If you’ve spent anytime on social media where discussions of cryptocurrencies are held you have definitely spotted the growing amount of crypto scams. Following the recent trend of impersonating well known personalities in the crypto industry and offering fake giveaways, the good ol’ pump and dump groups have been spamming their discords and telegrams in recruit of new users.
The United States CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commision (CFTC) has published a customer advisory addressing pump and dump schemes. The advisory states pump and dumps are an old scam taking advantage of new technology and being exasperated by the new mediums of social media.
A typical pump is described as having organizers count down buy signals and communicating the information to hundreds and thousands of ready buyers.
“15 mins left before the pump! Get ready to buy”
“5 minutes till pump, next message will be the coin! Tweet about us and send everyone
the link to telegram for outsiders to see what we are pumping so they can get in on
the action too!! lets take it to the MOON!!!!!”
Once the signal is announced, participants scramble to purchase the selected coin as cheap as possible and immediately sell once the price gets pumped to an exorbitant target amount. The whole scheme can be over in a matter of minutes and while some may manage to have an insane ROI, many who arrived a second too late are left holding bags.
Popular pump and dump group with around 10,000 members
