The Monero XMR Scam UncoveredMonero is being pushed very hard everywhere in this forum. XMR supporters are radically aggressive appearing in each and every single thread, flooding the discussions, and FUDing all the coins that appear on their way. The crypto community is already dead tired of the Monero shill accounts unprecedented activity.
I'm not saying that promoting your coin is illegal activity by itself. After all, the altcoin market is 99.9% about shouting louder than everyone else. PR usually helps get it going until it suddenly burns itself out (like with Doge). However, I came across a number of stinky facts that may prove that
Monero is a completely artificial bubble.
How it looks likeIf you've been reading the forum thoroughly for the last months, you might have noticed a couple of things about XMR.
You might have an impression that there are a lot of XMR supporters.
You might have an impression that the trade volume is very high.
You might have an impression that the developers are active.
You might also have an impression that something is very weird about this raw newborn coin.
Most likely because every single thing you see about XMR looks artificial.
The HypothesesH1. Monero's posting activity is artificial
H2. Monero's trades volumes are artificial
H3. Monero's developers are not capable of developing the coin
If all of the three hypotheses hold, then I'd say that Monero is scam and/or bubble. However, let the research be fair.
H1. Monero's posting activity is artificialRecently, I stumbled upon a thread where Spoetnik
points to a WTB hero member account thread started by
Come-from-Above.
Here's the thread by Come-from-Above where he claims that he is paying 5-10 BTC for Sr. Member and Hero Member accounts. And apparently he needs a substantial number of such accounts.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=728902.0Think about it for a moment. Why one need to buy old accounts? Hero Members make greater sense of community approval then the Newbies. If someone so respected is claiming something, plenty of users are likely to believe him. And of course,
these accs are NOT used for bad causes, just my opinions and forum presences Smiley
Of course, because you're buying Hero Members to post on flood threads about TV shows, right?
Nope. You are not.1.1. Who is the beneficiary of the bought accounts?Let's have a look at Come-from-Above's posting activity. There is a number of the things that might point us to Monero.
Other evidence:
proof,
mirrorproof,
mirror (please, check out the mirror link and notice that the original post has been changed to "Monero TO THE STARS". Is someone competing with Doge's "to the moon?")
proof,
mirror (how sweet!)
proof,
mirrorproof,
mirrorHe keeps on buying large Monero sizes even when the price is stagnant. Come-from-Above has even started a new thread:
1.2. How much is the fish? A weird factCome-from-Above has donated 5000 XMR for the XMR GUI wallet.
Based on XMR and BTC prices on July 19,
5000 XMR = 5000 * 0.00455 = 22.75 BTC
5000 XMR = 22.75 * 627 = $14,624
Can you even imagine somebody wanting the GUI wallet so badly that he donates $14,000? For an already available totally free software? Which runs on .NET and cannot be used without an ugly extension? While the market price of such a development would be way beyond $1,000, more like 1 BTC?
I'm not even sure which of the two explanations is worse. Try answering yourself:
Case 1: a whale donating $14k to a XMR wallet developer and buying hero accounts
Case 2: a shill account pretending to have donated $14k and buying hero accounts
As a side note, the GUI wallet developer
Jojatekok has quite an interesting activity history. He's commenting only on XMR thread and is mainly supporting his wallet only. Doesn't he look more like a maintainer of GUI thread to help conceal that all GUI wallets are being developed by the core team with no 3rd party developers around the coin? I do not want to seem too obsessed with the conspiracy theories, but those things just don't add up.
1.3. Compromised accsThis section is in progressSuspect 1Searching for compromised accounts requires a lot of time and effort but there is clear evidence already. Consider this user:
Joshuar. Once he used to hate XMR:
Another evidence:
proof,
mirrorThen suddenly he's in the WTB accs thread:
And then he's all for Monero:
Suspect 2When I first saw
saddambitcoin on forum, I thought he's goddamn hero member so he should be trustworthy. Apparently, he isn't.
Check out his posts in 2013. They are all so lame you would immediately recognize the account being maintained for sale.
Then suddenly, after 4 months of being absent (since December 2013 by the way) he re-appears with the different writing style and all for Monero:
Coincidence?
Other suspectsThere has been a remarkable "coming-out" that claims that certain XMR accounts were run by the bot maintainers. The person claims that such users as surfer43, smooth, mickey_miner, and novag were used by the ghost writers.
proof,
mirrorHowever, this might well be FUD.
If you happen to know any other XMR troll or sold account, share it with the community.1.4 An interesting observationIf you were reading the recent thread where XMR trolls are accusing Bytecoin/CryptoNote, you might agree with the post below. Monero bots somehow manage to turn any discussion into the XMR PR machine:
ImplicationsThat being said, Monero has a number of shady supporters including purchased hero accounts and shill writers. Next time you see a hero member, a senior member, or even a junior member that is posting for Monero, keep in mind that the account may actually be bought or maintained by an outsourced pr manager.
Hypothesis 1 is accepted. Monero's posting activity is likely to be largely artificial.
Rationale for hypotheses 2 & 3 are coming soon. Stay tuned. On the side note, I didn't even know that people are actually buying hero/sr/whatever accounts. It's certainly is weird.