(WJAR) — Investing in cryptocurrency could yield huge returns.
But it’s also a huge gamble.
Bentley University professor and creator of scamicide.com Steve Weisman said the crypto industry is rife with scammers.
What’s worse?
If you are scammed, the money is difficult to follow in this largely unregulated industry.
“People invest with FOMO – fear of missing out,” said Weisman.
He said people often get sucked into investing through posts or advertisements on social media.
“So they don’t know where to go and if you get social media – or one of the big ones that kind of prompted me in this area was a trading platform called Venotux,” explained Weisman. “And what Venotux would do to encourage people to use their platform for trading and storing cryptocurrencies is if you started an account with them, they would give you free Bitcoin.”
But Weisman said if you tried to take out that “free Bitcoin,” you were asked to pay Venotux.
“Again, if it’s free why are you having to pay to get it?” said Weisman. “And that’s where the scam comes in – the scam is you never got any cryptocurrency, they falsified account.”
Weisman said he’s seen at least half a dozen scam trading platforms like Venotux pop up and then disappear – along with victim’s money.
His advice? Don’t invest in something you don’t understand.
If you’re really interested in investing, there’s a site called CoinGecko that ranks cryptocurrency exchange sites based on trustworthiness.
