There are more than 5,000 diverse cryptocurrencies being traded with a total market cap of nearly $250 billion. As much as 95% of those cryptos are nothing but scams, according to the creator of the world’s first proof-of-work, or PoW, crypto. Emin Gun Sirer, the creator of the first PoW-based crypto, the Karma System, is confident that the vast majority of cryptos do not represent any tech advancement and only exist to grab people’s money. Bitcoin did it first In an April 29 AMA session with Equilibrium EOSDT, Sirer slammed crypto projects like Facebook’s Libra for wanting to compete with …

The sentencing of Mark Scott, a licensed attorney who laundered $400 million for the infamous OneCoin Ponzi scheme, has been adjourned until July 14, 2020. On April 25, Judge Edgardo Ramos of the New York Southern District Court reportedly granted Scott’s request for the hearing’s rescheduling due to his “need to get further medical testing.” Scott was delivered a guilty verdict during November 2019, however, appealed the decision in February. Scott’s sentencing sees numerous delays During mid-February, the U.S. Government requested a three-week adjournment of the deadline for its response to Scott’s request for acquittal earlier that month. Scott claimed …

It’s been a good week for Bitcoin. After languishing at around $6,700, the cryptocoin is up more than 6 percent over the last week to take it above $7,000. And the next halving is now less than three weeks away. Changpeng Zhao is looking further ahead. He predicts that in a few months, as governments implement quantitative easing measures to stabilize coronavirus-hit economies, Bitcoin will rise. “Mathematics works, he told BlockDown 2020, a two-day virtual conference. “If you increase supply of the fiat currency and Bitcoin is a limited asset, mathematics will eventually work.” For crypto-ATM services like DigitalMint and …

Investors who participated in the FLiK initial coin offering, or ICO, in 2017 have opposed entertainer Kevin Hart’s bid to have the $7 million lawsuit dismissed. The 25 investors claim that they collectively lost more than $2 million as a result of Hart, rapper ‘T.I.’, and FLiK executive, Ryan Felton, touting unregistered securities for an ICO that ultimately failed to materialize. ICO investors fight for suit against Kevin Hart to proceed In their opposition, the plaintiffs argued that the FLiK ICO “depended on” endorsements from celebrities to “elevate the standing” and perception of the offering. The investors assert that they …

The Ripple Army has sent more than 8.5 million XRP to known fake airdrops and YouTube giveaway scams in the past year, according to a new community site set up to combat fraud on the blockchain. XRP data aggregator xrplorer, which is still in beta, posted the data to Twitter on April 23, said that XRP holders had withdrawn six million tokens in 2019 and sent them to addresses associated with giveaway scams. It reported almost three million people have done the same so far for 2020. Source: Twitter Funds from these crypto scams ended up on nearly every major …

A federal judge in Texas issued warrants for the arrest of an ex-Washington state senator and the leaders behind an alleged cryptocurrency scam involving the Meta 1 coin. At an April 21 hearing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Judge Robert Pitman ordered bench warrants for former Republican Sen. David Schmidt and cohort Robert Dunlap after they failed to appear. This was despite the fact the proceedings were being convened over video conference in light of COVID-19 prevention measures. Nicole Bowdler, the third defendant named in the judge’s ruling, was not targeted in a bench warrant but was given …

EOS Ecosystem, a wallet app that attracts investors to deposit EOS with promised high returns, has reportedly shut down and possibly run away with close to $52 million, according to an April 20 report. $52M is gone and more is potentially missing The local media’s investigation of EOS block transactions found the balance of one of the EOS accounts associated with EOS Ecosystem had no more than 500 EOS tokens left. The account holder had removed about 890,000 EOS tokens on Monday morning. They dug a little further and tracked down a number of other accounts that also belong to …

A cryptocurrency staking wallet that offers users as much as 1.5% daily returns is bearing striking resemblance to a Ponzi scheme. That’s according to a Medium article published on April 19 by Jan Kowalski which warns readers to steer clear of an app known as StakedWallet. The website offers Proof-of-Stake “investment opportunities” wherein the user’s daily payout increases the longer they keep their funds staked. Staking payouts begin at 0.6% per day, and increase to 1.5% after nine months. Seemingly effortless daily returns such as these have been a hallmark of almost all well-known cryptocurrency scams in the past, including …

British TV presenter and former X-Factor star, Rylan Clark-Neal, alerted his followers as to “fake interview” claiming that Rylan had made “millions from Bitcoin.” On April 18, the former Celebrity Big Brother star tweeted that a fraudulent interview impersonating U.K. publication, The Daily Mirror, was circulating on Facebook. Rylan warned his followers: “There’s a fake interview going around on Facebook and social platforms claiming to be the daily mirror which isn’t saying how I’ve made millions from Bitcoin. Don’t fall for it.” Scammers promote fake celebrity interviews on Facebook The warning comes amid a steady stream of Bitcoin (BTC) scams …

Malaysian police have arrested 14 Chinese men for their involvement in a Bitcoin (BTC), scam targeting investors in their home country. Assistant Commander, Dzulkhairi Mukhatar, stated that the arrests took place on April 18, following two-months of surveillance. All of the suspects are aged between 20 and 30, three of whom do not have “valid travel documents,” according to the officer. Malaysian police arrest crypto scammers targeting China The group impersonated wealthy investors and targeted victims through popular Chinese messaging applications, WeChat and QQ. “All of the suspects would then give a fake testimony to persuade the victim into investing, …

The United States Commodity Futures Trade Commission (CFTC) has filed a complaint against Florida resident Alan Friedland for fraudulently raising $1.6 million through a cryptocurrency tied to a forex trading scheme. The April 16 filing accuses Friedland and his companies Fintech Investment Group, Inc and Compcoin LLC of illegally soliciting investments and publishing “untrue and materially misleading” press materials for its digital asset Compcoin from 2016 until 2018. ‘Proprietary trading algorithm’ The defendant claimed that Compcoin would allow customers to access Fintech’s proprietary trading algorithm ART and would deliver high returns on investment. Friedland falsely claimed that ART’s profit potential …

Popular Ethereum (ETH) block explorer Etherscan has launched a machine-learning powered surveillance engine to flag ETH and wallets that are associated with illicit activity. Wallets that have originated from illegal sources will now be blacklisted — allowing users to identify when coins they are receiving have a checkered history. Etherscan blacklists funds of illegal origin Etherscan announced its ETHProtect detection system in a blog post on April 14. ETHProtect will generate “daily user reports on suspicious fraudulent activities” which will be reviewed and verified by Etherscan’s security research analysts. The detection system is designed to identify funds associated with hacks, …