Cryptocurrency Scams

With the emergence and growing popularity of Cryptocurrency, inevitably cryptocurrency-related scams are also on the rise. Police are often ill-equipped to understand and deal with crime related to cryptocurrency and the unregulated nature of it makes certain practices that are illegal in fiat trading a grey area at best when it comes to cryptocurrency trading.

Cryptocurrency is very volatile and can be very unstable. New coins are created all the time, some with the sole purpose of drawing in investors only for the coin to "fail" and the investors' money disappears.

A 'Pump and dump' is where a group creates a fake coin or buys into a coin of little value and generates hype and false rumours of its value. The group buys a large amount of the coin and waits for the price to skyrocket from the demand they created, then sell all their holdings which causes the price to crash back to or even below the original value.

The best way to avoid these scams is foreknowledge and do your own research into any coin or token you are thinking of investing in before giving out information or money.