Topic: Beware of such Ponzi Schemes in India (Read 221 times)

Yes, these fraudulent activities are on the rise, especially due to the extremely complicated regulatory policies in India. This makes it easier for the perpetrators to lure investors by making false promises, which is quite difficult to verify. The Morris coin scam in Bengaluru is one of the prime example, where the perpetrators collected INR 15,000 from 1.1 million people. 

What RPM is your HDD? Because I had a ~6yr old laptop with a 5400 RPM HDD with 6GB of RAM and it used to take ~45secs-1min to boot, and that was after maybe 4yrs of usage, during its last two years, it had a lot of stuff on it and it was running a slow CPU too (namely the AMD A4 6210 APU @1.8Ghz), and it used to take maybe 2-3mins to just boot, let alone the plethora of other problems it had.
Now I have a nice laptop with a good SSD, so boot times are very minimal for me.

Now, regarding updates, first of all, I would not actually recommend disabling updates, as a lot of driver updates are necessary for your drivers (especially network adapters, they are notorious for not functioning if proper updated drivers aren't installed). Also, security, you do not want to be vulnerable to security issues, and especially if you use Windows Defender (which is shockingly really good now, probably better than anything else other than maybe Malwarebytes), you get Security definition updates almost everyday, I have even got ~5 security def updates in a day. You wouldn't want your PC to be vulnerable to major security flaws, which you will be, if you do not update. That is THE reason people should have switched over Windows 7 to 10, as Win7 isn't actively patched and updated.

If the timing of the updates disturb you, you can set your work hours as "Active hours", that prevents windows from restarting. But I would not recommend disabling updates altogether, that leave you, (any bitcoins that you have on your PC wallet), and other devices in your network vulnerable to attacks.

Now if you do want to disable updates (again, not recommended), you can use the Group Policy Editor (in Win10 Pro, I don't think its available in Win10 Home), and then you can disable automatic updates. There is also a way to permanently remove the updates, by modifying the registry (make a backup, and don't do anything you're not sure of, modifying this can mess a lot of stuff up!!) in the path
You can do that using the steps in this link (also has a few other ways to do so): https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop-updates-installing-automatically-windows-10

Bloatware:
You might find a few windows store apps installed when you first book, like Candy Crush and etc. You can simply remove them from windows store. Apps like McAfee are installed by system manufacturers/integrators (if you didnt install windows yourself, these system integrators do put a lot of bloat). Remove McAfee completely, it is a huuuge resource hog. You can use something like IOBit uninstaller. That removes all traces of these software. Any other apps can probably be removed from the Windows Store, control panel. There are a lot of other things you can/should uninstall/disable, and I probably cant list them in this post, but I can provide you with more links if you want.

If you want to find and troubleshoot resource hogs, you can use SysInternals by Microsoft to do so, it has lost of tools so it might feel overwhelming at first lol, but each tool is for a different use and you can find the ones that you need and just google some guides to help you use it.

Even though this would mislead the thread a bit but I would love to know what kind of changes you made to the registry? I am curious to know this considering that my Windows 10 takes like a decade to boot up due to my slow HDD speed maybe getting rid of a few bloatware from Reigstery could help me with it?

Another curious thing about windows 10 is that you cannot permanently disable updated what maximum you can do is to delay the updates up to 84 days. I think updates are one of the prime reason which makes windows unusable they update their bloatware on the similar old hardware which really isn't that capable to run latest updates. Moreover most or about all the updates are useless.

I would not necessarily agree tho. I bought a nice Ryzen 7 4800H laptop this November, and yeah it came bundled with Windows 10 Home, what I did was upgrade it to Win 10 Pro, and remove the bloated apps, and it runs fine. If you get into the registry, Windows is shockingly customizable tho, and yeah there may be occasional hiccups there, a BSOD here, but I usually get by just fine, and the headache of finding proper driver and programs that work with Linux is much more, tho I do agree that it is becoming more mainstream nowadays.

But, if I need it, I just run Linux on a VMware VM, and with my 8c/16t CPU it is a pretty snappy experience, and dual booting isnt necessary for me, as me having actually use Linux for much is pretty rare (up till now that is, might need to get more into it as I progress into programming)

You can delay updates, and pretty much customize a lot of stuff in Win 10 pro, and it wont restart while you are in the middle of working, like sometimes Win10 Home used to for me.

I wasn't particularly talking about Linux but most of the programs that we use today. The type of privacy policy that most of the software programs these days have been dubious. Maybe it's about the increasing awareness about privacy or maybe these programs and applications always used to ask for such a level of private information. Moreover talking about Linux there are many programs that don't support linux. Especially in the profession that I carry. Most of the softwares are made by local vendors that support merely windows. Moreover when I have been using something for 20 years chances are that a change to Linux would be pretty difficult.

Yes true. This is also a pretty good point earlier there were a few laptops that came without pre-loaded windows but nowadays you would see all laptops coming with preloaded windows. I have seen many mac users buying MacBook but then installing something like bootcamp or parallel space to use windows.

As @amishmanish said, any Linux distro is more powerful and secure than the bloatware Windows OS. But sadly, since we pay the 5k premium for the laptops which comes pre-loaded with Windows OS we are forced to live with them which is what I am currently experiencing. I bought a Ryzen 3 laptop last year September I guess and as usual it had Windows OS. I allocated certain space for my Debian and dual booted it along with Windows. I even managed to completely change the GUI look to replicate Mac OS Big Sur. (changed a few GUI codes as well) Now all the bitcoin related tasks like learning Core development, testing some simple open source wallets are being carried out in the Linux distro and I became more comfortable and productive with the terminal as days passed by.

Almost all the Windows/Mac softwares are available as open source alternatives in Linux world, but I still use Windows since I was completely used to Photoshop for almost 5-6 years. Today Libre Office can compete with MS Office, GIMP is becoming as powerful as Photoshop and a few more. Also open source softwares are more secure since lots of eyes watch the code and patches will be readily available and moreover it doesn't work like a closed source bloatware shit like Windows.

If operating system is an issue then you can choose one of the free Linux distros like Ubuntu. Linux is sufficiently user-friendly these days. You just have to approach it with an open mind as everything that you can do on windows, you can do on Linux (Except maybe hardcore gaming). You can even install it with your existing windows if you have a partition you can spare. . Free software are available that fulfill most requirements for any user.

Hardware wallet is a good choice if you have to regularly expose wallets to network for transactions.

You are knowledgeable enough to not need any investment so there really isn't much that you are risking. Concrete legality and suing for bitcoin scams is something that you cannot be hopeful about. Especially with this latest scam about loan apps in Hyderabad. 

Excellent Point! I was thinking a few days back that maybe I should reveal myself in real-world and start kind of bitcoin consultancy for people who want to enter the bitcoin world this idea came after an old friend asked me the method of buying some bitcoins. But later I realized it wouldn't really be worth the risk. I mean in this digital era you can't even trust your own laptop what if someone is snooping in it? Either first I should buy a genuine windows laptop with 100% genuine software and a trezor wallet to store everything without that it doesn't look great idea. Moreover, even the legalities currently are quite complex so you don't know how far can agencies go if they someday decide to ban bitcoin. It would be a wiser choice to enter only when there is concrete legality around bitcoin and you can even sue someone for scamming you in bitcoins.

And here i was hoping that someday we'll have a few beers over a discussion on all things bitcoin and Indian bounty hunters, lol. You are absolutely right about keeping your privacy. And if a real life meetup is ever planned, we should do it the cool way by establishing our identities through PGP or signed messages first. Then we'll know that we are talking to the right person.

I think at some point, real life interactions become necessary to be able to work together or build products and partnerships, if you are into that sort of thing.

Useful post as usual OP, Sorry i am out of merit for now. Will come back. If you have some company names and other identifying information about the promoters, do share in this thread here.

I would suggest people from this forum and people involved in Bitcoin from India should probably keep a low profile about themselves (never speak to others that you know about Bitcoin or try to save poor investors by compromising your identity). A few of our forum members I speak with know that I was contacted by a scammer a few months back and I luckily escaped from their ponzi schemes. I made a mistake of speaking about bitcoin with my real life friends back in 2017-2018 and thereby when I started getting involved more towards the technology I moved away from most of them.

Recently yesterday, I was contacted by a friend of friend who himself said he has started investing in Bitcoin recently. I have never met him but he got to know about me from my 2017-18 talks and tried to scam me for a few bits. India is a country with huge list of scammers where they try to mask themselves as friends and scam us. Also with current pandemic situation many has lost the jobs and has been roaming around bitcoin ponzis as their full time career. So just try to keep a low profile as how I am currently for past 2-2.5 years and never reveal about yourself or try to save any of your known people from scams by compromising your identity of bitcoin life, if not you would be losing your hard earned sats and bits all the way.

Apart from a few trustworthy Indian companies built on cryptocurrencies like WazirX, CoinDCX, Etherbit rest has been a scam to rob the investors money. For example Bitconnect was run by an Indian scammer, bitcoin-india.org is run by a scammer and we can add a lot more companies to this never ending list since 2012.

Haha. It's interesting how people can plug in that same multi level marketing concept in almost any concept and make it look like an excellent scheme. The tron thing is sheer foolishness? Why would someone give money to get interest in 12 months of the same money which they already own?

But on the serious note we can create a common ponzi scheme thread for any new person who wants to see if some scheme is original or not. I think you should give name of these websites too.

You should have given the title as 'Scam 2021'  

One thing that is common in both the plans you mentioned in OP is the 50% that is taken by the company.
This is where the scam begins. They will probably take the 50% of the deposit amount and then continue doing this for 9 or 10 months which would yield them a good amount to run away with.
You should post this in reddit too as more number of newbies are popping up on reddit and this would be very helpful for them.

Happy New Year!

As Bitcoin creates a new ATH record there has been a sudden influx of Ponzi schemes that use cryptocurrency as bait to solve their purpose. One such scheme that I came across recently is a combination of Forex, Crypto, and MLM. The scheme is primarily an MLM Investment plan using a binary tree structure.

So what this scheme is all about.

PLAN-1

The initial minimum investment is $100 worth wherein they will create an account for the investor on the MT5 Forex trading platform. They will also teach them how to start trading in Forex? and they will provide 50 percent of that investment for trading and the rest 50 percent will be taken as a fee for teaching Forex trading.

PLAN-2
Investors can join their investment plan by investing a minimum of $100 worth of TRON. They will be able to see 50 percent of their investment in a TRON wallet on their website. The rest 50 percent will be paid as daily interest in TRON for the next 12 months till the amount reaches the required total investment. To gain more TRON Investors can bring other investors and share a percentage of commission in TRON using the Binary tree scheme.

Those who cannot bring other investors are given the assurance that in the next 12 months TRON price will go up and you will earn more with the invested TRON.

They have not specified how they will pay the daily interest and why should anyone want to learn Forex trading,

Stay away from such Pozi scheme involving cryptocurrencies and forex, they are nothing but MLM investment plan and
in the end, the promoters of such a scheme will elope with your money when they have achieved the required profit.