Here's some of the stand-out, absolute worst people and companies we can all be glad won't be joining us in 2019...
Bitconnect
The day this ponzi scheme came crashing down began with their token at $400 and within a matter of hours had fallen to $40. The scam required people to initially invest using Bitcoin, but would then pay people out in their token, BCC.
So of course when the company announced they were closing and giving everyone what they were owed - they did that using their BCC token as well.
The problem is, the tokens were worthless by the time someone received them - the people behind it, who to this day were never caught, kept everyone's Bitcoin - totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars. You can read more about this here.
Bitconnect Users
Let's be honest here - the average Bitconnect user is far from an innocent victim. Sure, they may have initially signed up ignorant to what they were getting themselves into.
But by the time Bitconnect stole everyone's money - they all had been warned.
How did they typically respond to being warned they were promoting a scam? Everything from insisting the person warning them was actually just 'jealous they didn't get in early' like they did, or at the worst, death threats (I got some!).
Now, this pathetic group of people with no one to blame but themselves are even trying to sue YouTube. They claim they got sucked in after watching videos recommending Bitconnect. Of course, ignore the fact that a search for Bitconnect on YouTube would also show countless videos saying it was a scam. That story here.
Savedroid's unbelievably stupid publicity stunt.
After their ICO completed the CEO tweeted that he was skipping town, and even shut down the website.
Investors panicked as they believed they had just been robbed.
After a couple days, they posted a video saying it was just an example to show how easy it is for ICO's to scam people - but they're legit.
Ironically, a quick glance at their Twitter today shows they haven't made much progress since this - virtually every tweet has replies from angry investors saying various promises weren't kept.
But after this, could you really be that surprised to find out this is a company ran by idiots?
Read more about this here.
Twitter scammers.
Posing as everyone from Elon Musk to Vitalik Buterin, scammers on Twitter could be found responding to a variety of tweets claiming to be conducting cryptocurrency giveaways.
"Send 1 ETH and get 5 back" is the simple bait they used.
While anyone falling for this clearly isn't very bright, there's no shortage of people meeting this qualification. One of the wallets had $14,000 sent to it from victims.
Read more on this here.
A whole lot of ICO bullshit.
It's just too hard to name one "the worst" but i'm fine with them sharing the title.
First up is Titanium Blockchain and their CEO Michael Stollaire, and his exciting new partnerships with everyone in Silicon Valley from Apple to PayPal! Unfortunately, these only existed in his imagination. They ended up getting raided. That story here.
Then there was Wind Coin, which was so sloppy grabbing random photos from the internet for their testimonials section, they featured one investor claiming he invested 4 BTC into the project. However, the photo was of England's Prince Charles. That story here.
Blockvest possible had the most nerve - creating a non-existent government agency called "Blockchain Exchange Commission" on their website, then saying they had it's approval. But the geniuses over there thought this wasn't enough - so they listed it at the address of the actual SEC. Then... the actual SEC shut them down. That story here.
Lastly, there was Biitcoin - no that's not a typo, they really called it that. With an endorsement from actor Stephan Segal, the company faced accusations they were nothing more than a pyramid scheme. They insisted it wasn't true - but the graphic on their own website which was literally shaped like a pyramid made that a lot harder to believe. That story here.
So 2019 is about to be upon us, and it's already filled with a lot exciting things to look forward to! But i'm sure we'll also have to deal more of these crypto-cancers popping up in the new year as well. If you're like me, you can't help but to get angry when you see this stuff - but looking back now i'm actually feeling pretty satisfied to see most of these stories end with people getting exactly what they deserve.
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San Francisco News Desk
