We need to do something about all the scams

[carlisle1]

Wow thanks for bringing that up and now that I think about it I went in on a token similar to this one without giving it much thought. They were a well established company in real life but no blockchain experience and that was my mistake getting involved like that. Keep up the awesome work we need more heroes like you!

this is one best thread for all of users,those who was victimized of scammers,and those who will be a prospect to be victim.this thread will be filled of many accusations and complaints about their experiences together with the possible scam ico.thanks for bringing something like this OP,i hope you will be transparent in every cases might bring here,and wont favor someone or anyone in exchanged for something

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[bosimpson54]

How to identify that the project is scam? Please tell me.
I usually avoid project which only has small team, irrational, token which use waves platform and bad design of signature   . Developers like that usually not so serious in their project and probably they only want to earn money.

Teach me how to identify a project please,  

A fraudulent clue is challenging to grasp, hackers now have a lot of sophisticated tricks to cheat the investment participants but do not have much experience to identify, technology has been very There are a lot of fake websites and fake sites so no one can control them completely. I hope the future will be a good one for detecting counterfeit websites and investments.

[Lyne01]

Hey there,

I am a blockchain developer and most of my work consists in auditing Blockchain projects, criticising their use-case and proposing solutions and guidances.
What really kills me is the amount of scams and useless projects based on economic scarcity, fomo and proof of stupidity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1ZYGuJXBQE)

The reasons why we have to fight scams are fairly simple:
- Scams attract regulators
- More scams attract more scammers
- People invest blindly but if given the change to understand a project based on a professional analysis I'm sure many will think twice between sending those guys money.
- You know what is worse than exit scams? Shell projects that never get finished or have no traffic because their use case is pure BS.

I propose listing all the ICO scams here that can't correctly justify their use case, presumably scams:

* EQUI https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2888110.0
The guys weren't able to justify the use of their token and don't answer to critics and questions. More importantly they provide a passive return on investment which fails the Howey test (http://consumer.findlaw.com/securities-law/what-is-the-howey-test.html). They use their public image in order to attract suckers. Based on their use of proceeds they reserve 30% in order to develop the platform. 30% of 72 million to develop a react website with a postgres database and link it to infura (i assume they didn't even think about that). Laughable at best.

I agree 100% on your statements. We must fight scam so that it will not destroy the reputation of Bitcoin. Also, because of scams, many bitcoin users were discourage to invest and buy coins. People lost a lot of money and scams destroy the crytocurrencies. Scams also result to several banning in some countries and even those social media platforms. We should work together to fight scam.

[Clement Kaliyar]

It is not a new thing in a new financial sector you are bound to see many scammers and because you have the potential to hide your real life identity and people where still showering in big amount of money without any proof hoping that they could make some profit with every project.The only thing we can do is to avoid investment without any proper details and if they cannot explain what they are collecting the funds ,it is better to avoid them altogether and that is the best thing you can do now.

[laimaro]

The reasons why we have to fight scams are fairly simple:
- Scams attract regulators
- More scams attract more scammers
- People invest blindly but if given the change to understand a project based on a professional analysis I'm sure many will think twice between sending those guys money.
- You know what is worse than exit scams? Shell projects that never get finished or have no traffic because their use case is pure BS.

I would like to add one more point. These scams take away the trust of people from genuine projects as well.

[DBronze98]

Scam investment projects really hit the field of investors. A few months ago, MLM-based projects were really successful and this helped many scam projects come along and attracted many profitable investors. Scam projects tend to be trending and attract a lot of new investors.

[thoerz18]

which we must do in the event of fraud, if the online fraud that we experience, first as soon as possible we submit the block of the relevant bank account, prepare proof of bank transfer, make a fraud report to the nearest police station, prepare data from the fraudsters

[Hydrogen]

This thread cites an article claiming more than 10% of the $3.7 billion invested in ICOs has been stolen. The majority of thefts occurred from phishing attacks which strikes me as being a tiny bit suspicious.   

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2806881

There is a possibility of ICO founders stealing funds from their own ICOs to give themselves a free bankroll with no financial liabilities or obligations. Phishing is an attack vector one might expect tech savvy end users to avoid. A high percentage falling prey to it could be deemed unlikely from a probability perspective.

This thread cites blockchain stocks collapsing by 40% to 90% which seems to indicate the shadiness isn't limited to ICOs but may extend further.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2829312.

[Smarty14392]

I agree with you, I think ico concept need to be regulated, and people should understand fully what they are investing in, I think project might be legit but there may be an exit scam when token rises a lot.

These scams would never come to an end. Reason is only the lack of proper research from a person who is going to invest in some coin. Like if someone is investing in bitcoins, there are different methods of earning. Trading, investing, campaigning, associating with ICOs and much other. Scam always found in voids that are easy to target and it seems only when illiterate people are playing the game with bitcoins.

[CoinCollector006]

Scamming is part of life as an investor, look at penny stocks and even established stocks like Enron which turned out to be a giant fraud scheme. I think with crypto there are several markers that you can use as guidelines 1) Does the team have a well thought out white paper? 2) What is the valuation of the coin compared with similar coins, 3) Do they have any product or use case beyond speculation? 4) Does the team make outlandish promises of returns that are not credible? 5) What is the GitHub status and when was the last commit? Or is there no GitHub account? That is a giant red flag if that is the case. 

[krishnaverma]

These scams would never come to an end. Reason is only the lack of proper research from a person who is going to invest in some coin. Like if someone is investing in bitcoins, there are different methods of earning. Trading, investing, campaigning, associating with ICOs and much other. Scam always found in voids that are easy to target and it seems only when illiterate people are playing the game with bitcoins.

Completely agree with you. These scams are able to trap gullible people only. If every one started doing research properly before investing, these scammers would disappear. For instance, there are people in India who were selling Bitcoins offline. Many students were buying from them and got scammed. They just need to make an account on Indian exchange and buy there. How hard is that ?

[PalmerLaura]

A good idea might be creating some kind of portal where people can discuss different ICOs and vote is it a scam or not. I saw the thread of bitcoinwiki org here on forum and they say they're gonna implement smth like that on their portal

[chocolaty]

Definitely right. The reason why many people are scammed is because of lack of knowledge. They are easily tricked by people because they do not know how to distinguish fraudulent ones from real ones. However, we can never eradicate scammers in this market completely especially if there are still people who are gullible.

[Idrisu]

Hey there,

I am a blockchain developer and most of my work consists in auditing Blockchain projects, criticising their use-case and proposing solutions and guidances.
What really kills me is the amount of scams and useless projects based on economic scarcity, fomo and proof of stupidity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1ZYGuJXBQE)

The reasons why we have to fight scams are fairly simple:
- Scams attract regulators
- More scams attract more scammers
- People invest blindly but if given the change to understand a project based on a professional analysis I'm sure many will think twice between sending those guys money.
- You know what is worse than exit scams? Shell projects that never get finished or have no traffic because their use case is pure BS.

I propose listing all the ICO scams here that can't correctly justify their use case, presumably scams:

* EQUI https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2888110.0
The guys weren't able to justify the use of their token and don't answer to critics and questions. More importantly they provide a passive return on investment which fails the Howey test (http://consumer.findlaw.com/securities-law/what-is-the-howey-test.html). They use their public image in order to attract suckers. Based on their use of proceeds they reserve 30% in order to develop the platform. 30% of 72 million to develop a react website with a postgres database and link it to infura (i assume they didn't even think about that). Laughable at best.

I just got  some understanding from your post about why government is so interesting in bitcoin last year and the same government will turn it back against it this year, South Korea as a case study! Scamming do really attract regulations because governments are not going to fold her hands until things get out of hand. However, bitcoin i's decentralized and we should support this project in other not to allow scams to pant bitcoin in a bad light.

[VladWulf]

I agree with OP and am concerned about the "scams attract regulators" part of the OP here, but I've been resigned to the fact that governments are bound to regulate crypto eventually--it doesn't matter so much whether every other transaction is a scam or not.  If bitcoin and other cryptos actually do catch on and attain wide adoption, that in itself is going to get the notice of regulators.  And I suspect that even if crypto doesn't get widely adopted, it's still going to get some laws made and restrictions implemented.  That's just the nature of lawmakers.  Their job is to create laws, so they will.  It sucks and I'm against it, but it's going to happen.

I don't think there's much "we" can do about the scams other than to do our best not to fall victim to them.  Unfortunately, I've seen people's greed straight up run-and-tackle their rationality and skepticism at the 1-yard line, and I expect that'll keep happening as long as crypto exists.

You can't regulate crypto law. It is an "allegality".
Excellent talk by Gavin Wood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh9BxYTSrGU

[malikusama]

Intimation of scam projects before their completion can save many people from loss.
I also analyzed some of the projects that are not clearly explained and have many major flaws.
A combined work is needed in order to spot these scams, if we analyze individually and share our analysis with other community members then i am sure we can create a "scam hunter" project for a better crypto environment.

[StochasticOrder]

I agree with the premise that we need a form of community network that informs people of known scammers and potentially fraudulent ICOs. The spamming of scamcoins over the last year has been very prevalent and damaging to the market. One of the main attributes that would promote further growth would be stability and sense of security in investments. It's easy to say that people need to learn to actually read white papers, look at the team behind the project, analyze if the coin has potential use cases, etc, but unfortunately a lot of people just jump in and buy any ICO they see and get scammed easily.

[jakelyson]

This is a good initiative. With the help of the community we can get rid of the scam ICO. Maybe, there can also be a list for possible good projects because some of the good projects are not getting support. Their thread is getting out ranked by scammers.

Sometimes investors doesn't tend to look at any list so I see it will not be effective.

We cannot save the lazy investors from their foolishness.

There are also cases that an ICO will show their great innovations at first but after investors already throw away their money, then that is just the time that a scam ICO will show their true colors so in the end, still busted.

That cannot be helped. But at least we can prevent some obvious scammers from scamming investors by exposing them early.

[simpleholmes]

absolutely you are right, scammers attract more scammers, one of my friends wanted to invest in an ICO and it was obviously a scam but with a good team and he didn`t give attention because he believed even scammers with good team made a lot of money so it was not problem for him, the thing was just to win.

[Tigerheart3026]

Hey there,

I am a blockchain developer and most of my work consists in auditing Blockchain projects, criticising their use-case and proposing solutions and guidances.
What really kills me is the amount of scams and useless projects based on economic scarcity, fomo and proof of stupidity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1ZYGuJXBQE)

The reasons why we have to fight scams are fairly simple:
- Scams attract regulators
- More scams attract more scammers
- People invest blindly but if given the change to understand a project based on a professional analysis I'm sure many will think twice between sending those guys money.
- You know what is worse than exit scams? Shell projects that never get finished or have no traffic because their use case is pure BS.

I propose listing all the ICO scams here that can't correctly justify their use case, presumably scams:

* EQUI https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2888110.0
The guys weren't able to justify the use of their token and don't answer to critics and questions. More importantly they provide a passive return on investment which fails the Howey test (http://consumer.findlaw.com/securities-law/what-is-the-howey-test.html). They use their public image in order to attract suckers. Based on their use of proceeds they reserve 30% in order to develop the platform. 30% of 72 million to develop a react website with a postgres database and link it to infura (i assume they didn't even think about that). Laughable at best.

I do agreed that scams attract more Scammer, it is because the more they scams appeared or spread out in every places the scammer become more strong. The more victims they have is the more scammer became strong intention to scam others. So this was a good step and good starting to sue them also. And this can't be resolve without the support of the community too.