The top crypto scams of 2020
This 2020 has not only seen some real records for the major cryptocurrencies, but it has also seen a number of scams being implemented to the detriment of many people.
We will therefore list the top scams of 2020, although most of them are concentrated towards the autumn, helped by the high price of many cryptocurrencies which has attracted more people to take an interest in this sector.
Among this year’s exit scams we have one in India by the name of Pluto, whose founder, Bharat Verma, had deceived 43 investors with the promise of the launch of the platform’s native token and a Profit Revolution mining service that would guarantee users a monthly return of between 20% and 30%, recovering a total of $7 million, before he disappeared into thin air.
Things didn’t go much better in Africa either, as the famous Inksnation had first announced a simple login problem on its platform via Twitter, but then decided to go underground, and one of the key players, Omotade Sparks Amos Sewanu, has an arrest warrant from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) also for promoting the Pinkoin token.
A more complicated affair occurred in America, where Amir Bruno Elmaani, under the false name of Bruno Block, sold Pearl Tokens from the Oyster Pearl project during the ICO boom of 2017. In this way he recovered millions of dollars without paying taxes, which earned him a 10-year sentence for tax evasion this year.
DeFi’s top scams
On the decentralised finance side (DeFi), there have also been several scams, such as the one that exploited Binance’s blockchain, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and involved the Wine Swap project. The project was only set up with the intention of recovering funds from everyone who interacted with the platform, although in this case Binance froze the criminals‘ funds and identified them.
Another blockchain that was exploited was that of Tron: here we find the SharkTron project, which put the launch of JustSwap in a bad light and involved several users in the loss of important funds. But here, too, the Tron Foundation intervened to recover the victims‘ funds.
Finally, a well-developed scam used the famous DeFi Uniswap protocol to create a completely fake Android app that led to losses for several users. The app was promptly removed from Google’s store, to prevent other people from downloading this fake version of the famous DEX.
The year 2020 has certainly been an important year in the crypto and blockchain world, but all these scams remind us that we must not let our guard down and must always be careful with projects that promise certain earnings.