The financial pyramids have always been present, but in the world of crypts, we have barely been 10 years old. That's why we'll unveil these Ponzi schemes by making a top 3.
We have to remember that the advantages of cryptocurrencies are practically anonymity, privacy, and low transaction costs. And causally the big obstacle for their worldwide adoption is that thin line called CRIME.
For some scholars, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are used for illicit acts on the dark web and also serve as a functional tool for money laundering.
Today it is the turn of these types of pyramids, which are known as Ponzi schemes. It was coined by an Italian con-man named Carlos Ponzi.
We must remember that these types of pyramids do not produce any goods or services, what they do is Network Marketing. Where each member invites another member and so on.
The biggest beneficiaries of these are the organizers of these schemes and a few investors who manage to withdraw their investment in time. And for ordinary mortals, all that is left is debt, loss, and disappointment.
OneCoin
For the connoisseur of these schemes, OneCoin has been one of the largest in the cryptocurrencies which were in operation between 2014 and 2017. Where they managed to deceive 3,000 people and swindle their investors for an amount that ranges from 5,000 million dollars.
The owner of this pyramid is the Bulgarian con artist Ruzha Ignatova. This kind of scheme worked conventionally, i.e. you won for every invitation accepted.
It was such a media boom that Ruzha told her investors that they would become the world's largest cryptocurrencies and that they would beat Bitcoin. But it wasn't like that since they didn't even have their blockchain.
BitConect
This was another great scam that worked in the period from 2016 to 2018. It was created by anonymous developers, which was run by a man named Satao Nakamoto.
It worked like this: users had to buy their BCC token and store it in a very specific wallet so that the bot would automatically benefit from it.
Members were promised a 40% profit per month, claiming that if they invested $1 billion, they could withdraw $50 million in 3 years.
The first to realize this was the creator of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, since promising 1% per day is typical of a Ponzi scheme.
It was so much a precaution that the American authorities put an end to this story by setting up a Ponzi scheme that will cease to operate. As a result, the BBC Token fell by 90% and investors lost around 3.5 billion dollars.
PlusToken
It is one of the newest in the market, operating since 2018, was announced by the WeChat platform with promises of returns between 10%-30%.
Almost four million people joined this Ponzi scheme, with the purchases of the PlusToken. These scammers supposedly based their idea on financial education and even trained people in the induction of cryptocurrencies.
The purpose of this, however, was to get all those cryptos to their PlusToken. However, the authorities put an end to this about a year ago.
Six people have arrested thanks to the Chinese authorities, although three billion dollars were lost and could not be returned to the investors. And recently all the EOS and ETH were removed from the purses of these pyramids.