Let me share an story with you
I got scammed two times in my life. Yes, i lost money, but i also gained something more valuable: knowledge. Allow me to share with you how everything happened, and maybe you will learn with my mistakes.
First Scam
When i was 20 years old, i started to recieve some nice money, working at my father's accounting office. My family wasn't rich, but i had the dream that i would be some day. It was enough to spent on some parties, and to keep some on a savings account.
One day, a friend of mine came to me with a wonderful proposal. He had another friend that invited him to a circle of investors. A secret circle, where very few people were allowed to enter, and the only way to join them was by invitation of a friend.
That friend started to tell me how amazing his other friend was to inviting him in, and a lot of stories about how this secret investor circle were making tons of money, with a very small amount of cash. He called them genius of investing.
Like i said, i had a dream of becoming rich, watching all of my father's clients,moving aroung huge amounts of money, so i believed my friend, and paid the $1k membership fee to that incredible society.
He also said that i would double that money in one or two months, and that i was allowed to invite 2 more people to the circle, and it could only be someone that i fully trusted.
Guess what? I didn't even had time to invite anyone else to the secret society, because two monts later, none of them could be found.
Sounds familiar?
Yes. It was a Ponzi Scheme. Amazing promisses, and a "suggestion" that you will make more money convincing people to pay money to join.
Take a look at the Picture below. How many people is needed for a pyramid scheme become impossible to sustain with only 6 people per level?
And that's how i learned the first lessons:
If it is too good to be true, it probably is.
It it looks like a ponzi scheme, it is a ponzi scheme
Second Scam
The second scam came a bit later, when i was around 26 years old.
At that point in my life i had already learned a bit about markets, how they work, how to make some money on them, and i even had some sucessful investments and trades.
Then came this Guru. That amazing guy, that promissed that he had the secret formula to always win on the markets. And he would teach it. For a price.
At that time, information wasn't avaiable as easy as it is today with the Internet, but that guy was being praised among the circle of traders that i knew. Even big players of the market were supposedly praising his ability to make a lot of money.
One time opportunity. He would show his trick to win the markets, and would only do it once. A one time only exclusive conference with na entry fee of only $10k.
Why not pay $10k to learn how to do 100x that?
Then i got greedy, and forgot my first lesson: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
After paying $10k for the conference (plus travel expenses), i still lost around $23k on the markets following his miraculous technique. Only at that time i exited the markets for some time, and went back to the books to try to understand what i was doing wrong.
One month later, the "Market guru" was being arrested for fraud.
A few more lessons learned:
Never forget again: Of looks too good to be true, it probably is
Never trust the "market gurus". Specially those that keep saying they never miss a prediction
Learn. Don't follow
The sad part of these stories is that the cycle Always repeat itself. Time pass, but people are greedy, but don't want to work hard and spend time to learn about things.
They all want the easy way.
Uneducated and greedy people are the perfect targets for Scammers, and i have to say that, these months that i started to get involved with cryptocurrency markets there is a lot of both.
So here is my advice:
If you are not the scammer, learn and think for yourself, or else you will be the scammed.
Cheers.