SEC Issues Urgent Warning on Cryptocurrency Fraud

[TomPluz]

More of this news here!

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a warning to cryptocurrency investors. The SEC stated that fraudsters tend to exploit advanced investment technologies to perpetrate fraudulent investment activities.

These fraudsters specifically aim to capitalize on the hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) technology to lure potential victims. They may use common enticing words to advertise their fraudulent activities.

Moreover, these bad actors may also rely on advanced AI technology to impersonate their identities. The rapid development of AI has made it much easier for fraudsters to impersonate government agencies as well as prominent individuals (such as Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse).

SEC also cautioned about pump-and-dump schemes related to digital assets. This warning comes amid the increasing popularity of meme coins, with many celebrities jumping on the latest cryptocurrency craze by launching their own tokens.

We have to admit the fact that one of the big blackeyes with the cryptocurrency industry is the ever presence of scammers and fraudsters all just waiting for anyone that can be lured with their laid traps all over the place. And this has been true right from the very beginning of cryptocurrency's history...and it is because here there is really that potential to make big money with seemingly global reach as if one can be printing money out of thin air.

Can there be things we can do as individual cryptocurrency supporters to help in limiting the reach of these ever adaptive and enticing scams? Or should we resigned to accept that this is already a normal way of life in this industry?

[ABCbits]

The warning makes sense, although it's nothing new or unique with exception of using AI to impersonate someone.

Can there be things we can do as individual cryptocurrency supporters to help in limiting the reach of these ever adaptive and enticing scams? Or should we resigned to accept that this is already a normal way of life in this industry?

Even with cautious or warning message by public figure or government, few people keep falling to such scam. So aside from reminding other people what they've heard before, i don't know other effective ways to prevent someone got scammed.

[NotATether]

Anybody, and I mean absolutely anybody, who sees a crypto project using a bunch of AI buzzwords and chooses to invest in it anyway, is a dummy.

Most of the developers are not even AI specialists themselves. There is a world of difference between being able to program a token, blockchain and smart contract, and being able to create a machine learning model. What makes people think that they are even remotely similar things?

[yhiaali3]

Unfortunately, this is absolutely true, and this is a very painful truth. This space is incredibly full of scammers.

The main problem is greed. Greed is a basic human instinct and scammers know this well and take advantage of this bad human nature by using buzzwords that make greedy people salivate and easily fall into the trap.

Unfortunately, we cannot do anything to prevent this except spreading warnings and trying to increase knowledge, especially among beginners. This is the only method I know of, otherwise I cannot find a useful method.

[Zed0X]

Can there be things we can do as individual cryptocurrency supporters to help in limiting the reach of these ever adaptive and enticing scams? Or should we resigned to accept that this is already a normal way of life in this industry?

There's always a way to help no matter how small or insignificant the effort is. I get some private messages sometimes asking me what I think about a certain project or a trading platform and give my 2 cents. I find most of these projects referred to me as fishy/shady and so maybe I was able to help some of them avoid losing their money.

As to acceptance, yeah, scams are everywhere and we cannot help everyone. Let their own experience teach them a hard lesson.

[Captain Corporate]

To be fair, they are not really wrong. Look at any low level launchpad and you are going to see people who did not spend even a single dollar on shitty projects, hell not even have a .com website, something like .xyz website which is almost free, and could be gotten as a gift for a new membership or something and they end up trying to get funding from people. You are all aware that they are scams, and some of them still get funding, no idea how they do that. A situation like this does require a warning, go ahead and invest into bitcoin at trusted sources and you should be fine, but if you risk for more, you will get less.

[LogitechMouse]

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Can there be things we can do as individual cryptocurrency supporters to help in limiting the reach of these ever adaptive and enticing scams? Or should we resigned to accept that this is already a normal way of life in this industry?

Warnings, advice, tips, guides.
I guess that's what we can do to at least decrease the number of scams that are happening around the crypto space.

To eradicate it? It will not happen, and it already came to a point where scam is being treated as a normal thing that are happening with anything that involves investing (at least that's what I see). I said it because whatever we do, there will always be people that will get scammed. There will always people who are gullible enough to fall into even the most common ways of scamming. There will always be people that will not listen to warnings and will end up regretting it. There will always be people who are willing to risk their money even though they know that the chances of it being a scam project is very high.

It's good that authorities like SEC are giving warnings to different investors, and with AI being used by every much person around the world that has access to it, it's no surprise that scammers will also take advantage of it as well.

[robelneo]

There will always be bad actors in the Cryptocurrency industry just like in all other industries but the number is so huge and the bad actors are good at doing their things that even those good at doing research fall to these bad actors.

But the only way to combat these bad actors and their dirty deeds is to moderate our greeds, these scammers thrive on investors greed to make profit, if we are too greedy we tend to forget the best practice in researching the right project to invest.

[Stompix]

Can there be things we can do as individual cryptocurrency supporters to help in limiting the reach of these ever adaptive and enticing scams? Or should we resigned to accept that this is already a normal way of life in this industry?

No!
And worse than that is that some people don't want the limitations on these, if only good coins with true companies behind it, respecting every step of their roadmap would be allowed to launch a tardeable coin everyone would grab a pitchfork and shout the government is against crypto!
The "shut up and take my money" meme is the representation of the majority involved in crypto, the greed is overflowing, everyone sees money and value in every piece of garbage so you won't be able to do anything at this point! It's done for!

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

We cant denied the fact that scam happens in cryptocurrency, but how has this impact affected their own policies and regulations over the economy, i believe to an extent, its not everyone having their money with them were being accounted for on how they have generated the use of the money, in which we should also realized the more needs why we should go for having our financial privacy with the use of bitcoin since government cannot secure that for us, everyone should guide his asset in other not be experience fraud.

[Faisal2202]

I think its already a normal thing and has become a part of our life. The world is full of good and bad actors, it can't be full of only one. Diversity plays an important role here. So considering this I would say accepting the fact is obvious but not the solution. We could spread awareness about these scams. For example, these scammers pretend as a girl when they talk with you over social media, and after spending a long time chatting with you.

They will start the conversation about investing etc. and you already talking to her and trusting here, so you will definitely trust all of her words about investments as well. Even you will send your funds to them. Results in losing it as after they receive it, they will block you. So we can spread awareness to old and new users around us so they would save themselves from such actors. We can't force them but just tell them, after that its there decision.

[Baofeng]

I don't know but crypto enthusiast should be accepting the fact as early that there are a lot of criminals in this space an they really have to know how to practice security and safety hygiene first before they should invest.

This is the reality of it, so it's either you tackle it and work your way and learn everything or experience it first hand before you learn the hard truth. SEC can give as many warnings to potential investors, but still the burden is still on our side here and I will say that we shouldn't blame the market if ever we lost our crypto to scammers. Due diligence is needed.

[Z-tight]

Can there be things we can do as individual cryptocurrency supporters to help in limiting the reach of these ever adaptive and enticing scams? Or should we resigned to accept that this is already a normal way of life in this industry?

You can only help to educate the people around you or people you know about how these scammers operate, there are a lot of articles online and crypto forums that people can join and learn how to protect their funds from scammers. I believe that for someone who owns crypto, they should try and stay updated on all possible ways to avoid losing their coins to scammers.

However, it is important to point out that there are scammers in every industry, there are a lot of scammers stealing fiat currencies from people regularly too, so sometimes the media tries to attack crypto with unending reports of crypto scams.

[LogitechMouse]

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This is the reality of it, so it's either you tackle it and work your way and learn everything or experience it first hand before you learn the hard truth. SEC can give as many warnings to potential investors, but still the burden is still on our side here and I will say that we shouldn't blame the market if ever we lost our crypto to scammers. Due diligence is needed.

SEC can give many warnings to us, but the reality is, like GameFi, Memecoins, and others, SCAMMERS ARE HERE TO STAY.
That's the reality of investing and whatever happens, there will always be investors that will fall, and lost their money due to scams.

Well, at least the SEC is giving constant warnings and advice to the investors. I mean that warning might help 1 or 2 investors or even more with their decision making, and at least they will be less ignorant because of that. Like what you said, the burden is still on us hence, we need to make constant research on everything, and before investing, we should at least be knowledgeable on the thing that we are investing in.

[bitterguy28]

This will be very helpful if the SEC can name names those fraud crypto exchange and other forms of fraudulent groups and teams so the people will take a distance as we knew
how good those BS hiding themselves as a Sheep pretending to be but wolves .

hope that they will extend their hands in directly to help us crypto users/investors .