A while back I stumbled across some information online about a tech company using blockchain in a way that was revolutionising the consumer electronics market. As someone who takes an interest in new and exciting developments in the crypto space I looked into the project. At the time there was a massive marketing hype about this particular coin. It was not an ICO but a coin that had been around for some time but with negligible value (ie. even a sizable holding of coins was worth just a few cents). During the next few weeks the hype grew, although the price didn't move much. I decided the time was right to invest and, given how amazing the project sounded, actually invested a significant sum of money.
A few days later the coin got a listing on an exchange. The price actually shot up. When I looked it was up by around 3,000% from the average price it had been in previous months. My investment was worth about twenty times the amount I invested. I believed I had made a great investment. The price started dropping about four or five days later, but by small amounts at a time. I didn't pay much attention. I knew that the market was overpriced anyway and that prices were due for some downward movement. The price drops were more or less inline with the price of major cryptos anyway.
I decided that my strategy was a long term investment and forced myself to stop looking at the prices of my investment every day. I looked again last Friday. I was horrified. The price was back to almost zero and the value of my investment was about 2% of the amount I invested. The withdrawal fees would be more than the actual investment itself. What on earth was going on I asked myself. I spent the weekend digging around to try and find out. It seems that the whole thing was a scam, and a very clever one at that. The initial price rises on hitting the exchange were manipulated by the team behind the coin. They used the hype that they manufactured to build the interest which in turn produced the hype. It was very cleverly done.
As the team themselves held a significant amount of the coins, from their ICO that they had done much earlier, I think it was a year earlier, they then took advantage of the price, dumped their coins, but did so in a way so as not to raise any suspicions, and made an absolute fortune from this. People who invested during the hype, like myself, essentially created the opportunity for the team to cash in using money invested by people like me. They have now vanished. The coin is no longer trading, is worth zero, and I am left with nothing.
It's so easy to be fooled by a team whose aim is not to produce a blockchain-related product or service, but rather, create the conditions to create wealth for themselves by conning other people out of their money on the basis of fake promises that they have no intention to realise. I am not going to be able to say which coin this is, although a few people in the community may know or be able to guess, because there may be legal action going on and I don't want to be party to jeopordise it. Having said that, even if there were to be any form of legal recourse we all know it is highly unlikely that it will be successful.
Sometimes, despite all one's due dilligence, even the most careful of investors will get scammed from time to time. I'm not sure if there's anything I would, or could, have done differently, but I am nevertheless putting the whole episode down to a very bad experience that has simply led me to make a substantial loss. I will continue to be involved in the space and will continue to do the fullest amount of due dilligence, but on the understanding that scammers really are getting cleverer!
This story serves as a great lesson to most of us in the cryptocurrency business. That's to tell you that there no safe ground anywhere in the crypto space. We will continue to do our due diligent search always to ascertain the validity of any project before we dive in. I am very sorry for this heart breaking experience.