We recently listened to a podcast on creating cryptocurrencies.
We were pretty surprised when the podcast's guest "expert" laid out a crypto pump and dump scheme, which he said was guaranteed to make money.
We were equally surprised when the podcast host responded positively to the approach.
It's still unclear to us whether or not the podcasters knew what they were describing was illegal.
But what is clear is that the crypto space has fraud and scam problems.
According to Investopedia, cyrpto users and investors lost $10.5 billion due to theft and fraud in 2021. This is up from just $1.5 billion in 2020.
Related recent media articles include Rolling Stone's NFT Scams Are Everywhere. Here's How to Avoid Them, The Information's Crypto's Town Square Has Become "a Scammer's Paradise.", Yahoo Finance's Data: Illicit crypto wallets hold over $25B as hacks, thefts mushroom, and our favorite, Gizmodo's 7 Crypto Projects That Were Total Scams (January 2022 Edition).
Gizmodo's article is our favorite because it only covers large scams they found in January of 2021. Key quote:
We're taking a look at the biggest crypto scams of the month. And it should probably be noted this isn't necessarily a comprehensive list. These are just the largest scams we came across.
Other crypto fraud-related news include last week's U.S. Department of Justice announcement they'd seized more than $3.6 billion in bitcoin allegedly stolen in a 2016 hack.
And circling back to pump and dump scams, a group of investors recently sued Kim Kardashian and others for allegedly using such a scheme to defraud them.
The crypto space is often (and correctly, in our opinion) described as the wild west.
And just like the wild west, regulations and law and order will eventually tame it.
We consider ourselves crypto optimists and are not suggesting you don't participate in the crypto space.
But if you do, we suggest you follow Gizmodo's advice and "be careful out there, folks."
BTW, the picture is from last year's Evolved Apes scam, which netted the scammers $2.7 million in investor funds.
