{"id":72842,"date":"2021-07-08T16:36:52","date_gmt":"2021-07-08T20:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=72842"},"modified":"2021-07-08T16:38:35","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T20:38:35","slug":"when-will-folks-wake-up-to-these-worsening-crypto-scams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=72842","title":{"rendered":"When will folks wake up to these worsening crypto scams"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Crypto Scammers Rip Off Billions as Pump-and-Dump Schemes Go Digital<\/h1>\n
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Billions are getting pilfered annually through a variety of cryptocurrency scams. The way things are going, this will only get worse.<\/p>\n

By Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou and\u00a0 Charlie Wells
\nBloomberg<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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L<\/strong>isten to The Money Chant of the Wolves of Crypto.<\/p>\n

You remember The Money Chant: Matthew McConaughey thumping his chest, talking fools and money before \u2014\u00a0sniff! \u2014\u00a0<\/em>a little lunchtime \u201ctootski.\u201d<\/p>\n

Titan Maxamus has been there. Well, not\u00a0there<\/em>, in a \u201cWolf of Wall Street\u201d-style boiler room. There on the other side \u2014 as the mark. Titan Maxamus knows the game. All the brazenly cynical players do. In Scorsese\u2019s cinematic bender of sex, drugs and stocks, it\u2019s called the pump and dump. In today\u2019s cryptocurrencies, it\u2019s known as the rug pull.<\/p>\n

Maxamus thinks he got rug-pulled the other month in some sketchy digital token called \u2014 wait for it \u2014 Safe Heaven. Like countless dreamers in today\u2019s\u00a0memeified<\/a>\u00a0markets, he\u2019s been gambling $50 here, $100 there on what are known as Shit Coins, obscure digital something-or-others being minted by the thousands. This stuff makes\u00a0Bitcoin<\/a> look good as gold.<\/p>\n

One moment, Safe Heaven was flying. The next, it was crashing. Maxamus (that’s his online\u00a0persona.\u00a0His real name is Glenn Titus), can\u2019t prove anything. But he suspects what, in retrospect, seems forehead-slappingly obvious: some small-time hustler created Safe Heaven with a few deft keystrokes, hyped the hell out of it \u2014 and promptly cashed out. Telegram, a popular instant messaging app that\u2019s become a major crypto boiler room, immediately fell silent. The Safe Heaven Telegram group, once thronging with rocket emojis and Elon Musk GIFs, was deleted. The Safe Heaven Twitter account hasn\u2019t been updated since May 28.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody I know has gotten rug-pulled,\u201d says Titus, a 38-year-old butcher in Salem, Oregon. \u201cYou know, you win some, you lose some. Hopefully, win more than lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

It might sound like a joke, given the\u00a0crypto meltdowns<\/a> of late, but serious money is at stake here. Billions \u2014 real billions \u2014 are getting pilfered annually through a variety of cryptocurrency scams. The way things are going, this\u00a0will only get worse.<\/p>\n

Back in the Wall Street Dark Ages \u2014 six, 12, 18 months ago \u2014 these sorts of shenanigans were mostly associated with shlocky brokerages like the one depicted in the 2013\u00a0Wolf.<\/em>\u00a0In those halcyon days before\u00a0GameStop, Dogecoin and the rest, schlubs on Long Island might pitch ridiculous over-the-counter stocks to the gullible.<\/p>\n

Nowadays crypto hustlers and star-gazers like Titan Maxamus have established a weird symbiotic relationship. It seems to capture everything that\u2019s gone wrong with money culture, from Reddit-fueled thrill-seeking to conspiracy theorizing to predatory wheeling-dealing. The rug pull is only one play. There\u2019s also the gentler soft rug, the crypto version of getting ghosted on Hinge. And the honey pot, which functions like a trap. Old-fashioned Ponzi schemes, newly cryptodenominated, have swindled people out of billions too.<\/p>\n

At times the result can start to resemble the Agatha Christie mystery classic \u201cMurder on the Orient Express\u201d: The who in this dunnit is somehow everyone. Grifters will grift. But like Maxamus, many marks actually expect to get snookered once in a while. Both sides, the swindler and the swindled, are in on this one. Elaborate social-media systems have sprung up to flag potential trouble, not only to avoid it but maybe even to profit from it.<\/p>\n