I was looking into how the PlusToken scam spread, and seeing that one person after another who was promoting it, perhaps even 'most' of them, were also posting about something else called 'Cloud Token'.
As Chinese police were raiding and arresting those behind PlusToken, the people behind Cloud Token were living like superstars, and still are.
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| Cloud Token's Ronald Aai loves the spotlight. Here, he is escorted off stage by security at a Cloud Token event. |
You can see this for yourself: do a quick search of YouTube for old videos promoting PlusToken, find one 3 months or older from when the company was still active. Then look at that channels newest videos. There's a good chance you'll see one promoting Cloud Token recently upload.
Like PlusToken, the overwhelming majority of crypto traders in the English speaking market have never heard of Cloud Token, which is interesting - there's a larger gap between the two markets than I previously would have thought.
The few posts spammers attempted to make in English speaking crypto forums were promptly met with replies calling them scammers. It seems US/UK traders have generally wised up.
Apparently, this is not the case with the Asian market, as the people promoting Cloud Token are literally the same people who were also promoting a scam who's founders are sitting in Chinese prisons right now. The temptation for a quick buck is unbelievably strong in some people.
This May Sound Cold, But Don't Feel Sorry For The 'Victims'...
I'm the only journalist to have confronted Bitconnect, the first big crypto scammers, in person at the Silicon Valley Blockchain Expo.
On YouTube the video of my confrontation gained 300,000+ views before they had thousands of people falsely report it and get my channel killed. I did find a copy of it in another person's video, go to about 2:10 if you haven't seen it.
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| Packed house at Cloud Token's Singapore Event. |
In my case, Bitconnect sent their army after me. I received everything from laughable tweets saying I was just jealous that I 'missed the boat' to even more laughable private messages with death threats from wannabe crypto gangstas.
That's right, these idiots were scam victims, but before they realized they were scammed, they lashed out at the very people warning them.
That's right, these idiots were scam victims, but before they realized they were scammed, they lashed out at the very people warning them.
I tried following up with several of them to see how they were feeling the day after Bitconnect stole all their money. Suddenly, all those bad-asses lost their attitudes.
In the case of Cloud Token, i've already spotted several posts and videos dedicated to convincing people that while "Plustoken was a scam, Cloud Token is legit!" - the opposite of what they should have learned.
So don't be fooled - these people will cry when all their money gets stolen and play the victim when the time comes - but try confronting them now, while the scam is still 'profitable' and see how that goes.
The Same Old Bait....
The Cloud Token scam is the same recycled pitch that they've all been.
You know how it goes - give us your crypto, we'll pay you daily returns at some insane percentage. In Cloud Token's case, it's up to 12% per month.
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| Of course, featuring the classic pyramid. |
There's legitimate companies paying interest on crypto - and 12% per year (what Cloud Token says they'll do per month) is a good rate.
Then of course, at the core is the referral program, where users are encouraged to get friends and family scammed as well. This person-to-person promotion is what their marketing revolves around.
It's all smoke and mirrors, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that when we located the contract creation of Cloud Token on Ethereum's blockchain, we find a coin that says only 4 people own any. Meaning the app doesn't even really use the token at all, I guess there's no reason to really issue any coins, they can just make the app say someone is holding however many they want to.
One Alarming Difference...
Where I start to get a really bad feeling in my stomach is when I see they're pushing Cloud Token as a multi-coin wallet, able to accept all the top coins - and of course, they want all of yours!
The scams of the past have had the basic concept of "send us your Bitcoin, we'll pay you profits in this coin we just created, which can be exchanged for Bitcoin" but at some point they stop this exchange. That's when everyone is stuck with tons of the scammers worthless coins, and they've disappeared with all the crypto worth anything.
But CloudToken is the first big scam where they're holding people's entire portfolio of coins.
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| What are they doing? I have no idea, but why does every event for pyramid scheme scams have people doing strange things like this? |
The previous scams we've mentioned have all had anonymous founders. That's why nobody knows who was behind Bitconnect still. When these previous scams held events, they simply contacted some of their best promoters from YouTube and Twitter, and encouraged them to host company events in their area.
But the CloudToken 'team' appears to be deeply mentally disturbed, and went straight for the spotlight when the company began to grow in popularity, pretending that they aren't scamming everyone in the room.
Everyone loves the scam when it's still paying - and these guys couldn't pass up getting some of that love. It's creepy.
So now, with their identities known, they need to close this thing without having bounties put on their heads. Which is an awful plan - every time this happens there's people who lost everything, and they're out for blood.
Over the last few days there's been some red flags that Cloud Token may be coming to a close.
"Cloud 2.0" is supposedly here, and they're saying they're shipping phone SIM cards out to their users, who still aren't sure what to do with them. But, somehow they will be required to use it.
Also announced is that a 3rd party called "Ribbons" will be taking over payouts. This company does not exist, so if it pops up, it was created only as a shell company of Cloud Token.
My guess is they're going to make it look like nobody liked Cloud 2.0 and "oops, we thought it would be cool, but nobody could figure out how to use it. Now we're going out of business."
Of course, the big mystery is how much crypto do they hold? Based on the overlap with PlusToken, which had accumulated $3 billion, this one could easily be in the billions as well.
Or, will law enforcement shut them down before they can execute whatever their exit plan is?
The end is coming, and I have a feeling it's going to be an mess like we haven't witnessed before. We'll be watching!
Have any friends in Cloud Token? What do they say when you tell them the obvious truth? Tweet us @TheCryptoPress
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Author: Ross Davis
E-Mail: Ross@GlobalCryptoPress.com Twitter:@RossFM
San Francisco News Desk
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