Hi Steemit,
AAA here again.
Most of us Steemians landed on Steem due to crypto one way or another. I've been participating in this space since December of 2016. It feels like forever, but they say crypto time progresses like dog years.
When I started learning about crypto currencies, I made sure I found good resources, learned the basics, progressed when I was ready. It started with Coinbase, then wallets, private keys, alt coins, exchanges, security, ico's and scams. I've spent hours, nights, and countless of weekends reading, watching videos, and practicing buying/selling/sending. I'm a slow learner so I purposely put more time in so I didn't mess up. Typical noob that was very skeptical but eager to learn.
I was lucky enough to ride the Bitcoin wave to 3k, the Ethereum wave to 400 and most recently the LTC wave to 57. I started dabbling in ICO's and was able to get into some successful ICO's such as VERI & PPT. I'm not a cryptocurrency expert by any means, but one skillset I have is finding and disseminating information. I found my sources of information and vetted them through many years of research and testing. I've also spent years.....yes literally years trying to tell my friends about my sources of information that have helped me with my investing decisions as well as life decisions only to fall on deaf ears.
Now that the crypto space has started to explode, people are more willing to listen. It's pretty annoying that after years of preaching, they only start to listen now. Some newer people that I'm less familiar with on forums I frequent have expressed interest in my crypto journey as well, and I have offered to help. I've held numerous 101's in person, through text and more on wallets, exchanges, cloud mining, which are documented here in my posts that i've shared with them. I've helped my friends navigate decentralized exchanges, setup 2FA access, explained Bitcoin's political debate, Ethereum's POS, and many other issues. It takes up A LOT of time, but I figured I'd do my part in the community and also help some friends out while i'm at it. Some of my friends have picked up crypto very very quickly and some have not. I've been a bit worried at how my friends have been progressing, as some take crypto learning more seriously than others. It's very time consuming and stressful being a teacher but I've learned for free at the behest of some very kind members of our community and I want to pass that along.
I have explained how I pull my information from sources that I have vetted over years, top reputable youtubers, websites, twitter handles, Satoshi, Charlie Lee, Clif High, Tone Vays, and everything is bookmarked so I don't click on a fake MEW address, and with the rise of scams, I try to send as much scam information over as possible to my friends so they see it first hand. On top of looking for for fake websites, emails, and hacks, you have to due your own due diligence when investing into new ICO's which is the new fad. If i'm investing in an ICO that isn't recommended by my sources, I look up each and every individual founder on linkedin. What is their experience like? Business exp? Leadership exp? Management exp? coding exp? They all need to check out. How long has the company been around for? 1 year? 2 years? Less than 1 year? Anything less than 1 year is a screaming red flag!
This is where the scam comes in. Now that my friends are somewhat familiar with navigating the space that it took me over half a year to learn that they've learned in 2-3 weeks, some of them have developed a superman type hubris. Some have paid a small price with getting some ETH stuck and losing some ETH due to gas fees. Small mistake that is easily overlooked but today was the first big mistake one of my other friends made by "investing" in coindash.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1905500.0
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-17/over-7-million-stolen-after-coindash-initial-coin-offering-hacked
If you haven't heard of the CoinDash getting hacked/Scam today, you can look it up. It's one of the biggest scams going on right now. When my friend asked me about CoinDash last week I did not some quick research on it for his sake, but I've already made them all aware of what research needed to be done. I told him it was a no go because of how new the company is. Literally started in January of 2017, i'm sure many crypto companies have started in that amount of time or less before they asked for funding but that's a clear red flag. I also did not see any mention of crowdfunding numbers or presale/ICO numbers in the whitepaper which was also not constructed well. Overall, didn't scream scam company, but it wasn't a company I wanted to put my faith in just yet. Another friend and I were looking at EROS and it looked like a shady company as well. After I shared this information, my one friend still decided he was going to invest in CoinDash. He asked me this weekend if I was going to invest in CoinDash and I stated no. I did not like the company because of my research. He again, asked me this morning if I was going to participate in CoinDash and I stated no.
Guess what........He sent his ETH over to the CoinDash address this morning and it's gone forever. His first ICO experience turned out to be a hack/scam. He does not blame me but I feel partly responsible. He's sad and disappointed. I'm sad, angry, and disappointed. He was so ecstatic about how he was going to flip this ICO for a profit (which I stated is not how this works, it's an investment), and then move onto the next project that I was a bit annoyed at how guaranteed he thought this was. I don't think he understood how many years I spent vetting my sources, hours, and sleepless nights I spent in this space to get to the level of knowledge I have now just to share with him and a few others so they didn't make these kinds of mistakes.
I've already had to tell a few friends that I will no longer help them because they weren't being serious about crypto but I've decided that I'm going to let all of them learn on their own. It's causing too much stress to help people when they are not seriously willing to help themselves. Cryptospace is very risky and like any type of investment needs to be heavily scrutinized before jumping in. There is no such thing as a free lunch. So pay the price, whether you want to pay the price in countless of hours of sleepless nights or you want to pay in ETH to a hacker. Your choice.
To my friends, I've done my part but you are now on your own. Looks like you need to learn the hard way and I need my sanity back. May the force be with you and live long and prosper.
Thats CRAZY, ive been warning people about this and most people have called me a liar
everyone has this fear of missing out and its causing people to do such rash things - there are people who have lost hundreds of coins hoping to be apart of the nxt big thing, only to find out, its someone in a small room in china who just made 100k in a few seconds
i told a friend about bitcoin in 2012, and he fell n love with it, the price dropped dramatically and he accused me of lying and told me that it was fault the price dropped.....so.... i dont tell anyone close about cryptos, never ever again
Exactly. Fomo has replaced due diligence and that should never be the case! I thought I was doing them a favor by helping them navigate through the space in an intelligent and safe way. Turned out that the help backfired and some developed a hubris in place of caution.
@aaagent what great posting. I really enjoyed and found it of great value. You have a new follower. Keep up the great work. Maybe you can do something of the fork... everyone is talking about it but very few actually know what it means.
thank you. The fork issue is very very complicated and I don't think I could do it justice in 1 post. I'm also very biased on the fork issue and in favor of UASF vs. Segwit2x/miners.
I still think come the 31 July 2017 we will see a massive sell off of crypto ... we live in interesting times
My friend deleted Jaxx wallet. Because it was freezing up. No backup. No more bringing close friends into crypto if they aren't equipped for it.
I know what you mean. My friend is now going for his second ICO. He only asked me about 2 ICO's and I said no to both of them. He's going to invest in the second one I said no about too. I don't know how many times I can facepalm.......
And you'll still be there when it crashes a month after, to hear about it.
Sounds like he just didn't completely understand how cryptos work. Don't blame yourself! He should of done more research for himself before investing.
Thanks. I don't entirely blame myself. It's more of a disappointment when you educate your friends and tell them this is the future and money can be made but they mis-construe that into a get rich quick scheme.
I tend not to bring up crypto to my friends because I'm worried they'll do the same thing OR think I'm falling for a get rich quick scheme. As the saying goes: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Solid post. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Blockchain is the fututure but how are we gonna kill all those scamy cryptos out there? An interesting website I found: https://www.coincheckup.com I really missed a platform that analyses every single coin in depth but this site gave me all the answers.
Great post. The space is still young and the desire for anonymity with some of these coins make it an attractive venue for scams. Thanks for sharing!