Rampant Scams Getting Serious

[theyoungmillionaire]

I have done some research regarding bitcoin within my community, and have noticed of many frauds about bitcoin and cryptocurrency. The old “easy money” scheme still catches people’s attention. Lack of information and lack of discipline among community members were the primary problem encountered. The common mindset in terms of bitcoin is “investing without working” you just need to give money to us (so-called traders) to amass your net worth. How bitcoin investment work is not known in the community. Information dissemination of its importance is not properly implemented. Implementation should start with:

Community/General Public. Public should start their research first before joining any bitcoin investments. Awareness on how to invest in bitcoin should reflect to economic, social and political as well as community development.

Educational Leaders. Leadership effectiveness of school curriculum, university administrators/faculties should include the needs and problems of bitcoin. It is high time to guide faculties in scheduling of daily lessons that will help develop student’s knowledge about bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

Teachers/Professors. Thru curricular offerings together with the applications of knowledge and skills achieve in universities professors promote growth and development of the youth for the improvement of cryptocurrency community life. Proper education will surely help us in building cryptocurrency revolution.
 
Parents. Family is the very foundation of an individual in our community. Most of our members here in bitcointalk are students.  Parents are the ones providing the financial needs of the students. They believe that their children will gain enough knowledge and skills to become useful, productive and responsible citizens in the future, so they give support to school programs to meet their expectations. I am sure universities will have enough funds from parents if they implement bitcoin awareness in their curriculum.

What about your community? Any suggestions? Your views on this issue.

[suchmoon]

I love your... uhm... optimistic view of how educational institutions can help dealing with this problem but I doubt it will ever happen, as it doesn't happen with some far more serious social/health/environmental issues.

We'll have to learn to figure out those scams the hard way and eventually they will fade but will never go away completely. For example, most people don't fall for the Nigerian scams but some still do.

[theyoungmillionaire]

I love your... uhm... optimistic view of how educational institutions can help dealing with this problem but I doubt it will ever happen, as it doesn't happen with some far more serious social/health/environmental issues.

Yes. Nevertheless, at least we can start talking to some educational institutions to include bitcoin or cryptocurrency as a subject in business courses. I already talked to five of my associates (university faculties), and they are aware of the said issues circulating about bitcoin; and learned that universities are looking to incorporate cryptocurrency as a subject now, which is a good sign for us bitcoin enthusiast.

[aleksej996]

Greed is greed, my friend. People should be more educated about Bitcoin, but this will not help with the scams that much.
Someone will come up with a new altcoin or something and promise easy money and people will jump to it because they are naive and greedy.

Same with pyramid schemes. Everyone knows about them, but they are still very popular under a different name of "multi-level marketing".
They use the same stupid trick in crypto space as well. You really need no skills to change a face of the same old trick.
Bitconnect was the same thing and yet was very popular.

You can't fix this mate. Some people are greedy and stupid, they always will be. You can't help them with every little new shape that the same old scam takes.
Until they learn that you can't earn without work, they are helpless.

[orions.belt19]

Yes, it's great that you're trying to help by creating some awareness but I'd have to agree with this:

Greed is greed, my friend. People should be more educated about Bitcoin, but this will not help with the scams that much.
Someone will come up with a new altcoin or something and promise easy money and people will jump to it because they are naive and greedy.

Same with pyramid schemes. Everyone knows about them, but they are still very popular under a different name of "multi-level marketing".
They use the same stupid trick in crypto space as well. You really need no skills to change a face of the same old trick.
Bitconnect was the same thing and yet was very popular.

You can't fix this mate. Some people are greedy and stupid, they always will be. You can't help them with every little new shape that the same old scam takes.
Until they learn that you can't earn without work, they are helpless.

Even with all the education or awareness made, it's not going to help if people will keep on believing that there are easy ways for them to get rich. These kind of people will go through extreme extents just to have money and this is why they fall for scams.

[theyoungmillionaire]

Same with pyramid schemes. Everyone knows about them, but they are still very popular under a different name of "multi-level marketing".

Pyramid is just a structure, i.e., the banking pyramid structure from top to bottom: Bank Owner, Shareholders, Middle Management, Lower Management, Head/Supervisor and the hardworking Regular Employee (Rank and file), and business courses are more educated about MLM, most of the universities has a subject or topic about Multi-Level-Marketing. There are still many legit MLM Company; you just need to choose very carefully in joining them. If you would look working pyramid, and MLM are just the same, people at the top earn most of the money. But, the difference is, when you work in the working pyramid you don’t have a chance to earn CEO’s income while in MLM you can have a chance to earn CEO’s income, if you work hard.

[suchmoon]

Same with pyramid schemes. Everyone knows about them, but they are still very popular under a different name of "multi-level marketing".

Pyramid is just a structure, i.e., the banking pyramid structure from top to bottom: Bank Owner, Shareholders, Middle Management, Lower Management, Head/Supervisor and the hardworking Regular Employee (Rank and file), and business courses are more educated about MLM, most of the universities has a subject or topic about Multi-Level-Marketing. There are still many legit MLM Company; you just need to choose very carefully in joining them. If you would look working pyramid, and MLM are just the same, people at the top earn most of the money. But, the difference is, when you work in the working pyramid you don’t have a chance to earn CEO’s income while in MLM you can have a chance to earn CEO’s income, if you work hard.

Not sure what you mean by "legit", but many commission/referral-based MLM scams go out of their way to pretend they're legit while there is no feasible way for the lower levels to ever make money. That's very different from an actual legit wage-based business where everyone makes money, with some making more than others. Let's not muddy the waters.

[theyoungmillionaire]

Not sure what you mean by "legit", but many commission/referral-based MLM scams go out of their way to pretend they're legit while there is no feasible way for the lower levels to ever make money. That's very different from an actual legit wage-based business where everyone makes money, with some making more than others. Let's not muddy the waters.

Multi-level-Marketing is a business for people who wants to attain a better quality life; you can start with a lowest investment, example is Avon. People can earn through direct selling. Building your own team, and by teaching your sales team members to duplicate your efforts can make them leaders.

This article sums up my thoughts about MLM: Is Network Marketing Just a Scam?

Network marketing is a legitimate business. First, it's based on providing people with real, legitimate products they need and want at a fair price. While some people do make a lot of money through network marketing, their financial benefit is always the result of their own dedicated efforts in building an organization that sells real products and services.

Pyramids are illegal and are based on taking advantage of people. For a person to actually make money in a pyramid scheme, someone else has to lose money. But in network marketing, each person can multiply his or her efforts, skills and talents by helping others be successful. Network marketing has proved itself as part of the new economy and a preferred way to do business here and around the world.

Network marketing isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. Of course some people do make large amounts of money very quickly. Many would say those people are lucky. But success in networking isn't based on luck. (Unfortunately, money won't sprout wings and fly into your bank account no matter what someone has promised you.) Success in network marketing is based on following some very basic yet dynamic principles.

Now let's discuss what network marketing is. Network marketing is a serious business for serious people. It's a proven system where the design, creation and expense the corporate team has gone through becomes a road map for your own success. Just follow the simple, proven and duplicable system that the good companies provide.

I know we cannot save everyone, and it is his or her choice, I have so much hope for humanity

[aleksej996]

I hear these arguments for pyramid schemes all the time.
"Pyramid is just a structure man...". You might as well use the same logic and say "That is not a ponzi sheme, Ponzi was just a person and he ain't around anymore...".

Pyramid scheme is a name. It is name given to it due to obvious reasons, but it does not define it.

There are certain similarities and certain differences between all of these things. What is legal and what is not is beyond my point. Many things that are stupid and immoral are perfectly legal while other completely moral things are not. Legality of something makes no argument on morality or profitability of something.

MLM are a watered down version of a pyramid scheme. Sometimes they offer something relatively useful, but you don't join them because of that.
You join them because they give you that extra edge, that bonus, that little magic, that pyramid scheme characteristic of it.
That characteristic is the same one that is a problem with pyramid schemes and that is that after couple of levels, the business becomes unprofitable.

Do that jump a couple of times and if you are in a place low enough, there wouldn't be around enough people to recruit to make it worth your while.
That is the danger. That is the problem with them. You don't have that in a normal business.

You don't get hired by a company and they tell you at the end of the month, "Hey, about that salary...You didn't get enough people to give us money, so you get this small salary that isn't worth your while".
The problem is that you are so incentivized to get a return on your investment that you start getting your friends and family into the same shit.

There ain't easy money my friend. If you are getting that CEO salary without being a CEO, you are hurting other people, whether they know it or not.
Which makes you no better than a common criminal that still has his freedom.

[theyoungmillionaire]

There ain't easy money my friend. If you are getting that CEO salary without being a CEO, you are hurting other people, whether they know it or not.

Exactly, there is no easy money. I respect your opinion about MLM. My Parents joined MLM, and they work very hard to achieve their status now. After a devastating typhoon that ruined our family business, Pama decided to try MLM because we do not have anything left but to try. I am against it at first cause we are already too late, there are so many people joined in, but Pama are very eager to try.  After my work, instead of going home, I sell products to help my parents. We grind day and night for 7 years to have a comfortable life now and it is not easy, my friend.
I am sorry, my friend (aleksej996 & suchmoon), if I have offended you in some way, nothing to blame but greediness of some people.

[Vod]

You want to get serious?

Start investigating and reporting scams.  Reveal your identity so people can be sure you are not just someone looking for revenge.

Be prepared for scammers like Quickseller to call you the worst things imaginable - like a pedophile, and be prepared to have your work history and images stolen from Linkedin and posted on an extortion website.

There are thousands of people claiming they want to get serious.  There are only a few of us THAT ARE.

[lokanot0]

I really like your point of view on this issue and I'm with you, but scams has been with us since a long time ago, even educated people will still get scammed because of greed, that is human nature. If greed exist then so will scams.

[paxmao]

There is a basic (and wrong) assumption in your proposal: Governments do not want an excessive number of financially literate people, nor an excessive number of properly educated people for that matter.

Educated people are difficult to manipulate, have their own views and are much more difficult to lie to. These are the traits that politicians and governments are most scared off. They don´t mind if a number of people loose their money to scams, as this additionally provides a perfect rationale for the false myth that "everything is possible if you work very hard, but there is no way to do it quickly".

You have to work (sometimes hard) but do so intelligently, and no institution wants to give away the tools that you need for that. Self learning is your friend and our hope.

[KWH]

Greed overrides common sense, we see it all the time. An account can have -50 and yet they still throw money at it. Some have been burned by the same scam multiple times yet learn nothing. Most of those burned don't even bother to mark the account either.

[fernandoaleixo]

Hello, unfortunately, Bitcoin is not the first victim of scammers and won't be the last, so based on your research, I'd like to point out one thing that people (at least where I live) often do, they are simply not interested in trading, most scam victims are those who are looking for quick bucks and get trapped on it, if the population in a whole gets interested in trading such cases will drastically decrease!

[celtic99]

I believe the worst scams are behind us, after bitconnect collapsed a lot of investors should of wised up.  I even consider ripple to be a scam and its a top 5 coin as well.  and I consider dash a scam because it had a shady premine.