Zetacoin has all of the earmarks of a concerted plan to increase the price-per-coin while leaving people who don’t know better holding the bag.
This strategy is extremely effective, it relies almost exclusively on hype and misdirection, and is extremely low on fact. This Wikipedia article is a good starting point to understand the dynamics for any micro-cap stock. This type of scam is illegal in the US, and many other jurisdictions, but because Crypto Currencies are for the most part unregulated people are preying on unsophisticated investors. The general flow is as follows.
1 – Buy a bunch of some random non descript alt-coin or start your own. For an existing currency like Zetacoin you probably want to slowly buy into it so as not to disrupt the price. If you buy too much too fast people are going to notice that there is manipulation at play. A good example of this is the number one Zetacoin address by value ZGfz94PBE2D3yhgSSooqMbtSiLNLozYsbv which at this time is worth approximately 1.5 million USD. Here is the link to the very first transaction for that address. Notice how the owner systematically accrues 50,000 ZET every 4 minutes. That is until yesterday at 6:26 PM where the owner starts offloading and reaping the profits, $456,000 of other peoples money at the time of this writing.
2 – Get suckers into the game. Start building a hype machine via your blog, pull people in on Twitter who can push your penny-stock. Just check the #Zetacoin hashtag for an unending stream of non-fact on twitter Some choice selections:
“When people eventually start to dig into what the #Zetacoin community has done they are not going to believe it.”
“#ZBAD’s motto of #BuyHoldBuild is starting to make sense to everyone else. True value of a coin is in application not speculation #zetacoin”
“I’m all about community that’s why i believe in #blackcoin and now #zetacoin”
“#zetacoin is a screaming buy even without knowing anything concrete.Hype/rumours to 2k,the breaking news will easily bring it to 20k #HUGE”
3 – Offer no concrete facts. The thing that is nice about talking about community is that you don’t have to back it up with anything. You don’t have to say where or how Zetacoin is different from anyone else. You don’t have to point to real world examples of use. In fact, you can pretty much manufacture a community of users overnight. Let’s take a look at the Zetacoin “community”.
Zeta-coin.org has a News section with 2 bullet points since 2013. Not seeming very active to me.
Twitter 6445 followers. That seems pretty sizable. The thing is you can buy a few hundred twitter followers for a few bucks, so difficult to tell if that is real community or not. There seem to be only a few very active in the PUMP. Zetacoin themselves say that over 500k has been traded in 24 hours! The vast majority being sold as the PUMPER takes the profit.
Github Has almost no changes since it was forked from Bitcoin. For a developer community working on something game changing this is also a red flag.
Forum. The Zeta-coin forum has less than 100 total posts on it.
OK, what about Reddit Ah. A very little going on, but 157 active readers!…
4 – Be anonymous. Beware when people don’t put their real name on a project, it says a lot about it when the creators are basically unknown. Remember, you have to avoid legal liability later. If there isn’t a name associated with the coin, someone who has something to lose if it goes belly up, buyer beware.
5 – Promise something big in the future. The main proponents talk a big game, that is all part of the hype machine. Examples:
“His project was a complete and utter GAME CHANGER.”
“Within 4 days Zetacoin was the hottest crypto in the community. Within 5 days the twitter feed was running red hot with Zetacoin talk.”
“Most of you have figured out that there is something big, and that there is a third party involved.”
“We have an opportunity to walk the talk that the community keeps mouthing.”
This is called bullshit. Unadulterated, useless drivel. Just look at the charts. Read the block chain. At the end of the day there is no news that should result in a 700% increase overnight. If you are investing in Zetacoin you just made somebody else Rich. Shame on you guys, you know who you are. People need to be aware that what is old is new again, the pump-and-dump penny stock scam is alive and well in Crypto currency!
http://www.brantonbits.com/blog/2014/04/07/altcoin-pump-and-dump-scams/Wow Unclebobs, you've got quite a lot to say on the matter. Which coin are you with these days Quark or XCP Finished bagging Darkcoin and now moving onto the next best thing. Maybe you are hoping for a down turn in the ZET market so that you can move over to a more popular coin. Hell, sell your crap coins now and buy something with potential.
However, I like your point about a 700% overnight increase, it seems outrageous. What the, that's like zetacoin going from $0.005 cents to $0.03 cents .lol
