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Cryptocurrency speculation has pulled in a large population of people who do not know what they are investing in. If you hear about an investment of $1000 turning into $1M, it’s tempting to get sucked in yourself.
For most of these everyday people, the game is completely rigged. A large percentage of market activity is driven by “pump and dumps.” A pump and dump is a conspiracy to trick investors into buying a currency.
An insider group commits the pump and dump. This is accomplished by purchasing the currency ahead of time, then promoting it via Twitter, Telegram, and Reddit. The outsiders fall victim to the promotion of the currency and buy it after the fast run-up in value. The currency then crashes, and the outsiders are left “holding the bag.”
Pump and dumps are not a new phenomenon—they have happened with worthless penny stocks. One thing that is new is the ease with which new cryptocurrencies are being created. Launching an ICO is easy. Marketing it is cheap. Pumping and dumping has never been more accessible. And buying them is quite easy as well. This has led to a perfect storm of naive investment capital.
Bruno Skvorc is the CEO and owner of Bitfalls, a site with blog posts, news, and information about cryptocurrencies. He wrote a post called “The Anatomy of a Pump and Dump Group,” which details how cryptocurrency pump and dumps have been used to swindle investors out of millions of dollars.
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