Scammers are now moving into Masternodes (2019 exit scam method)

[Franzinatr]

Last time in 2017, there are many exit scams happening in many projects especially in ETH platform (called tokens) with the "E" token name since the trend of eBTC project creation. There are too many project plagiarism that copies eBTC (Example: Tokenize version of ETH, BCH, Ripple, Doge etc...) which are many investors getting hype in those project because of the popular coin/token ticker name with it and ended up investing in no value/fake projects. Their livechats usually in Telegram and Slack.

In 2018, there are many reports that a newly created coin/token project almost all info's are plagiarism and putting a team that doesn't involve in the project in the first place (Identities were real but the person isn't even into cryptocurrency) and also running a ICO with a fake data of coin/token purchases (based on explorer) or the coin/token doesn't exists. Now the scammers using a team members that with randomized picture and name! They putting a picture of a team and the name is randomized so the people who'd like to invests to the fake projects can't track on their info's (and some admins/mods in live-chat apps like Discord & Telegram saying that they're real and they already did meetup in some random events about crypto trying hard to convince investors to invest). If scammers can't convince investors, they're running a Airdrop/Bounties that has KYC required (they need your passport most of the time) which they'll sell your identities thru black market.

Now in 2019, there are noticeable exit scams of coin projects with masternode + huge premine by devs (more than 10 projects) in january. They're announcing members especially investors to invest in their pre-sales (which is the bonus is more than 100% of bonus coin/token purchases) which can attract investors and joining into mn. After the coin is listed on the newly or low volume exchange especially the free or vote listing, they'll set their own coin price before they'll announcement of their project is listed on exchange. After having fake high volume (which the devs buy and sell their own project currency) in 3-5 days, they'll getting lists on CoinMarketCap and more members will hype about the project price is almost the same as the pre-sales. Investors especially the whale will bite the price and pump it higher and higher, in that time, devs will sell their huge premine and abandoning the project like they didn't make a project at all. They're mostly in Discord now. Be careful of some random folks which is dming you with their discord invitation link in their first posts. If you're a investor and unsure what altcoin will you invest, invest and hodl BTC and ETH instead.




Take note: This is only my experience and opinions, I might be wrong in some point of what I post.

[TheCrimsonFucker]

Exactly! Your thread is very enlightening with regard to SCAM in the last 2 years! That's basically what happened, I remember this eBTC airdrop. Before him there were some like Ethereum Dark, DeepOnion and some other less famous, but in fact, the airdrop concept was not so famous until the airdrop eBTC! In fact a lot of people made a lot $$$! Since then there has been the airdrops boom. Masternodes was not something so common, I remember when some important coins like Dash adopted this incentive system, since then some other projects have also adopted, but also at the end of 2017 began to appear more Masternodes! The MNrank site was the most famous for me, today you find thousands of websites on the subject! Through banks or anything else that calls itself a defender of people, they are trying to destroy the PoW mining and put people in the minds of the PoS concept! But no one understands that this concentrates what is already difficult to decentralize. This combination MN - PoS (Premine), without Pow, a coin needs some origin, is literally scary.

[UnruffledST]

I mean no one should be investing in a project without checking the technical aspects of it, doesn't matter if it's the new thing. I really do not know what to say I mean I would never put my money into a project that I haven't done my proper research on, I do not care what team members are in the project.

I would always ask myself is there any use to this? will users be using this even after the investors are gone?

Most people get stuck up on looking at the team members first but no you first look at the project idea and ask yourself has this been done before?

If yes then is it really worth investing in it? what would make them better than the other.

You are looking to invest into duplicate ideas, just because it's succeded the first time doesn't mean it will succeed again after all the new ideas that actually solve something is where the big money is at, not the duplicates.

[Imoote]

Strongly agree, because in the past two years many project masternodes were born just like that, without valid clarity, even when they made coins and registered to the market the price tended to be cheap and there were no enthusiasts at all, I strongly agree that scammers have moved to bow masternodes.

[Milamol]

Yes, back in 2017 there were projects with the main focus on the fact that they will use MN. There were no other important features in their coins. This surprised me. Now I get at the goal of the devs was to rise money from MN lovers.
If, when studying a project, we see oddities, contrived problems to solve, then this is a false project.

[Omela44]

Thanks for this warning. Defrauder keep coming up with new ideas to get the money from unsuspecting people. At the moment it's probably masternode projects and next month certainly something else again.

[ivaf]

Yes, I also noticed a significant increase in the number of such projects. Dear investors, beware! Do not invest in projects that work for several days and immediately suggest to you get a huge benefit from masternodes. Think with your head!

[mrdeposit]

I started to remember them, they even sent emails several times to me that we are giving some amount bla bla.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/98mv31/most_masternode_coins_are_a_scam/

[bartolo]

Premined coins were quite usual before ICOs appeared and everyone started to create projects based in ETH or other established coins. As the OP has explained, when those coins got listed in some exchange, devs dumped their coins to zero. If you see a coin with premine, no matter dev's explication, you better stay away.  

[OluwaTosin10]

Basic highlights of repackaged run away scam projects and this is one reason why investors have to make researches daily

And not be buoyed or bought over by the prospect of owning a masternode hitherto

[Bttzed03]

Don't forget the Ethereum colors in 2017   But to be fair, Blue Protocol which started out as Ethereum Blue is still alive.

They are everywhere aren't they? Scammers and fraudsters tend to level up or "evolve" once they've been busted.

[Krium project]

Yes, it's true, but it's also true that there are dozens of new real projects, carried out by teams composed of young people, seriously involved in the realization and development of the project. The Krium team is working hard to lay the foundations for a project aimed at advertising and beyond. you must be careful of scams, but also invest carefully choosing projects that are real and not fake.

[leonair]

It's 2019 and still my number one motto in identifying this scams is 'If it's good to be true then it's a scam'

We can't stop bad people in doing this kind of scams though but we can help to limit the number of people getting scam by spreading different kinds of scam techniques.

[boranes]

Masternodes have been around for very long time maybe you noticed this now. It was always like this, someone creates coin, premine, listing on exchange, pump, dump, launch another coin, repeat.

[starblocks]

Masternode projects that haven't been around for a while and that typically promise unrealistic returns are usually unlikely to last very long, especially in these market conditions and these types of schemes have been around for a while now they've just begun gaining more popularity recently as competitive miners seek to profit by being the "first in best dressed" with the most hash power so unless you're one of those it's best not to invest or contribute as it's likely you'll just be wasting your time and money

[Tipstar]

Masternodes has been a ponzi and a exit scam since 2017 and is continued.
After the relative success of DASH masternode, people all jumped into masternode and many coins offering a paid masternode made easy profits by selling masternodes that yielded no profit to the users. And a lot of variation of it are now in work.

[maydna]

Yes, the scamming will never stop, and they will search on many targets to exploit. In this year, they will use another resource to scam people like before.

They can easily change the identity in every time they create a project because they can buy the information in many places and even they can just copy paste the data from one source to another source.

It is our job to find a legit project, so we don't get a bad experience because we don't know if the project will be good or not before we research them.

And related with master nodes investment, I see some people invite the investor to comes to their project and invest in some money to get a profit in a year, and they offer a huge percentage of profit which does not make sense to believe.

You need always to think before you invest in any investment programs and only use the money you can afford and don't invest in all money in one project only.

[maculeth]

wow, it's very terrible scam mechanism that happened in ico all this time. maybe it was only discovered because of the analysis of several experts when several ico projects foiled the distribution of tokens to several bounty participants and decided to leave. if this continues, ico will die.

[Raizou]

It's very true what is written in this thread! It's amazing how they managed to pollute even the MNs! Soon they will be looking for other alternatives to steal people.

[pinoycash]

Any Masternode that runs on PRE-SALE is 99% Scam & only a handful of project will survive in this type of business model.

Only those Masternode Project that is Pre-funded from own developers pocket will survive or will enough attention on the market today.