Although cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, may seem to be new. I have been writing in Scamicide.com about cryptocurrency scams for four years. Cryptocurrencies are legitimate, but scammers are increasingly taking advantage of the public’s fascination with cryptocurrencies to take old forms of scams and update them with a cryptocurrency twist. The perception of many in the public is that cryptocurrencies offer an easy path to riches coupled with many people violating the cardinal rule of investing by investing in schemes that they do not understand creates a perfect storm for a wide variety of cryptocurrency scams.
According to the Wall Street Journal, federal regulators initiated 90 cryptocurrency fraud legal actions during the last two years and state regulators have filed an additional 70 cryptocurrency legal actions in just the last year. One of the biggest cases where both state and federal regulators have brought charges involves the company BitConnect which had a market value of 2.8 billion dollars before legal action was taken to put it out of business for violation of a number of state and federal regulations. Many investors were lured in by promises of profits of 120% annually. Promises of huge profits like this should always be a red flag to any investor.
A good example of what another type of cryptocurrency scam looks like can be found by going to this website touting HoweyCoins.
https://www.howeycoins.com/index.html
The bad news is that while HoweyCoins may appear to provide a lucrative investment opportunity, there is no such thing as HoweyCoins. It is a scam. Fortunately, it is a scam website that was set up by the Securities and Exchange Commission to serve as a warning to unwary investors about the dangers of cryptocurrency scams.
TIPS
As I have mentioned many times previously, you should never invest in anything that you do not fully understand. You also should not invest in anything without investigating the people offering the investments. In addition, as always, if the investment sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Facebook for a time banned all advertisements promoting cryptocurrencies due to the plethora of cryptocurrency scams, but has reversed this position and now does accept ads for cryptocurrencies. Some of the things to be on the lookout for in regard to cryptocurrency scams are promises of high, guaranteed returns on your investment, false claims of being SEC compliant, allowing you to invest using your credit card and pump and dump scams. For more information about pump and dump scams related to cryptocurrencies, check out the Scam of the day for April 11, 2018.
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