Prypto Scam

[minerjones]

Prypto Cards... scamtastic!!!

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[ChiBitCTy]

I really hope this can get worked out, if not..this is a scam in my book. They are responsible for keeping that website and redeeming tool functional until the very last card is redeemed!

[krogothmanhattan]

Sorry to hear that MJ. I have some of these cards redeemed and possibly loaded as well IIRC. That's not good at all even though its a minute amount.

I have to say I don't like it when we depend on a website to redeem anything.

I prefer cards like Bitbills and Coldkey that have the private key in the hologram, no need to go thru the website.

[hybridsole]

Yikes. Any physical crypto that relies on a website to redeem should be a non-starter today.  Luckily most of the market knows better now, as opposed to when these were being marketed and sold (back in 2015?).  I have a few Prypto cards but pretty sure unloaded. Need to double check now I guess.

[vizique]

There's a user on here, I think it might be wttb (?)  that knows the people at the back end.
They moved on to some Casino coin iirc
Viz

[ChiBitCTy]

I just tried redeeming a scratch card using 3 different web browsers. Each one error'd out. It doesn't work.  I imagine there's a lot of people holding these having no idea they aren't redeemable.  Also, is there any way we'd even know if they had stolen all the funds by now?  

Yet another crypto scam (even if funds weren't stolen)  

Edit: You do however see this page when selecting the "validate" tool. Not that it's saying much..

[vizique]

There's a user on here, I think it might be wttb (?)  that knows the people at the back end.
They moved on to some Casino coin iirc
Viz

Correction, not wttb its Why We Fight that is your point of contact.
Sorry for the confusion.

Viz

[FFrankie]

How much are on the cards?

I always thought it would be cool if we could get gambling scratch cards like the US loto has. I would only want to be gambling 0.1 mbtc but a physical card to scratch would be cool

[Lutpin]

I have a few of the Prypto scratch cards and wanted to redeem one.

From what I remember, Prypto Scratch Card have a limited validity time.
They are valid for 5 years (I've checked that earlier), which means any cards bought in 2014 are either expired, or close to expiry.

I reached out to the company and got no response.

I've contacted someone I know who has been in touch with the people behind Prypto, I'll let you know.

Correction, not wttb its Why We Fight that is your point of contact.

Edit 1: I've just got a response from wwf, they said based on the information they have,
all cards have reached their expiry date and redemption is not available due to that.


Edit 2: This got me curious and I checked for where the 5 year expiry date was mentioned.
The reseller you got your cards from should have informed you about those conditions.
I got mine from getprypto, which is discontinued and offline as of now, but WBM still has some snapshots of their site.

When do the Crypto Scratch Cards Expire?
Our Crypto Scratch Cards have an expiry date of 5 Years on them from the date of printing, providing that the code has not been used.

[ChiBitCTy]

I have a few of the Prypto scratch cards and wanted to redeem one.

From what I remember, Prypto Scratch Card have a limited validity time.
They are valid for 5 years (I've checked that earlier), which means any cards bought in 2014 are either expired, or close to expiry.

I reached out to the company and got no response.

I've contacted someone I know who has been in touch with the people behind Prypto, I'll let you know.

Correction, not wttb its Why We Fight that is your point of contact.

Edit 1: I've just got a response from wwf, they said based on the information they have,
all cards have reached their expiry date and redemption is not available due to that.


Edit 2: This got me curious and I checked for where the 5 year expiry date was mentioned.
The reseller you got your cards from should have informed you about those conditions.
I got mine from getprypto, which is discontinued and offline as of now, but WBM still has some snapshots of their site.

When do the Crypto Scratch Cards Expire?
Our Crypto Scratch Cards have an expiry date of 5 Years on them from the date of printing, providing that the code has not been used.

What a load of horse shit. If this is all completely accurate they are not only an inept bunch of morons but also scammers.  If this is not stated on the cards themselves or anywhere on the website, how in the hell is this a legit business practice?  They deserve some sort of punishment for this, not that there's any chance of that ever happening 

Thx Lutpin

[LoyceV]

It's the first time I've heard about "Prypto scratch cards", so I have to ask: who thought it's a good idea to rely on a third party website to access long-term Bitcoin storage?
Trusting a stranger to create a private key is bad enough, but at least that ensures you can access the funds without external help. A website to redeem funds is a terrible idea!

Edit 1: I've just got a response from wwf, they said based on the information they have,
all cards have reached their expiry date and redemption is not available due to that.

So someone got very rich out of this! Waiting 5 years for Bitcoin to go up, then taking the funds.

I always thought it would be cool if we could get gambling scratch cards like the US loto has. I would only want to be gambling 0.1 mbtc but a physical card to scratch would be cool

I like it! I've opened a topic about it: [IDEA] Physical Bitcoin Scratch Cards.

[Lutpin]

It's the first time I've heard about "Prypto scratch cards", so I have to ask: who thought it's a good idea to rely on a third party website to access long-term Bitcoin storage?
Trusting a stranger to create a private key is bad enough, but at least that ensures you can access the funds without external help. A website to redeem funds is a terrible idea!

From what I can tell, they were not meant to be used as long-term storage.
They were meant to be used to either purchase cryptocurrency quickly & easily, or mainly to give away cryptocurrencies in a quick & effortless fashion.
Some altcoins used them for promotional giveaways, thus you'll see Prypto Cards of the weirdest shitcoins out there (like Worldcoin, Uro, Vertcoin, Max).

The concept of it would be for example like the following: A vendor/service/promoter buys 1000 of those cards, then hands them out at a physical event to interested users,
and those can at home go through the process of setting up a wallet for the specific coin and then get the coins sent to their securely created addresses through the website and codes on the cards.

There are similar services today working off the same idea. CryptoVoucher (not an endorsement!) is a service that offers voucher codes for sale which then can be redeemed for a certain value of cryptocurrencies. They're somewhat popular on keyseller sites like MMOGA, eneba or G2Play.
Similar to the Crypto Scratch Cards, they rely on a code and a website interface.

Checking google for similar services, I've also found Bit4coin (once again, no endorsement) which apparently operate under the same general business principle.
The practice of a code+webinterface combination seems to stick around, despite Prypto's CSCs being discontinued as of right now.


Prypto also did products that were meant as long term storage, but those aren't the Scratch Cards, they are "Crypto Wallet Cards" and come in sets of two, one card you can break into half that contains two copies of your public key + QR code, and one card with the private key under a scratch-protection.
Those came unloaded and don't have any expiry date tied to them, since they have the actual private key on them.
However, here your second point comes to fruition, and you have to trust Prypto with generating and destroying the private keys, so you should probably think twice before loading any of those Wallet Cards.

[ChiBitCTy]

I have continued to dig in to this, and now know who the main owner(s) are. This company also sold ownership shares, like a business going public does (https://www.google.com/amp/s/cointelegraph.com/news/prypto_lets_you_walk_into_a_store_for_your_cryptocurrency/amp).

The head owners currently run an online cryptocurrency  “CasinoCoin” are active here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=181084)  and other social platforms such a twitter




There have been scam accusations already from members here


(https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=616792.4080#msg27345018)

Who knows how many people they have left high and dry..



The company going ghost that just left active shares in limbo and nothing on the website stating what’s going on just doesn’t add up to anything legitimate. No closing of business listed anywhere on the website as can be seen here :






I will continue looking further in to this (I have more reading to do) will be reaching out to the owners to get their take and ask why they are not honoring their promise to keep their redeeming site open until all cards are redeemed. I will be placing a scam accusation as well as flag accounts and continue to add info about that and anything else pertinent.

Until proven otherwise, this looks to be one big fat SCAM.

[krogothmanhattan]

What a load of horse shit. If this is all completely accurate they are not only an inept bunch of morons but also scammers.  If this is not stated on the cards themselves or anywhere on the website, how in the hell is this a legit business practice?  They deserve some sort of punishment for this, not that there's any chance of that ever happening 

  Agree whole heartedly with Ty...They should've printed this on card with an expiration date.

  I checked all my cards, and thankfully all of the ones I have I bought redeemed.

[Sat0shisGhost]

They deserve some sort of punishment for this, not that there's any chance of that ever happening 

I may know a guy 

[krogothmanhattan]

  Ok.....SO do should these guys be placed on the scam list thread?? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3315347.0

  If the card was to expire after a certain amount of years, then they should have MARKED IT CLEARLY on the card itself.
  
   What are the communities thoughts on this. I am thankful I never purchased a loaded card, but still EVERYONE should be made aware their loaded cards are not loaded at all.

   A big thanks for ChibiCTY and other for the effort into looking into this further
 

[FFrankie]

 Ok.....SO do should these guys be placed on the scam list thread?? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3315347.0

  If the card was to expire after a certain amount of years, then they should have MARKED IT CLEARLY on the card itself.
  
   What are the communities thoughts on this. I am thankful I never purchased a loaded card, but still EVRYONE should be made aware their loaded cards are not loaded at all.

   A big thanks for ChibiCTY and other for the effort into looking into this further
 

I think the terms and conditions should have been advertised better.

[anonymousminer]

 Ok.....SO do should these guys be placed on the scam list thread?? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3315347.0

  If the card was to expire after a certain amount of years, then they should have MARKED IT CLEARLY on the card itself.
  
   What are the communities thoughts on this. I am thankful I never purchased a loaded card, but still EVRYONE should be made aware their loaded cards are not loaded at all.

   A big thanks for ChibiCTY and other for the effort into looking into this further
 

Couldn't agree more.... Scam in my opinion!!  Even filthy banks put 90 days or 180 days on a check that needs to be cashed.  This is gross and should be added.

[Sat0shisGhost]

Anybody have an estimate as to how much they scammed for?

Or a link to the wallet they processed withdrawals from on walletexplorer.com?

[Lutpin]

Anybody have an estimate as to how much they scammed for?

That's nearly impossible to gauge.

While the cards are numbered sequentially, you could get an estimated total run by asking people for their security codes
and then assuming the highest answer you get is roughly the amount of cards produced.

However, that list would include not only different denominations (ranging from 0.005 BTC all the way up to 0.1 BTC),
but also different currencies, there's been Doge ones, LTC ones, CSC ones, and all those weird shitcoins you and I have never even heard about.

Then you'd have to find a way to estimate how many cards have been redeemed, and how many cards "expired".
There isn't any list of public keys you could parse through, like there is for some other physicals. Getting an idea of how many are redeemed and how many are not will be nearly impossible.

So to sum up: Unclear how many cards in total, of which denomination each, and if redeemed. I doubt you'd come up with any useful number.

The company going ghost that just left active shares in limbo and nothing on the website stating what’s going on just doesn’t add up to anything legitimate. No closing of business listed anywhere on the website.

They filed for closure a while ago, according to the company register.

I have continued to dig in to this, and now know who the main owner(s) are.
(snip)
I will continue looking further in to this (I have more reading to do) will be reaching out to the owners to get their take and ask why they are not honoring their promise to keep their redeeming site open until all cards are redeemed. I will be placing a scam accusation as well as flag accounts and continue to add info about that and anything else pertinent.

As this is going to bring up real names sooner or later, I'd suggest a thread in investigations.
Else we're stuck beating around the bush not being able to fully share all information available with everyone interested and concerned about this.