiting for that day where we will start seeing new bounty projects showing off only DeFi use cases, I'm currently promoting DIA which is a data based DeFi project simply because it isn't new

I think Masternode and new exchanges are more favorite tools for scammers. If you see this topic https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5212811.0. many people talk about BCNEX exchanges. This is most hype exchanges project and becomes scam. It was very sad when the project already popular and many people trust it, and team decided to scam people

just like what you've just said.. I was opportuned to work as a better tester for a new exchange that list only slp and erc20 tokens.. these guys have already built there exchange from scratch international internally generated funds.. and are currently listing slp tokens.. it made me wonder why so many projects requesting funds in order to build a exchange

Exchange coins is the most popular IMO.
The most common indicator of scammers are the unrealistic ROI's or a bit higher than what's considered as normal/standard rate of returns. Since this will catch the attention of the naive investors.
Also, I don't easily believed in cryptocurrency backed by gold.

Sorry to say but some artificial intelligence projects are over exaggerated, it's like chasing something that can never be possible, the only A.I Projects I can support must be reasonable fair, like A. I messengers application etc

Never heard of https://sophon.ai/ ?

AI project sounds as bullshit, unless it was collectively feed processing power but that doesn't exist.


Edit: Yaunfitda the sophon.ai thing is legit, but you gotta program it, and might be a bit different of most people's perspective of artificial intelligence.

I also hate AI-related projects, since I entered this market, no AI projects have been successful. They received a lot of money from investors but in the end they still could not succeed with it. Stay away from AI projects for the time being because I'm sure it won't succeed

Lol Also include adult industry projects. All I know in these categories have failed, even though a few projects based on AI still look promising. Worst is deflationary tokens, most if not all projects in this category were baseless. Trends come and go in this space, just learn to ride the trends while you can.

Exactly, I've heard projects talking about AI and stuff, but at the end of the day, they are all scams and never proven to really have a good case, except hyping their project. And I believed that they are really exaggerated to really look like that project is the next big thing in crypto and AI, but so far no one has proven to be successful.

most fraud occurs on airdrop through phishing sites and others and more strangely they want to charge a fee if want to get the results of the airdrop
If I find this airdrop, I will continue to go

I'm so against gold backed tokens and deflation tokens because they are mostly scam projects, the only deflation token I trust is BOMB and even this BOMB is alive based on the big hype it has created when it got launched, all the rest are just copy cats

That's right because scammers will continue to look for ways to make money from cryptocurrency investors, in their own various ways, so we should be extra careful of scammers.

Yes you are right, most of the projects you mentioned above have indeed ended in a scam. I think investors should think first if they want to invest in the above project.

That is just it. If they successfully open their exchanges, it will be a pitfall for most investors, because whatever fund they send in there is all gone. Many of them will bring up strategies that would lure traders with huge funds. They would be deceived to send more funds in, promising some forms or rewards or incentives and at the end, they will disappear. A typical example of such is BCNEX.

Sex sell yes, but in the case of crypto, it was used to lure unmatured guy that still let their d*ck control their investment. 100% adult project is either fail or just straight scam.

Porn on the other hand has achieved relatively more success than many other genre. There are a lot of porn sites that gives paid personal live stream as people find it easier to give and take crypto for private events. The current pandemic situation has further boosted the economy as more artist are joining these platforms and earning money just for showing off on webcam.

Scammers don't settle in particular category of projects, they are everywhere now the recent trend is DeFi projects which may turns out into huge scam in the next few months so watch out for the every new projects releases because it holds the risk of turning out into a scam.

Other popular ways of scamming people with fraudulent ICOs
- STO, they claim to give x percent of operating profit for x time or forever. Many people did jumped into those STOs and at one time they were quite famous until IEO were the new trend.
- Mining projects. No mining industry can provide a sustainable profit for investors just for one time investment as it's a dynamic business.

It's really hard to see new projects that aren't here just for the money, it's why I don't trust new projects today unless I find strong prove  that they are here to stay, it's getting more annoying, DeFi projects will join the sea of frauds in crypto space very soon, I'm waiting for that one

Truth.
They use the kind of industry where we think it will be successful.
I doubt they will.
When it's so good to be true you doubt it.

But, there are still others which are really making a good progress.
There is 1 out 10 in the bounty sections in the industry of gold.

That's it, naive investors. Because they are quickly diving to invest without further investigations just because they believed on the hype that the vast of those who in hype were fake and just want pump and dump method of increasing the price. But I'm not totally disappointed if there's project that keeps coming, we should have to dig on research before putting our money as an investment.

I have doubt that once there is a scammed project and then suddenly disappeared, then, it will be expected they will come back with a new name that we can't able to determine. I have a friend who told me this before, just because of money they easily fool people.

I bet on scammer's next favorite tools is going for DeFi project since they're trending right now. Please invest in DeFi project carefully.

I have nothing against projects interested in this topics but what is interesting to me is a team just coming out of nowhere thinking they can spend $20 million or so on Artificial Intelligence and succeed, this is just like a drop in the Ocean, Apple, Google and most of these top company have spent alot on this subject and still spend so how do you want to succeed. Raising money through ICO has its limits

But their several other projects tokens that claim the same and are still currently doing good and making their investors happy.
There is no doubt that scammers take different dimensions to get to their victims but it doesn't mean every offering such projects are all scammers

yes, scamers always have many ways to fool the victims as you said above, on the other hand like an attractive offer, a high return on investment is a way to attract the attention of investors to join in it. most of the scamers have revolutionized their ICO project again to make it look real or convince investors.

I would say something believable is the most awesome thing you can scam people around.
If you tell people that you will give them 100 coins if they give you 100 satoshi, they will not believe you, some might, but mostly they will laugh at you.

However if you tell people that you will give them 20% per year, and that is guaranteed, they might believe you. Is it impossible to give 20% profit per year? Well Warren Buffet made a career out of it so it is quite possible, however we are not Warren Buffets here and the people who say that are lying. They are trying to ponzi the hell out of the situation. Ponzi scheme or pyramid scheme is by far still the best way of scamming people, that way you know what you are doing as scammer since you saw it a million times before and you can perfect it by scamming much better next time.

In my span in crypto space DASH was the only coin masternode which actually gave me a decent profit lol apart from every coin ended up with a loss. Never trusted/invested in any real estate related projects.

I participated in ICO of COSS exchange and that ended up badly too so I agree with your statement above completely. Not all exchanges can be binance.

Few artificial intelligence projects exists and they are doing fine but majority are chasing the air, gold backed tokens have fake foundations and are just 'make believe' use case, I made few dollars from deflation tokens, these are the kind of altcoins you don't want to hold on to for long because they can become worthless very fast

You are right, this techniques as been working for quite sometimes now, and I hope investors will learn and stop falling for cheap scam. 80% of exchange projects too is pure scam, they don't have any real usecase, just mere attractive name to deceive investors.

exchanges who are doing are ICO are the usual. we've been sing more of it since 2018. its unsure if they really get some funds fro investors though and i have not investigated an of them but the fact that they tried asking for funds and just defaced their website after ICO date, its a valid reason to think they are scam.

i would assume a single team is behind the ICO scam of exchange project and the next exchange ICO scam but just doing different way of exiting. one that i suspect today is that  KOINPRO. its not doing ICO but its allowing users to deposit.

The worst and the culprit among them are exchanges I hardly see any exchange coming into real life I personally invested in one or two of them which eventually turned scam I belief this is an eye opener to any investor or bounty hunter to avoid those ones else the end result will be regret of course those scammers are having a field day due to non regulation of cryptos where every dick and harry enters the market with shady deals and tricks to defraud unsuspecting investors every crypto enthusiast has to be wary of them including those mentioned by OP.

I agree with you. DeFi project seems the next potential tool to use by scammers effectively. Well, one of the ways to scam people effectively is by using what the most favorite ones currently. We must know that nowadays, most scammers prefer to use IEOs on small or unpopular exchanges to attract people than using ICOs. As most investors don't trust again in ICOs, scammers rarely used ICOs to trap people anymore. We must realize that scammers are always following the current trends in crypto to get the victims, so be more careful guys!!

Yes IEOs could be one of their tools, but they can't be accepted on bigger exchanges and they cannot venture into approaching such exchanges, because thorough research will be done, such as the IEOs on Binance, Gate.io and other bigger exchanges in the space. They most times prefer exchanges like p2pb2b, latoken and the likes, because they are birds of same feathers.

there are many project in various aspect that are scams with little or nothing to offer. the reason why professionals insist on investors to reach and research about projects before spending their money to invest. unless you are good in gambling. the new tools for scammers also include gambling projects which are totally cpy cats from previous projects.

That's true, all these use cases have always being met with bad endings for investors while the team moves away with the funds generated. However from the list, I can say based on my own understanding that gold backed tokens tends to be the worst as I have not seen any which is working nor any which is actually living up to expectations. In the case of deflation tokens, I think there are some platforms which uses it, such that when tokens are used for services the supply tends to reduce nevertheless it was still leveraged on by scammers to achieve their aim. Therefore what this shows is that, before one invest in any project, one should study the use case and make sure it is something that can work.

that's why if you do really want to gamble, just play in the known casino sites here. you can always visit the gambling board in this forum and look for reputable ones. if you want to try new casinos, better deposit small amount as you will see potential problems when it comes to withdrawal time.

and also, not only those types of projects mentioned by the OP are prone to screwing investors, but almost a lot of blockchain projects. you have to spot those projects that have empty foundations and just here to grab money from naiver users.

Lol, if you have issues with Gold-Backed token then you are not a good project or token researcher. Because to my very understanding; The digital gold stable coin has been ever reliant and functioning well with good volumes on different exchange platforms as an alternative to usdt or other stable coins. When it comes to gold backed tokens; verify the gold amounts in vault; when it comes to deflation tokens, remember it is a pump/dump token. When it involves AI projects; its 2 side of a coin.

Always do your own research

many exchange projects have emerged lately, and they always offer a variety of attractive facilities and great benefits, yet they usually give a number of coins to bounty hunters and they give their own value to their coins, exchanges like this should be on the lookout , so you do not lose your money

That's probably will happen. Scammers are very good at taking advantage of trending projects. Remember back in 2018 when ICO projects raised as a hype, scammers immediately took advantage of it and fooled a lot of people. DeFi projects is developing and gaining its reputation through the market, the term "DeFi" is become a trending word in the forum. Surely there will be a chance for scammers to fool people! Be careful guys!

They survived Because there are still some fools that trusted them even how many times that same style these scammers are using.

Don't you get that same technique they are using?meaning the same people involves on these scamming.

Try not to believe in same like this and trust me this will stopped sooner.

Their creativity to make new ways to scam people will always improved. Those scammers knows how to ride which hype they should enter so they can take advantage of those newbies seeking to gain more profit from your money. Just remember that too good to be true giveaway will always associated with scam. There are no free money easily. You should be able to recognize that after you been scammed.

DEfi project since its hot now actually there are many defi project created as of today you can check bounties atcoins and you can find many defi  project that have bounties.

There is also other way I found that they are using fake wallet website with fake return they promise if you stakes you crypto in them and other use fake application .they are improving everything For them to keep up with new trends .

I don't think anyone is good at betting, especially in terms of investment, all jobs really need further research and analysis, because making hasty decisions without doing research will only ruin oneself and one's life.

Well I guess this is also a good thing that scammers don't put  in the effort of creating something unique to scam the people and rather copy other projects to scam people because it makes easy for us to detect the obvious scam. Though many people were scammed in the beginning because of these projects, people have become more aware that such projects are most probably fake which is why it's actually good that scammers are using the same technique again.

I notice that scammers do not bring anything new to the market. They repeat the same schemes without coming up with anything new, only the investors who are newbies in cryptocurrency change. Only newbies can believe that you can earn 100% in 24 hours.

I hope that this is more of a current market history and randomness than a pattern. Audits will fix it

Exactly as you said, Buddy, scammers trick is evolving everyday, in 2013-2018 projects were using mining tokens as a trick, nowadays, you can't find new project claiming to be a mining project. Additionally, DeFi (Decentralized Finance) is onboard trick now, members be careful about new projects claiming to be DeFi project because it's booming in the market structure right now. DYOR.

If they have any kind of creativity, I doubt they would use it for trying to scam people. Scammers are the laziest person you could find out there so most of their tricks are also very repetitive. When you see some new project keeps pop up one after another without any creativity, pretty sure scammers project are in it too.

Any catchy use case can be used by scammers to fool investors, the lists of use cases they can use are unlimited, it's your job to find any means necessary to spot any scam intents from any new projects and also, since DeFi is reigning now be prepared for some scam DeFi projects

Based on what I had observed I guess Masternode coins are the most effective tools for this to scam others here in this community business in the forum guys. Then, one of the apps they are using it too was Telegram this has been proven and tested I know many of us seen these things
in most telegram channels.

The most effective tool or trick that scammers used are the spam links that they send through mailbox or other messengers. And unfortunately a large number of people got trapped into this. The thing that insists to click on these links are some kind of Lucarive offers comes alongside these messages. So make sure to never click on scam or unverified link that may arrive in your inbox or message.

I think anything that promises instant returns and very high gain are red flags for crypto scams. most successful projects developed slowly but surely. If one wants to invest in crypto, he must research if the projects have practical usage and sustainable development of their platform.

It's a good thing that over time,we have learnt the trick of most scammy projects, they look so attracting that you will definitely want to invest in it, but it's good a thing most of us have started doing research on projects before investing or even hunting, research helps a lot and reduces risk .

We must have a way to be able to detect the scamer project, I think it can also make us minimize the risk of what will be invested, identify the project carefully so I am sure if we all understand in understanding this it will be easier to detect it.

where tokens will be listed can also be used as a benchmark, how the team manages the project. if a team slides a token into a market exchange with low liquidity, they may just want to cheat and that often happens, where in the end the token ends up with a very low price or exchange rate.

Yes, you are right if something is built on the basis of honesty and have a product, I am very confident that the project is successful especially if you are familiar and known and supported by a strong team and good management.

Profits can still be make out of bad projects, I tend to hold any new coin for short term only because once they start pumping that will be the last surge you will see and every thing the start crashing down, I remember deflation tokens like Ethplode and BAGS Token, today they are useless

This isn't the case most of the time. They can imitate whatever they like as long as it is convincing or appealing to crypto-folks.
You should know how to spot the fake project by
[1] Go to Google.com
[2] Search "name of the project + review bitcointalk"

Tadah, you are now one click away to know what the Bitcointalker geniuses think of that specific project you were about to explore.

While doing so, beware of self moderated threads as the starter of that topic can delete any hostile messages.
And the forum review might not be always sufficient to make a decision as there have been cases of hyped project in this forum and some even endorsed by popular forum figures turned out to be scam. Some prominent DT members and I guess a staff member too lost their position just for promoting fake ICOs knowingly. So, it's better to look at every aspects.

I think you shouldn't be on guard with self moderated. Most time, people just don't like off-topic or signature the only poster make their thread hard to keep track of conversations. Scammers don't have any viable tool in bitcointalk to push their thing and this is why I like to stay at here.

I don't think this is really good because I have seen many deflationary projects that survived it and waxed strong. Scammers can use any method to scam not particular steps so you have no concrete reasons to say so. For the fact some failed you shouldn't be that all are scammers. Remember some used the method genuinely before scammers picked the idea because it was working fine.

In addition, Stablecoin is also often used as a cover for fraud. Most airdrops are currently less valuable or small in allocations, high price estimates are only sweeteners, often the nominal is too small so it does not reach the minimum requirements to be withdrawn. Although the task is simple, we must continue to analyze and be careful, fraud is everywhere. Research to read the rules, and do not sacrifice your personal identity only for airdrops whose value is not much.
To be safer, for now, I only join airdrops that are held by trusted companies or exchanges, with clear rules and clear allocations. Usually the number of participants is limited, first come first serve.

One scammer favorite tool you have not mentioned are victims greediness and naive attitudes, if you see an investment opportunity it js only right that you do a comprehensive research about it before venturing, but due to laziness and greed several newbies join ponzis.

Hopefully, newbies learn to do their research independently and enjoy the crypto space

I have notice it, these set of use case hardly do well but you keep seeing it, indeed it is scammers tool because their reward looks so tempting and that will lure you into being a part of the project before you know it, they have exited scam,be mindful of projects with juicy offers.

Even though the project when launching ICO was a big success because there were many enthusiasts, but apparently they were operating to deceive people. After this incident maybe in the future the exchange project will be a little difficult to gain more trust.

I am not sure about the artificial intelligence tokens but gold backed tokens and deflation tokens are not something that I would go into. I don't believe that gold is something useful and investing in it via crypto is not something which I want.

It's practically impossible to know the exact tools of scammers and we know that there is a pattern but not confirmation. If you consult the history we will see a diversity of scammers that do not follow a pattern and in the end what really counts is the intention of the developer or team.

You amazed when you said gold backed token and deflation are not something youll invest in when the type of project are what give people unique profit these days. Check Gold stablecoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5161544.0) which a year old project and already gained almost a million daily trade volume.

You're right cause it is totally impossible to know the tools of scammer because they always use diverse methods but it better for crypto investors to understand how scammers operate.

There are so many buzzwords and it is hard to understand what is a new big thing and what is totally crazy idea that can´t be achieved.
After 3 years there is no trusted independent rating company for ICOs and IEOs.  ::)

Sending 0.5btc after winning 1btc? that must be a half scammed lol. Anything that revolves around here can be used by a scammer, anything that can communicate to other person can actually be a tool for them to use for scamming, and yes even casinos can be a scam too, this is why we have a reputation and Scam accusation section to report those. These days scams are evolving to the point that you can't distinguish which is which between the legitimate ones. My advice? don't be too adventurous you might click a bait  ;)

Our guess is only limited to assumptions until we really reach the goal was, they develop projects well, give rewards fairly, or instead go away and disappear. Of course, we don't want to be late knowing this. That's why we have to analyze as best we can understand the risks, then join or invest with the right strategy. If the project is doubtful then leave it.
The safe way in my opinion right now is to join IEO which is handled by the exchange top, but it must still be considered the right strategy.

This list could be extended by adding:

4. Master node coins
5. DeFi based projects
6. BTC fork with mandatory holding with 1:1000 claim

Yes, scammers are running out of ideas these days it seems hence they do come up again and again with a repeated concept based projects and naive investors are supporting them blindly which gets them zero returns for their hard earned money.

Artificial intelligence based projects must be a new trend. Some people claim there is no AI is existing anywhere but only machine learning is misinterpreted as artificial intelligence.

I guess there should be 10 to 20 projects were announced on this forum about gold back up for the circulating supply of their coins.

Creating artificial deflation must be a deceiving idea but it has been into practice for years. I am not sure how people agree that burning process is a good one toward the development of a project.