One of the biggest reasons Bitcoin won the market and the internet, is largely because how its blockchain structure made it doubly secure to operate. It is essential to choose the right digital wallets like btcrevolution, that ensure your safety at all costs. But, to our dismay, digital wallets are prone to hacking and scams, and if you’re someone who wants to see both sides of the coin, a look at the top 7 worst bitcoin scams might give you a full picture:
The Optioment Ploy
One of the worst cryptocurrency scams is when someone is provided with a fake ICO (initial coin offering), and ICO occurs when a business commences its journey of selling cryptocurrency. The scams usually consist of investment fraud, where companies pretending to be successful and profitable, don’t exist, or are imposter companies, pretending to be successful ones. Bitcoin Savings and Trust promised buyers around 7 percent returns, every week, and at the end, 265,000 bitcoins were stolen. This scheme collapsed in 2012, and its founder has been fined enormously!
The email trap created by Silk Route
Silk Route was an illegal black market, where individuals participated in the selling and trading of drugs and illegal things. When they were busted by the government, and the bitcoins captured were auctioned to the public. To let interested buyers aware of the auction, an email was sent out. A simple bcc mistake revealed the entire mailing list, which was then used, to send fake auction messages. They pretend to be from the government and related agencies and were essentially asking for sensitive and confidential financial information.
Canadian Bitcoins, 2014
This was the simplest scam ever, in the history of Bitcoin, where somebody contacted Rogers Data Center, the data center responsible for handling exchanges of Canadian Bitcoins. In the message, they claimed to be the owner of Canadian Bitcoins, James Grant, and wanted all security codes. Without verifying, all security codes were sent to the hacker, in question, and $100,000’ worth of bitcoins was stolen. This was a simple careless mistake, which resulted from no verification or cross-checks, and eventually ended in an enormous scam that was financially debilitating to Canadian Bitcoins.
Bitcoin Gold
Bitcoin Gold was another obvious scam no one should have fallen for, but they did! We all know how we should never share personal and sensitive information like passwords, and private keys, but Bitcoin Gold expert scammers sent out a life-time opportunity to users, from a website called mybtgwallet.co. They allowed them to get access to gold bitcoin wallets, and were asked to enter their private keys, which are used to protect cryptocurrency wallets. People fell for the scam, and as a result, $3 million in bitcoins were stolen to investment fraud. Bitcoin Gold creators had themselves fallen for the scam, when they had endorsed it on their Twitter. All of the people were undoubtedly in for a big surprise, and not a beautiful one.
Gox
One of the most infamous bitcoin scams to exist in the history of bitcoin, Mt. Gox started as a bitcoin exchange that was based in Tokyo. People thought it was safe, and it offered security to users, so the majority of bitcoin transactions all across the world were carried out, through this platform. As there was not an abundance of options for selling or exchanging bitcoins, it was easy for people to rely on one particular exchange platform! It got prone to hacking attempts, and attacks and the company finally declared bankruptcy. They lost $450 million in bitcoin, at the time, which amounts to $8 billion today. Though later the bitcoin was found, the price had halved, and it caused the first-ever bitcoin crash in the bitcoin market. Millions of dollars were lost to embezzlement and investment fraud, and it remains as a shocking testimony of the volatile market bitcoin is.
Cryptocurrency card backfires, and celebrity endorsements
Celebrity endorsements are popular in every field, and the general public trusts them, so if you’re a celebrity, you’ve to be careful about the endorsements. The Centra Scam was one such where celebrity endorsements played a major role. Dj Khalid with Floyd Mayweather did a couple of paid endorsements, of Centra ICO, and ended up promoting it as a secure and safe method of storing cryptocurrencies. This allowed Centra to raise to $30,000,000 in just a matter of weeks, and they were fined heavily by the SEC. In a matter of weeks, Centra was busted for running a fraudulent ICO and they ended up tarnishing the reputation of cryptocurrency.
QuadrigaCX and Murder
When the CEO of QuadrigaCX, an investment firm, died in 2019, without explanation, and leaving no will behind, and no person in charge of managing client funds that were estimated around $190,000,000. Following his death, it was uncovered that no such fund existed at all! It was all a major case of identity theft, duping and several class-action lawsuits!
