Cryptocurrencies have revolutionized the way people do transaction worldwide – but they’ve also facilitated some monumental scams within the last nine years. The success of Bitcoin and several altcoins jumpstarted an industry that’s incorporating Blockchain technology in several innovative ways.
As the smartest minds have created some game-changing companies backed by the ability of Blockchain and cryptocurrencies, nefarious minds also have jumped on the bandwagon, fleecing unwitting investors in elaborate scams.
ICOs fever spawns massive scams
Since Bitcoin’s inception in 2009, people are becoming increasingly enamoured with the thought of Blockchain technology. With time, developers and business minds began creating their own solutions with this specific decentralized ledger technology. This resulted in the development of Ethereum and other virtual currencies, with the former simply in charge of a boom in initial coin offerings (ICO) in 2017.
Being an ICO is basically a circular of public finding and is normally launched with a tech startup which sells cryptocurrency tokens to prospective investors, these investors buy tokens in the hopes that company will launch its product and the tokens will grow in value.
An ICO isn’t like an initial public offering, that is each time a traditional company makes its share available to buy to the public. Actually, that is where in actuality the ICO moniker stems from.
Given there are no promises that the ICO is likely to make good on its future plans, investors have a leap of faith if they part ways making use of their money. This obviously has resulted in an array of scams billed as ICOs, which may have seen a large number of investors left out of pocket.
Listed below are five of the largest ICO scams in history.
Continue after the page break to see the list