Not that kind of hash

A few weeks ago I saw an ad on freebitco.in for another ponzi scheme/ bitcoin multiplier, this one was called cryptotriplex. I wondered to myself, does anyone fall for these still? So I clicked it.

And that is what I saw. It looks like they ran off with everyone money.

This isn't uncommon. It also happened recently with a website called hash ocean. Immediately after reading the name, I thought of hash profit and thought it must be a similar scam. I was interested enough to study it for a bit. I attempted to go to the site but the website didn't load; it was offline. It looks like essentially the same scam happened again, just with a slightly different name. I thought it was interesting that the site did advertise an actual physical location in San Francisco. However now that I think about it, San Francisco isn't an ideal place for a bitcoin mine.  Everything is way to expensive particularly space. It is funny, I visited the city just a day before reading about this, maybe I could have gone to the abandoned location if I knew.  Anyways, I would say don't trust any cloud miners without a lot of due diligence, and may not even then. But I would especially avoid anything with hash in the name. Based on the smells in San Fran, there is a lot of it there. And it almost goes without saying, stay away from money multipliers.

Ponzi schemes? Oo

Though the viewing of many bitcoin sites via the Bitvisitor, it has come to my attention, much to my alarm, that there is a prevalence of Ponzi schemes in the bitcoin community. Bitcoins, not being a recognized currency, can be gambled online. It also seems they are eligible for other forms of nonsense that are illegal for recognized currents, like Ponzi schemes. Currently I wouldn't trust a bitcoin anywhere but your own wallet ( and even then you probably ought to have number of security measures to keep others out and provide a backups for yourself if you lose it).

Update, I just found a website that literally is named BTC Ponzi 120%. I am shocked. I am completely at a loss of what to say. I mean this awful fairly easy to see though ponzi scheme are one thing, but THIS! This is a whole new level of terrible. I hope no one thinks that this is a good idea in the slightest. Wow, and I thought the Bitcoin community would be better than this. Hopefully all the transactions listed there are fake.

I went on to find countless other sites that are similar to this. Some say they are Ponzi schemes, others do not. Here is a disclaimer from one of the sites:

THIS IS A PONZI SCHEME

We want to be clear: This is a Ponzi Scheme - This means that the returns on your investments come from other investors.

As long as people invest after you, your payout is absolutely guaranteed!

Any deposit amount between 0.001 and 0.5 will be allowed!

To keep this system running, please promote it - So everyone participating will benefit from it!

Seriously? So everyone will benefit? haha. More like, the owners will benefit and the majority of people will be screwed. Sounds like a great deal to me.

But one level up from the ponzi scheme, actually, multiple levels up, is MLM . So the Banner I'm providing gives you free cryptocurrency everyday for free. You just need to sign up. You need to refer other people to it though in order to really get anything though, which makes in Multi-level marketing in my book. But with a sign up taking all of 30 seconds and free, it doesn't look too awful. Let me know what you think.