Topic: Bitcoin User Loses Record $1.1M (Read 543 times)

I wonder what sort of promises this person was given and how much they were promised in order to lure them into sending that money. Unless they somehow intercepted internal communications, this person was probably being exceptionally greedy and should have verified the transfer by at least 2 other methods before sending. I'd expect to at least visit their offices in person and get verifiable contracts in place. Besides that though, it feels like Youtube is too often helping these scammers - they long ago abandoned staff driven moderation and it appears their automated systems are getting defeated by scammers all the time, which is how they are able to snag so many victims in the first place. Until Alphabet, Google and Youtube start paying for these crimes - in fines and if necessary jail time for executives - committed via their services it is unlikely to stop. They are making billions in profits but do not put proper safety systems in place.

Even with increased awareness on every count, people who choose to be gready will still fall for cheap scams. It might be nothing to the user who might have lost such but, BTC26 is a lot, especially following current market condition of bear market.

This really shouldn't be happening yo anyone but one needs to be careful on how they invest such money over some random contacts online no matter who the user poses to be. I fact, with such money, you can trace back to the company office and actually person to conduct a proper business.

Scammers are so relentless in getting a pay-off there schemes, why shouldn't crypto investors be relentless in searching out redflags in offers until they get to the root of it. It's sad!

Is this a joke or does this actually happen???
Are people still this dumb! It is okay to lose a couple of funds to scammer but to lose 26 btc just like that! I doubt this is real, this looks fabricated imo,
Is the identity of the victim known! Obviously with such a large amount of money lost this person can not just remain anonymous and be quiet about it, although the article said it has been reported to the authorities, but it just makes me wonder how can someone send over more than 26 so easily.

i do i have the feeling that this as well as some of the big nft's purchases sometimes are just obvious money washing tactics??

You know what they say ‘Truth can be stranger than fiction’ the reality is that people with that much money can be that dumb, after all just because you are an expert in one field of knowledge that does not necessarily mean that you are an expert on every single field in existence.

So as an example a doctor could have accumulated that amount of money in bitcoin by using his savings, and even if he was an expert on the medical science that does not makes him an expert on the markets, he believed otherwise and now we are seeing the consequences of that misconception.

Some of the stories will always sound very funny to me, because I don't want to believe someone fall for this kind of scam in this time, it sounds ridiculous. But anyway, all I see is a greed infested person who seem not to be contented with a whole lot that he has and now lost them to scammers because he wanted to make an increase over night.

I guess he learnt the hard way and a case study for us. Scammers thrive a lot in the crypto space, we all should be careful.

This is the problem nowadays even though we are trying to keep it safe sometimes we cannot avoid this kind of fake giveaway i guess there's a lack of knowledge with these scams. But of course, again no one will give double your capital in just giveaways its already 2022 and i expect too the holder is knowledgeable because he holds one of the highest coins in the crypto market feels sad to see this kind of lesson might be quite expensive it losses a large amount of money.

I'm very much surprised about his case if he really owns 26 bitcoin this means he is smart enough and familiar with bitcoin and probably have experience with bitcoin and someone with this knowledge in the cryptocurrency world should know more about possible ways to scam people so that's surprising for me to see him getting scammed however the way they use to scam people is totally smart because of abusing other people's reputation which can make anyone get trapped because there are many people who may believe such things. However, I feel sorry for him.

I used to think people who actually took the trouble to own Bitcoin properly (with private keys and all that) had a bit of sense. Ashamed to say that I continue to overestimate people and their greed.

Something tells me he didn't really have to work hard to earn that BTC, though. You don't just part with such sums if you bled at least a little to get that.

Maybe you are right, or this is just an awareness campaign from authorities to warn crypto investors not to easily fall in this kind of scam. If you own such huge amount of money and decided to send it without any proof or assurance that its a legit one then you are qualified as one of the most stupid person on earth lol just kidding..,sometimes many people fall for this one to easily multiply their wealth "greed" is one of the reason.     

You would really be having that question in mind on why they havent done some research considering that these investors do knows about investment and not just throwing away a million without even thinking on what are the things that they've been dealing on and its just really impossible that you wont be having reconsiderations before you do make such act.Even how rich you are you wouldnt really release off those funds
without minding if you are dealing with real thing or a scam.Dont know on whats the real story behind on this one.

Most likely this, this scam is not a new one. It used to be Elon Musk that they pretended to be with their doubling scam. I can’t imagine anybody with an amount of money like that is so stupid although this is the human race after all.

sometimes you really wonder how people are getting screwed up by scammers. they don't do their homework before sending that huge amount??? greed may largely contributed to this situation. if you are sending that amount, at least make some research and verify the authenticity of the other party. but we don't know the whole story here. we can't judge the person by what is given to the media. maybe there's more than meets the eye here...

When you do let your greed overcome into your self control then its over, you would definitely be ending up on making out mistakes specially on investment talks.

You wouldnt able to resist the greed inside you which you do aim for doubling your money in instant? If you do just make use of your own common sense then you would
able to avoid that but what happens here?

Neither a fake claim or just totally this guy is too dumb when it comes to frauds and scam in the market.

I am not surprised people still fall for this scams but I see it as being greedy. Why would you believe that type of giveaway from a person of that status, as in, even in my low level, if a Michael Saylor wants to do a giveaway, I don't think he would ask for your deposit for a double and the person could have varify this. 

This is more often the case.
I used to report hacked channels on youtube doing this stuff a year ago and they had all the same operating mode, they will get a ton of coins in the first few hours, and then, even with the channel and videos still online-only small dust, the hint is usually in the way payments were collected, the first ones were coming from obvious tumblers, the rest were usually at least 10 days old deposits.

Plus the whole story doesn't make sense, why would somebody send coins continuously :
2022-01-16 14:45
2022-01-16 22:29
2022-01-17 10:06
2022-01-17 15:14
2022-01-17 21:38

Would you still send coins after coins a full day and a half after not receiving the double money?

Either somebody trying to inflate the address with transactions or somebody faking a few losses.

It's hard to digest the fact that someone would randomly throw away 26 BTC into a fake giveaway to double the capital.
Nobody in their right mind would take this kind of risk unless the news is fake or there's something fishy.
I read the comments on the tweet by whalealert and found few guys saying that it might be a way launder money and get away with taxes.
It does make sense if you are having millions and want to save up on taxes.

Yeah but nobody who has an executive role there cares enough to curtail this issue, it's all about how to drive more profits to the company until someone hacks into their platform and runs a mega-scam that gets widely reported and sends their stock on a nosedive.

And even then it's just damage control at that point, how to save ourselves instead of figuring out how to stop this permanently.

people always jumping in when there's someone offering  a massive return even though they now yet if it's legitimate or not..most for sure were greedy people wherein wants to double their money instantly reason they always ended up scam.. They are literally blinded when they saw a very promising events without knowing there are some frauds that using copy paste technique in order to have a victims around the internet.. Sorry for them because at the first place they not very aware of what's the real happening in the space especially when it comes scamming..

this crime often appears everywhere other than on twitter, youtube or facebook now on telegram too often there are many like this people imitate accounts so it is easy to deceive beginners who hold a lot of bitcoins, this needs to always be reminded to anyone bitcoin holders no one is the name giveaway doubles the amount of bitcoin whatever it's called, even famous people want to hold it rather than share it for free with people

I might be away from the internet when I have that certain amount actually. Maybe living in my own island and just enjoy for the rest of my life. In this scenario, it surely is the person that sent that amount of BTC. As much as I would like to hear the reasoning of the person behind that amount s/he sent, I guess it's unlikely that we're going to get any single word. This is just going to be one of those scenario back in the days where there were Youtube livestream of fake Binance giveaway where they just use an old footage of whatever podcast they can stumble upon and play that video in a loop making it a legitimate livestream.

I felt the same when I read this news. Such amounts and no information about the safety of their assets only prove that if he hadn't fallen for the scammers today, they would have duped him tomorrow.
Having a large capital is also a big burden, as it turns out. There is always a temptation to get into the wrong deal.

I had always thought that scammers make this kind of traps because if a small percentage of people fall for it, it is profitable for them, but I could not imagine that a user would fall into the trap for such a large amount. I certainly don't feel sorry for him, because on the one hand he was motivated by greed, and on the other hand, if he lost that amount I guess he is not poor. I feel worse when people who barely have enough to eat are swindled.


It is ridiculous but very profitable for scammers.

Bitcoin was not made to be spent. Not now. There is a misinterpretation of what Satoshi wrote in the Whitepaper: "A peer-to-peer electronic cash system". He created bitcoin to be an electronic money system.
If 80% of the world's population still doesn't understand, they don't know and don't trust Bitcoin. And it's okay, Bitcoin adoption is a long process, but the internet is open to seek knowledge and information, but some just buy it for greed without even knowing what it is....
scammers take advantage of lack of knowledge and greed...

As Charles Hoskinson has pointed out, social media companies have the technical abilities to more effectively prevent these giveaway scams. Youtube in particular seems susceptible to these giveaway scams via hacked seemingly legitimate accounts. While warning investors about these scams is important, it's also important to hold social media companies accountable.

because cryptocurrencies print a lot of new rich people even young people can become billionaires, this happened suddenly not even many people thought it. but behind the happy story, many also have sad stories from cryptocurrencies because of their lack of knowledge. I really hope that the knowledge I have can be used to help people, not to hurt them

I never thought of it that way though. A lot of people did have a lot of money profiting from the NFTs and many more bounties that could be created from it. I just hope that they would do it for the right things and help other people.

I really don't know if that person is greedy or just naive considering he didn't check any verification first from the scammer or maybe the scammer is just too good at talking that's why the person got lost with the deal. If that's the case, then he surely is feeling greedy that tend to forget the do's and don't if you end someone from the internet. I bet all he did was searching how to double his BTC and visited several sites or is it an email spam why he got scammed.

But not everything would be perfect since no matter how rich you are but there are still things in this world which you don't know because theres no such thing about pinnacle of something
or knowing everything on this world.

Maybe this guy been drunk and made out these foolish actions? People wont learn if they wont fucked up themselves but if this one is hella of a rich guy
then that wouldn't be a bothersome amount but for sure lessons do really learnt up.

I am sure that he is an educated person, he has everything, he is rich, and he can seacrh completed information including has financial consultant with that much money. For me, that BTC is a big amount and how come a person wuth that amount of BTC can be scammed by that way? Is ut because of a greediness? Careless? Or just unlucky?
But I mean, if I have that amount of BTC, I will not invest in something that is not clear like that, moreover in online platform, by YouTube or other promotion.

The reason while people adventure into this method of scam site, is because of greediness and over multiplication of wealth or over excitement to have have times three of what they have, i know vividly that no one is above or exempted with what they have, so provided that you have develop the mentalities of doubling you what you have to double or triple, they is every tendency to run into fake or scam investment platforms. Only the have to do is to be careful.

Having such a big number of bitcoin gives an outline as one among the early investors or a person who has understood well about the potential of bitcoin and has invested into it. Losing for a scam, that is well known seems like a mood swing. Atleast he could've tried with a very small amount. If he had done that, now such a big loss could've been avoided.

Why would I do that again when I was once a victim of the same thing back then when I just join the cryptocurrency investment but I am surprised someone could lose an amount to online theft when everything to need to participate in the MicroStrategy investment scheme is clearly stated on their site.

It is not about rich people because we have seen people who are not rich and have also done the same thing. All this happened because they lack knowledge, time, self-discipline and patience which is whats need to be successful in cryptocurrency

You will be surprised that it could be his biggest investment.

Imagine having 26 BTC and thinking that someone out there will double it if you trust them with all of it.  That is a level of stupidity mixed with greed that you would think would be impossible to coexist.  I guess in this case that's true... 

Greed is such a strong motivator for bad behavior.  I'm not sure who is worse in this scenario, the scammer, or the person willing to put so much money on the line for free money without a care in the world where it came from.  Such opportunities like this are almost exclusively illegal or immoral, so it's hard to feel too bad for someone. 

Who knows though.  I've heard of people taking an Ambien and doing crazy things.  Maybe when things like this happen, prescription drugs are a potential cause? 

This do really proves out that not every whales would really be that having kind of knowledge when it comes to scams but same as you said that it is odd on someone who does have big funds dont know on how fake giveaways do existed and its been on this market for a while now and it doesnt really need up some knowledge but rather only needing up that kind of common sense on which you would able to avoid it
out if you do able to make use of it on the right way.Very feel sorry for the man who had lost that million just believing that he could really double up his capital.
Well, its a lesson learn.

Not a big loss for him but we do all know that it is in most people here on this market and we could definitely say that person is just too dumb on not to know about those fake giveaway
or something like that.

Scammers could really masked out themselves anyone which is popular or something like that to take advantage out of those noobs that could potentially able to
be fooled easily.
It is really just odd that someone who do have big capital isnt aware of these things.

Going in more detail, it seemed like it came from a live video in Youtube. I recently read this post in Reddit like few hours ago and a discussion in Reddit mentioned that the address of the scammer now contains a total of 87 BTC. Holy crap. Imagine holding that amount!
Here in my country, that certain amount is more than enough for retirement lol.

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Source: The scammer who received the single largest payment of 26BTC has received a total of 87BTC.[Reddit Link]

Laziness + Greed = stupid decisions. This has been proven time and time again ...and this is what is behind the Millions that are lost to Ponzi Schemes all over the world. The promise to give money for FREE or to give people unrealistic high returns on their investments... is the thing that clouds people's judgement.

The scammer normally use small payments as the hook for the long con, because they "double" small amounts to gain your trust and when you transfer large amounts, they cut and run. (They then use those proceeds to fund the next target)  

I don't want to believe that people with such high amounts of bitcoin at their disposal would commit a greedy and rookie mistake such as this. I mean, surely you must be above average in terms of IQ if you managed to have that many bitcoins, or at least decide better than most of us here. One would not easily fall in these stupid scams, but apparently this guy did, and he did it with a huge sum.

This is where greed leads people. And it's certainly not a good place to be no matter where you put it.

Who knows? In order to lose that much bitcoin I think that person was a complete newbie in the market of cryptocurrencies in order to fall in the old doubling scam that we have seen for so many years.

So I am not really convinced this was a small part of their bitcoin portfolio, as that will indicate they were someone that invested in bitcoin early on, but if that was the case then it would have been impossible to fall for such an obvious trick, which by the way once gain shows that the amount of money you have in your wallet does not indicate in any way the the skill level you posses when it comes to managing your money, after all I could understand if someone lost 20 dollars or another low amount to a doubling scam like this and then they learned their lesson, but losing 1.1 millions dollars in something like this? This is probably the most expensive lesson of his life.

Did anyone claimed he was the victim of this scam? No if I'm right. It is also possible that scammer themselves sent the BTC tx so that other people may get interested to deposit bitcoin on their address. Otherwise, who the fuck with owning such huge amount would be dumb?

Those that use Bitcoin aren't elitists, it doesn't mean that you have a higher intelligence than someone who uses fiat, and it definitely doesn't require higher intelligence. I personally want to see as many people adopting Bitcoin as possible, and I believe Bitcoin is a little bit too complex if anything. We should be striving to simplify Bitcoin as much as possible without sacrificing security, so that anyone, and everyone can use it without actually having in depth knowledge on it.

Obviously, security is a big concern especially when your in charge of your own wealth. Banks take care of this with fiat, but I suspect this will also be a thing that happens with Bitcoin or at least some sort of movement where people who aren't comfortable being solely responsible for their Bitcoin will be able to use. Using banks would obviously diminish one of the best features of Bitcoin i.e the freedom it allows. However, banks with Bitcoin don't make a whole lot of sense, at least them controlling it, but I can see a sort of multi sign system setup between them to assure no unauthorised spending or access.

Other than over coming the complexity issue, and the potential security compromises simplifying the technology could have, Bitcoin doesn't require any specialist knowledge to use. It only really requires knowledge, and due diligence to secure it correctly. However, note I use the term "knowledge" instead of intelligence, because anyone can gain the knowledge, as it doesn't require a high intelligence to learn, only time, and effort.

Yes, I was thinking this could've been what happened too and mightve even been likely. Someone who posted above you also said they expected someone with $1m to not be naive, a scammer could've relied on this too.


Sometimes I forget just how valuable bitcoin has become from when it started though. Not that I'd send money to a doubler but just the denomination and a few other things can throw people off. Hopefully it wasn't all the btc they had too.

Regardless of Bitcoin, who believes that any money can be multiplied easily and without conditions, pay this and you will get that tomorrow.
Even the most greedy will be skeptical, and if he does a Google search, he will find that such claims are inaccurate.
I think it's fake news from news sites to get free views.

Unfortunately, why is that amount of bitcoin still owned by stupid people? LOL
I think there have been many warnings of bitcoin doubler scams on behalf of famous people on social media. An important lesson that before filling the address with a lot of bitcoin, we should fill the brain with knowledge about security, risk and vigilance.


Of course it will always work, cryptocurrencies these days have made a lot of idiots rich from memes, nft and more to come.

Just from the title of the scam done, it sounds like those which were running on youtube from Musk, Woz, CZ and so on.
You see where I am going with this;
All crypto influencers in one way or another who can have their name used in these schemes. If it were, then youtube are responsible as much as Saylor is because they are still allowing these scamjobs to proceed on their platform even after announcing they were assigning an algorithm.

Anyways, here is an interesting article while searching for more information before running into the reddit thread on the above subject:
https://newrepublic.com/article/160773/bitcoin-price-boom-michael-saylor-microstrategy

reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/s5zpim/btc_worth_11_million_sent_to_a_confirmed_michael

When I was just beginning my crypto journey, I too fall for this kind of bitcoin doubler. I'm sure majority of you here remember back in the days wherein there's a lot of websites who offer this kind of doubler.

So the inexperienced in me that time made me think that I can double my bitcoin that easy. And then it dawn on me that it was a scam but it was too late as I have sent my BTC already.

That was just a few satoshis, but the feeling though. So imagine what going on with that man mind right now falling for this scam, damn, it's hard.

Man this is rough. I recently lost quite a bit of cryptocurrency, although not by a scam, but this makes me feel a lot less worse about what I lost, nothing near this. It unfortunately amazes me that so many people are losing money to scams like these.  I also wish that social media sites would do a better job about policing these sites. If you log on to any of them you’ll easily see all the scams that run rampant.

I would have never thought someone that rich could be that naive. But then again, I guess that person must have probably inherited all his money, instead of actually working for it. That might explain it.

I mean he did not even check with a video meeting with the CEO or anything? The only strategy you need with Bitcoin is HODL. Thats it.

Is there a way to track the scammers down at this point? A million dollars could be worth the effort if you set a bounty of 100-200k on the scammers.

I guess there are still some investors who are still very noob as far as the crypto games is concern.

I mean this is not the first time that we have seen scammers trying to pose someone famous and influential in crypto world and we have warned them many times. And yet, this method is very effective because people are still failing for it.

This is a classic bitcoin doubler which has been plowing in the space since I joined crypto 5 years ago and still effective up to today.

Even though we've seen many people teaching anything about investing, even though we have lots of information on Google regarding these scams, even though we've seen people getting fooled by these scammers, there will always be investors who will fall into these kind of traps and there is nothing we can do to them.

Well, investors will not learn if they will not experience it in real life. Investors will not realize until they themselves are in the spot. Ignorance really is very expensive that in this case it causes 26 BTC . I don't know TBH what I'm feeling right now. Its kinda frustrating that we see an investor that has huge BTC but falling into this kind of typical shitty scam but at the same time, its a little bit funny that the investors is holding that huge amount but he is ignorant to the point that he is falling to scams like this.

Hope the investor learned from this. The word double itself is already a red flag at least for me.

"Promise to double the capital". These words alone in my eyes, I have the "I knew it" mindset already.

I don't know why that person with 26 BTC fell for it so easily without having second thoughts? Looks like that scammer has some great eye-catchy skills in creating headlines of the giveaway. He should have manually verify it first to the real MicroStrategy if he really is the one doing the giveaway or not. Oh well, a hard lesson to learn.

The crypto market is infested with scammers. But there is one prominent common reason for every victim to such scams - Greed! It is either get double or unrealistic return or it could be anything that promises to make you richer. Unless someone is unable to control their greed, there's no way out!

I am surprised to see that a millionaire is stupid enough to fall for such scam attempts! They are usually those people with higher iq. But that wasn't the case here, clearly!

From here we can take a big lesson because people like these criminals will always make sense to carry out their tricks.
On the other hand, it turns out that there are still a lot of people who are innocent and easy to believe in things like this even though it is about their finances.
things like this will not happen when the person who was tricked is not too reckless in making decisions.
It's a shame that something like this could happen.
I hope something like this doesn't happen again and people start to realize their actions so they won't be too careless in making decisions like this

Another lesson worth 1 million dollars. Everyone take note of this. 

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How could a million dollar holder could be so ignorant to do this? Dam even if I want to send 20 bucks over p2p transaction I will freaking check the end user 2-3 times and if I’m not sure about the transaction I will literally cancel it.

And here you go, in the parallel universe someone is so confident about their trades that they are throwing away one million just like that. Must be rich man with golden heart I would say.

What’s done is done but I’m still shocked, a millionaire being so ignorant.

I can’t just digest that.

It's not just about being secured with your coins, and it's with the fact that you should know the possible scams you could encounter in this world. I mean, imagine being able just to shell out 26 BTC to double it. It's a lot, and that's going to be only possible for those already who have a lot. I think the lack of knowledge motivates them to keep on hacking because it still works. It's just sad that they have done it that way.

People who don't know how to securely keep their coins don't deserve them especially those who are reluctant and bounded by greed to double their coins by sending them to someone renowned.Maybe i am too blunt but seriously you would send 26 btc straight away if someone says i will double it? This is the purest form of scam like why would Saylor even attempt this thing? There are so many suspicious sentiments that arises at our end but nothing happened to these victims at all.

This is not new but the only thing which is addition to this scam is the involvement of amount which is huge as $1.1M is lot of funds to be scammed.At this time it's around that much but he could have doubled it soon by holding.

These types of doublers scam has been around the corner for quite a long time and the the best is the scammers portray themselves as some renowned personality and promise to double the coin which these known one's seems to support and then have fake address and hack the social media accounts for some time.They are lucky that get victims like this one was happened in the past :


Elon Musk double doge scam

But still they will find victims because people are fool enough to trust them derived by greed but they need to have proper check beforehand.There are lot of guiding threads on how to check project is scam how to avoid them and all that but still we see same things each time.

This is also the idea I have about cases like these.I find it difficult to believe that someone who had up to $1.14 million is not financially exposed enough to detect fake giveaway and fall for a pay 2 get 4 scam. Anyone who uses the internet regularly should have come across such scam attempt.

It is very possible the scammers are sending bitcoins between themselves and doubling the returning amount.

It is a very old scam trick. Send a deposit, go first with it. Then you will get double in return. Is it too good to be true offer? Is it what we can actually have in life?

It's a bad lost story and I am sorry for that whale but somewhat deserved to be scam because of naive and laziness or ignorance on all scam alerts or guides to avoid scams.

Scammers on Youtube. Don't fall into this scam trap and lose money, guys
Youtube scam channels. Please spend your time to report them and take them down

Correct. Scammers can make fake transactions to convince others that their giveaway is real.

How can we know that that transaction wasn't made by the scammers themselves in order to create a fake perception that other people are sending money to them? This is one thing that gets rarely discussed with these scams, as everyone assumes that all the incoming transactions to doubler addresses come from victims.

If you had 1M USD,would you want to double them by sending the money to a guy,who promises you 100% profit right away?Those "double your BTC" giveaways are a total nonsense.It doesn't make any sense.
Rich people can be naive.Who knows?
Perhaps this guy is so rich that he could throw away 26 BTC at some "fake giveaway" without caring about the consequences.He probably has 100 million dollars and he doesn't care about losing a million or two.

Cases like this just prove that there are a lot of people who are incredibly naive and have no idea what they are doing in life. Someone may now try to blame Bitcoin for everything, but the blame is on a person who believes that someone like Saylor is distributing millions of dollars to random people.

Unfortunately, these people cannot be saved from their own stupidity, I don’t know what else to call it. Scammers live like gods these days, and the saddest thing in the whole story is that no one can do anything to them - at least in most cases.

https://beincrypto.com/bitcoin-user-loses-record-1-1m-scam-michael-saylor-giveaway/

Another ironic story. For me, it looks exactly like this. A person who owns 26 BTC falls for the bait of scammers who, allegedly on behalf of Michael Saylor, promise to double his capital. Maybe I'm too skeptical. Having a decent capital in bitcoins, it would be worth checking the information on several channels than throwing away bitcoins, counting on increasing your capital. While those 26 BTC may not have been the last in his portfolio, and for the owner is not a big loss.