A new Bitcoin-oriented scam is presenting a sort of blatant hoax, with wild claims of remuneration and an unlikely list of celebrity backers.
A new initiative making the rounds called “Bitcoin Profit” posts pictures of Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Bill Gates on documentation that experts have called categorically false according to Cointelegraph.
The project’s web site also reportedly includes endorsements from actress Kate Winslet, who has gone on record through staff as not having made any of the statements presented.
“This misleading promotion is completely disingenuous and categorically false. We are dealing with this through the appropriate channels,” a Winslet spokesperson reportedly said, through UK daily news pub The Mirror.
The kind of scamming exemplified here isn’t hard to do – because so many people don’t really understand cryptocurrency, there’s this golden opportunity for unscrupled snake oil salespersons to come in and dazzle the crowds.
As many of our dads used to say, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
However, some sites evaluating BTC trading products paint a very different picture of Bitcoin Profit.
“Bitcoin Profit is an automatic trading software that claims to make people money by buying and selling cryptocurrency at the right time, offering a win-rate of up to 92%,” write staff at Inside Bitcoins. “The Bitcoin Profit app, also known as a bitcoin robot, uses a complex algorithm to detect market trends. These ‘signals’ are used by the most experienced traders to open and close buying and selling orders automatically. The Bitcoin Profit software completes this whole process on auto-pilot, making it beginner friendly.”
All of this sounds pretty amenable, and in an ensuing tutorial, the site takes the same tone, basically promoting Bitcoin Profit as one of many similar options for taking the legwork out of BTC analysis.
Interestingly, the site does treat the idea of untested endorsements:
“You’ve probably heard about the Bitcoin Profit after seeing a Facebook ad claiming it’s made people rich. You may have also heard that the app was featured on some program such as This Morning and Shark Tank, and trusted by famous business men such as Peter Jones and Richard Branson.”
This statement early in the article is not qualified or backed up in any way, although later, in an FAQ at the bottom, the piece does address the issue this way:
Q: Is it true that Celebrities endorse the use of Bitcoin Profit?
A: No. Celebrities and self-made millionaires recommend trading with Bitcoin and investing in other assets.
The bottom line seems to be that trading parties are sometimes endorsing the practice of using platforms like Bitcoin Profit, but site operators have not put to rest the controversies around grabbing and using the profiles of famous people without their knowledge. Let’s see if any of this translates into legal action.
