The rapid development of the cryptosphere also carries risks. First of all, we are talking about a massive increase in the activity of fraudsters, since the hype around digital assets inevitably attracts more and more gullible victims to them.
One of the most recent sad events in the history of the crypto market is the fall of the South African platform AfriCrypt, which resulted in losses of over $ 3.6 billion .
There are many options for losing money in cryptocurrencies. Moreover, even if the creators of a certain platform did not plan to steal other people’s funds, hackers can do it. For example, in January 2019, criminals hacked the Cryptopia exchange and removed tens of thousands of ethers from it. And although the developers immediately began to cooperate with law enforcement agencies, this did not lead to anything.
In this case, the scammers represented the project team and initially expected to disappear with other people’s funds. And they did it.
AfriCrypt Scam History
The reason for the loss was the sudden termination of the South African investment platform AfriCrypt. The two co-founding brothers of the firm disappeared, taking with them about 69,000 BTC of their clients. The fact of their guilt is still being established by the investigation, but every day the former clients are more confident that this was a planned fraudulent scheme, rather than a hacker attack from the outside, as previously assumed.
AfriCrypt was founded in 2019 by two brothers Amir and Race Cages. It has raised over RR 54 billion, or $ 3.6 billion by 2021, Cointelegraph reports. April 13, it was reported that AfriCrypt was hacked, and company representatives «are trying to return the stolen funds and user information».
The South African law firm Hanekom Attorneys, which handled the case on behalf of the affected users, said suspicions arose very quickly.
Clients were warned that they «can go the legal way, that is, turn to lawyers, but this will only slow down the process of returning funds . » In addition, one of the platform’s «wake-up calls» was the fact that it offered very high investment returns of up to 10 percent per day – a clear sign of a pyramid scheme.
Recall that even the world-famous Bitconnect pyramid, which also became a hit among novice investors in the wake of the popularity of cryptocurrencies, promised even lower percentages. So, in this case, the creators of the scheme did not expect to delay the process and wanted to quickly save customers from their «investments». Nevertheless, the higher the promised percentage of profitability, the higher the chances for the creators to lose stability and lose the influx of new participants.
AfriCrypt team from the official website of the firm
The suspects withdrew all 69 thousand BTC and sent the coins to various darknet services, Bitcoin mixers and other platforms in order to obfuscate the trail of transactions. Meanwhile, the AfriCrypt website stopped working, and its founders still do not get in touch and are hiding somewhere. An elite special police unit was even involved in their search.
Considering the volume of financial losses, AfriCrypt will go down in the history of the crypto market as one of the largest fraudulent schemes. It also demonstrates how easy it is to fool a lot of inexperienced investors: the promise of sky-high profits only attracted a lot of people, rather than scared them off. While new details of the story are revealed, in general, it negatively affects the image of the decentralized assets industry. However, it is important to understand here that cryptocurrencies have become only a tool for theft, so you should definitely not see them as a source of evil.
Meanwhile, analysts at the banking giant JP Morgan predict BTC a new wave of collapse, which will drag the price of the main digital asset below the $ 30,000 mark and up to $ 25,000. Here is an expert quote from CryptoPotato.
Despite the correction this week, we do not want to abandon our negative outlook for the crypto market. Despite some improvements, our signals remain generally bearish.
Accordingly, experts believe that the period of market collapse before its transition to further growth is still not over.
The simple rule «free cheese only in a mousetrap» characterizes the crypt better than ever from the very beginning of its existence. We strongly recommend that you remain extremely careful if someone promises you huge returns on your investment. In the vast majority of cases, this is a clear deception. And in general, it is impossible to guarantee a rise or fall in the coin industry, since the cryptocurrency market is unpredictable.
We believe that this situation will not be the last. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of the perception of blockchain technology, many beginners do not go into details and trust others. Well, this ends with falling into the clutches of scammers, which will always be enough in a growing market.
