What Is This Bitcoin Cycle's Biggest Scam?

[BitGoba]

Every Bitcoin bull market is followed by a huge wave of scams. Scammers try every possible way to exploit the general public’s lack of understanding of what Bitcoin really is, taking advantage of both ignorance and greed. Bitcoin is too abstract for many people to grasp without knowledge of both economics and some technical understanding.

In every bull run, scammers come up with new and more creative schemes. In the past, we saw ICOs Initial Coin Offerings   such as EOS, ETH, and many others. Then came the “blockchain has other uses beyond money” narrative, which was used to promote countless projects. This was followed by a flood of altcoins claiming to be faster and better than Bitcoin, and later the NFT hype, which lured in masses before collapsing.

One of the biggest Bitcoin YouTubers, Matthew Kratter from the channel Bitcoin University, recently made a video explaining that this current Bitcoin bull run biggest scam is Bitcoin treasury companies , here  can watch his video in which he explains why
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr8hog1BHAY

How do scammers manage to convince people to invest in their projects?Do you think Bitcoin treasury companies are the biggest scam, or are altcoin scams worse, considering Bitcoin’s dominance is only about 60%?

[max64lowes]

Thanks for sharing this — it’s a really important topic. The pattern you mention is sadly very common: every Bitcoin bull market inevitably attracts a wave of scams that prey on people’s enthusiasm but limited understanding.

[Free Market Capitalist]

One of the biggest Bitcoin YouTubers, Matthew Kratter from the channel Bitcoin University, recently made a video explaining that this current Bitcoin bull run biggest scam is Bitcoin treasury companies , here  can watch his video in which he explains why
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr8hog1BHAY

How do scammers manage to convince people to invest in their projects?Do you think Bitcoin treasury companies are the biggest scam, or are altcoin scams worse, considering Bitcoin’s dominance is only about 60%?

Hahaha! I saw the title and knew what this was about. I follow Matthew from Bitcoin University, but he's wrong about this. He's a purist who doesn't stray from P2P bitcoin. And today, bitcoin has gone far beyond that, and will go even further. If people only used bitcoin the way Matthew wants them to, it would easily be worth 100 times less.

[betswift]

I think it's a caution for those that rather would hold these treasuries tokens rather than BTC itself - eventually, surely, there will be more of such companies than just 21st Century and MTSR, and those that are ugly as it was said in the video - they already are pulling the capital out of the folk that could of went to BTC straight up, without third-party tokens or ETFs

 

[God Of Thunder]

I think the biggest scam was perpetrated by BSV shit. The team led by CSW forked Bitcoin Cash and created BSV, which they sold to thousands of crypto newbies, claiming that BSV was real Bitcoin. CSW should have been in jail for that. He has a lot of involvement in that fork, and he misled a lot of people. This Faketoshi should have been punished for what he did to the Bitcoin community.

Imagine yourself as a crypto newbie and buying a fake Bitcoin. How would you feel when you realize that you actually bought fake Bitcoin? We may see other forks in the future. But considering none of the forks are actually successful enough, I don't think the devs would dare to do another fork.

[Zaguru12]

How do scammers manage to convince people to invest in their projects?Do you think Bitcoin treasury companies are the biggest scam, or are altcoin scams worse, considering Bitcoin’s dominance is only about 60%?

For now due to the impact of altcoins I will still rate them as the biggest, moreover this scams is still the same, both the treasury and the altcoin method. Both are simply just saying you’re late to the bitcoin market and to maximize it you can actually invest in them. How many of altcoins have pulled this up and did it end up. In fact I am of the belief that treasury wouldn’t get into people like Altcoins would do, I believe with the current adoption and awareness that bitcoin has gotten many will still want to have their own bitcoin in their custody so treasury to me wouldn’t be pulling the number that Altcoins did, but I agree they are the scam of this cycle, the ETF approval actually made them more popular

Imagine yourself as a crypto newbie and buying a fake Bitcoin. How would you feel when you realize that you actually bought fake Bitcoin? We may see other forks in the future. But considering none of the forks are actually successful enough, I don't think the devs would dare to do another fork.

Fifteen years plus down the line and the early forks couldn’t actually get the attention off bitcoin and as such I don’t think there will be any fork even getting any little attention as even compared to what shitcoin BSV got. This is because history already shows the fate of all the past forks and the sentiment that none can actually get close to bitcoin is there, for me it will even be dump take for any dev thinking of pulling off a bitcoin fork at the moment

[taufik123]

I think the biggest scam was perpetrated by BSV shit. The team led by CSW forked Bitcoin Cash and created BSV, which they sold to thousands of crypto newbies, claiming that BSV was real Bitcoin. CSW should have been in jail for that. He has a lot of involvement in that fork, and he misled a lot of people. This Faketoshi should have been punished for what he did to the Bitcoin community.

Imagine yourself as a crypto newbie and buying a fake Bitcoin. How would you feel when you realize that you actually bought fake Bitcoin? We may see other forks in the future. But considering none of the forks are actually successful enough, I don't think the devs would dare to do another fork.

CSW got in big trouble after that for making claims saying he was the inventor of bitcoin, but all just and a lot of demands on him.
His own project became a garbage project and was abandoned by his community after he left BCH and forked again into BSV, it became a real fork scam, not Bitcoin itself that did it.

Bitcoin does not carry out any fraudulent cycles, only the bad guys who take advantage of doing forks and claiming that the fork results are the real Bitcoin.

But if we talk about scams today, it is not only focusing on Bitcoin but altcoins or memecoins which are the biggest scams today.
Thousands of memecoins appear and create many scams in a matter of seconds, ICOs, IDOs and the like are no longer popular, it's a scam that still requires a lot of capital.

[Joy_learns_crypto]

Every Bitcoin bull market is followed by a huge wave of scams. Scammers try every possible way to exploit the general public’s lack of understanding of what Bitcoin really is, taking advantage of both ignorance and greed. Bitcoin is too abstract for many people to grasp without knowledge of both economics and some technical understanding.

Bitcoin bull market is followed by High wave of scam because the slow to act people or the doubters get energized about bitcoin during the bull market making bitcoin the center of attention.
But the truth remains that the bitcoin scam cycles happens all year long but scammers encounter greedy and ignorant people more during the bitcoin bull market wave.

[Spinning99]

One of the biggest Bitcoin YouTubers, Matthew Kratter from the channel Bitcoin University, recently made a video explaining that this current Bitcoin bull run biggest scam is Bitcoin treasury companies , here  can watch his video in which he explains why
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr8hog1BHAY

How do scammers manage to convince people to invest in their projects?Do you think Bitcoin treasury companies are the biggest scam, or are altcoin scams worse, considering Bitcoin’s dominance is only about 60%?

This is stupid and you should think for yourself. There has not even been 1 serious case of a treasury company that has turned out to be a scam. Compared to all kinds of scams that were going on in past cycles, and that are going on now is just dumb.

But if we talk about scams today, it is not only focusing on Bitcoin but altcoins or memecoins which are the biggest scams today.
Thousands of memecoins appear and create many scams in a matter of seconds, ICOs, IDOs and the like are no longer popular, it's a scam that still requires a lot of capital.

First, you are underestimating the number of memecoins. As of today there are several million memecoins, not thousands, millions! I was going to say the same thing, but the topic is more about Bitcoin. In the last cycles it was Bitcoin forks, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV the biggest scams, before that pyramid schemes. For now I am not so sure but definitely ordinals and runes are leading contenders.

Do scammers manage to convince people to invest in their projects?Do you think Bitcoin treasury companies are the biggest scam, or are altcoin scams worse, considering Bitcoin’s dominance is only about 60%?

Nothing in the Bitcoin world comes even 1% close to the scams in the altcoin world.

[God Of Thunder]

CSW got in big trouble after that for making claims saying he was the inventor of bitcoin, but all just and a lot of demands on him.
His own project became a garbage project and was abandoned by his community after he left BCH and forked again into BSV, it became a real fork scam, not Bitcoin itself that did it.

Bitcoin does not carry out any fraudulent cycles; only the bad guys who take advantage of doing forks and claiming that the fork results are the real Bitcoin.

Yeah, I know he was in court, and his lawyer was using his autism as an excuse to get some sympathy in court. I don't exactly remember who was fighting against him back then. I think it was back in 2023 when the judges themselves admitted that they didn't understand Bitcoin and its technology well. It was funny that the judge didn't know how it works, but they had to deal with the trial.

CSW is continuously getting into trouble for what he did. He is a businessman, and he manipulated the community, the devs, and crypto newbies and scammed them. He showed zero acceptable evidence to back his claims. Some people believe Hal Finney was Satoshi Nakamoto. Not CSW.

[john_egbert]

CSW got in big trouble after that for making claims saying he was the inventor of bitcoin, but all just and a lot of demands on him.
His own project became a garbage project and was abandoned by his community after he left BCH and forked again into BSV, it became a real fork scam, not Bitcoin itself that did it.

Bitcoin does not carry out any fraudulent cycles; only the bad guys who take advantage of doing forks and claiming that the fork results are the real Bitcoin.

Yeah, I know he was in court, and his lawyer was using his autism as an excuse to get some sympathy in court. I don't exactly remember who was fighting against him back then. I think it was back in 2023 when the judges themselves admitted that they didn't understand Bitcoin and its technology well. It was funny that the judge didn't know how it works, but they had to deal with the trial.

CSW is continuously getting into trouble for what he did. He is a businessman, and he manipulated the community, the devs, and crypto newbies and scammed them. He showed zero acceptable evidence to back his claims. Some people believe Hal Finney was Satoshi Nakamoto. Not CSW.

Either way, it's better to not to know who Satoshi is, imagine how many suits could of been filed on him if they only knew on who to point the finger if needed..

[MystMoney]

Tether (USDT) has never proved they have enough real assets to actually back their scamcoin. Every time they release a new batch of fake money, that is available to help inflate the price of BTC and other crypto.

[nutildah]

There has not even been 1 serious case of a treasury company that has turned out to be a scam.

Not 1 serious case... so far...

Doesn't mean it can't happen. If BTC were to drop precipitously, Microstrategy could find itself in something of a death spiral while taking the price further along with it. This would be far worse than a scam, yet still also a scam.

Say for whatever reason the price of BTC suddenly drops by 50% (it has happened BTW). The following scenario could play out:*

[1. Balance Sheet Shock]
   | Bitcoin holdings lose $30B
   | Assets plummet (~90% BTC)
   v
[2. Stock Price Crash]
   | MSTR stock drops 40-60%
   | Investor panic
   v
[3. Debt Covenant Pressure]
   | Debt covenants (on $4B+ convertible notes) are tested
   | Reduction of collateral, covenant breaches
   v
[4. Forced BTC Sale]   
   | Sell BTC at loss   
   | Assets erode
   v
[5. Shareholder Dilution]
   | Issue new shares   
   | Stock price falls
   v
[6. Operational Strain]
   | Cash flow diverted
   | Business weakens
   v
[7. Insolvency Risk]
   | Bankruptcy
   | restructuring
   v
[END: Fragile Stability or Collapse]


* I made this with the help of Grok BTW, NGL, since I started a famous thread about busting people for unattributed AI plagiarism... I did have to tweak a few things here and there.

[OgNasty]

I think this cycle it is very clearly Bitcoin treasury companies.  Right now it's the cool thing and investors are piling into any company that establishes a Bitcoin reserve.  This is great while prices are rising and everyone is excited.  As soon as the market turns and these companies start massively dumping the coins they said they would hold, things will change.  Investors will bail and their taste will sour.  Companies will go bankrupt and blame Bitcoin.  People will capitulate and then the cycle will begin anew. 

[Dunamisx]

How do scammers manage to convince people to invest in their projects?Do you think Bitcoin treasury companies are the biggest scam, or are altcoin scams worse, considering Bitcoin’s dominance is only about 60%?

Those that are into it will definitely know better, because that is probably part of what they know to do best, its not possible for one to be doing something repeatedly over time and not know the best approach in doing that same thing, they often promise what is too real to be true, they engaged the effect of fake news, breaking news, FOMO, FUD, and also market manipulations, all these are past of their instrumentations which they use and developed against the people in crypto space.

[DubemIfedigbo001]

How do scammers manage to convince people to invest in their projects?Do you think Bitcoin treasury companies are the biggest scam, or are altcoin scams worse, considering Bitcoin’s dominance is only about 60%?

memecoin scams are worse, there are really thousands of tokens created that influencers promoted and unsuspecting newbies invested into before they got rugged. Worse of it all most of them are still holding them and having hope that it would pump back and they get profits. I shared the story of someone in a community I belonged to lost $269 million in less than an hour and the token was created on the Solana blockchain.

A lot of scam comes with the bull run, personally I fell for the million money scam on the Ethereum blockchain in 2020 and lost all my Ethereum to that scam in a bid to build accounts and reap rewards. From my experience and what I've seen, altcoin scams are more rampant during bull runs and they leave lots of people in a big mess.

[dzungmobile]

CSW is continuously getting into trouble for what he did. He is a businessman, and he manipulated the community, the devs, and crypto newbies and scammed them. He showed zero acceptable evidence to back his claims. Some people believe Hal Finney was Satoshi Nakamoto. Not CSW.

Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto and he is a most famous Faketoshi. He is also behind scam fork coin Bitcoin Cash and it failed too.

COPA vs Craig Wright: The Identity Trial.
He looks to deep too dively into the mud and he does not know how to stop his illusional vision and activities that as you said only bring more troubles to him.

One of the biggest Bitcoin YouTubers, Matthew Kratter from the channel Bitcoin University, recently made a video explaining that this current Bitcoin bull run biggest scam is Bitcoin treasury companies , here  can watch his video in which he explains why

He has his rights and freedom to say this and Bitcoin is decentralized so nobody from any called as Bitcoin company sues him about that. Let him be.

The joke is why he aimed at Bitcoin but not shitcoins?
Bitcoin has been strong over more than 16 years since January 2009 and it won't die. "Bitcoin is dead" is so famous saying used to attack Bitcoin but hundreds of times like this, Bitcoin has been alive, not dead.

https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/
https://bitbo.io/dead/
https://bitcoindeaths.com/

[d5000]

Even if I'm not really a friend of treasury companies, I think they're not a scam.

They offer a product that caters to some specific types of demand, basically a leveraged long position on Bitcoin without some of the disadvantages. If Saylor hadn't started this, maybe another company would probably have done it (but probably a lot later).

But they're risky, and I could perfectly imagine an outcome like nutildah described. The difference to a scam however is that it could also work if Bitcoin's transition to a low-volatility asset with a relatively stable high price is relatively smooth, and the treasury companies have a plan to deal with this lower volatility. Scams, in contrast, cannot work, they will eventually explode because they are built based on lies. Treasury companies sometimes launch predictions ("10M $ BTC") which look like borderline lies but they aren't completely impossible.

[SilverCryptoBullet]

Even if I'm not really a friend of treasury companies, I think they're not a scam.

They offer a product that caters to some specific types of demand, basically a leveraged long position on Bitcoin without some of the disadvantages. If Saylor hadn't started this, maybe another company would probably have done it (but probably a lot later).

They are not scam and their products are not scam at all. From good original idea of building a new product to serve demands in the community and investors, there is always risk of appearance of scam company in the future. It is unavoidable in all countries and societies as among thousands of legit companies, there are companies that abuse the law, regulation and do shady things to scam their customers.

People who trust those companies must know "Not your keys, not your coins" principle and must wake up as soon as possible.

[davis196]

Every Bitcoin bull market is followed by a huge wave of scams. Scammers try every possible way to exploit the general public’s lack of understanding of what Bitcoin really is, taking advantage of both ignorance and greed. Bitcoin is too abstract for many people to grasp without knowledge of both economics and some technical understanding.

In every bull run, scammers come up with new and more creative schemes. In the past, we saw ICOs Initial Coin Offerings   such as EOS, ETH, and many others. Then came the “blockchain has other uses beyond money” narrative, which was used to promote countless projects. This was followed by a flood of altcoins claiming to be faster and better than Bitcoin, and later the NFT hype, which lured in masses before collapsing.

Why don't you try to distinguish the Bitcoin scams from the shitcoin scams. ICOs, NFTs and shitcoin scams have nothing to do with Bitcoin.
If you are going to discuss altcoin scams, then maybe you shouldn't call the bull run a "Bitcoin bull run. Call it a "crypto bull run" instead.
Maybe you should move this forum thread to the Altcoin discussion forum, since you are more focused on altcoin related scams.
I don't remember what was the biggest Bitcoin scam. I wouldn't consider the collapse(or exit scam) or some big crypto exchanges to be a strictly "Bitcoin scam", since most of those exchanges we dealing with altcoins.