From Bitconnect to SIM-Swap Swindling: 2018's Biggest Scams

[Nikko]

2018 will long be remembered as the start of a significant cryptocurrency bear market, but the declining market still provided opportunities for scam artists to snag unwary investors.

Given that 2017 was a breakout year for Bitcoin (BTC) and the likes, investors were clamoring to enter the fray as the price of cryptocurrencies skyrocketed toward the end of the year.

With such a positive environment, businesses and developers looked to leverage blockchain technology for new projects, leading to a boom of new initial coin offerings (ICO) that has collectively raised more than $20 billion since the beginning of 2017.

This provided the right atmosphere for more nefarious individuals to set up scam operations looking to fleece unsuspecting victims.

The modus operandi varied from project to project, but there was no shortage of conventional multi-level marketing and pyramid schemes, as well as pump-and-dump operations.

As the year has come to a close, it is worthwhile to take a look at some the biggest scams of 2018, as well as some of weirdest and outright ridiculous schemes.

Readmore: https://cointelegraph.com/news/from-bitconnect-to-sim-swap-swindling-2018s-biggest-scams