2021 is a big year for cryptocurrencies to go mainstream, with popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ether, and Dogecoin having a banner year following the memestock boom that occurred in January. These cryptocurrencies soared to new highs, attracting the attention of a large number of people who may not have been familiar with the industry before.

Still, cryptocurrencies are unpredictable, it's still an incredibly volatile market, and it's almost completely devoid of laws and regulations to protect virtual currency investors. But over the past year, so many cryptocurrency newbies have jumped into this "half-heaven, half-hell" market with the intention of trying their luck, and they, along with some scammers, have formed one of the most unique and unscrupulous scams in the virtual currency market in 2021

Squid Game Squid Coin

Turn this year's biggest and hottest TV show, Squid Game, into a cryptocurrency and what do you get?

The answer is that you'll become the protagonist of one of the year's most "socially dead" scams - Squid Game.

Squid Coin is an exclusive token for a gaming platform with the same name as Squid Game. The platform mimics the six rounds of the TV show, with the prize money awarded to the eventual winner (the show's jackpot is capped at $38.5 million, while this virtual currency program has no cap) going out in the form of Squid Coins. But players will have to pay a preset price of Squidcoins up front to participate in each game, and some rounds will also require users to purchase custom NFTs (non-homogenized tokens, which in this game are similar to game skins or props) sold on the platform.

It is such a project that sounds like the sound of a scythe cutting leeks has been a huge success. It is reported that the squid coin in the pre-sale on October 20 sold out in less than 1 second, and in the official release on October 29, 1 cent a squid coin in 24 hours was speculated to 2.22 U.S. dollars, a surge of 2,400%, and in the next few weeks, the squid coin price of a staggering 2,861.8 U.S. dollars (about 18,309 yuan), which led to CNBC, Forbes, Business Insider, and a series of other media outlets. Business Insider, and a host of other media outlets clamoring for Squid Coin coverage.

But like most Ponzi schemes, the Squid Games virtual currency project can quickly outgrow its pretensions after a certain point in its volume. At the peak of the coin speculation, there were complaints from investors that they were unable to sell their Squid Coin holdings on Pancakeswap, the only virtual currency platform where the coin could be traded, which should have been a wake-up call for everyone, but everyone was still swept away by the high Squid Coin and chose to believe Squid Coin's founder, LinkedIn's, explanation that the project deployed an innovative "anti-dumping technology" that would temporarily restrict people from selling Squidcoins when demand drops.

Yet this proved to be yet another "rug pulling" scam. On November 1, EST, squid coin suddenly flash crash, from $2,861 per coin to $0.0007 in five minutes, a drop of 99.999976%. And at this point, Squidcoin founder LinkedIn has cashed in the equivalent value of CoinAid to transfer the funds.

SaveTheKids Coin

In 2021, cryptocurrencies pushed by KOLs on US social media were a big part of the year.

For example, Musk, who recently sold a lot of Tesla stock and is planning to quit his job as an "internet celebrity", has repeatedly promoted dog coins on social media, and the scam we're talking about today was caused by KOLs promoting cryptocurrencies and standing up for them on social media platforms.

In early June 2021, Kay, Teeqo, Jarvis, Nikan, and YouTuber RiceGum, all four members of the Los Angeles-based eSports organization FaZeClan, began promoting a cryptocurrency called SaveTheKids. The project claimed to raise money for children's charities, which was supposed to be a win-win for both the project and the KOLs, but it was another "carpet-pulling" scam.

This is what happens when a developer creates a cryptocurrency with the intention of running away with investor funds. Shortly after the official launch of the SaveTheKids token, the cryptocurrency fell due to a massive sell-off by initial investors who held most of the tokens, rendering SaveTheKids worthless as soon as it hit the market.

It may not look like a scam from here, but it has been noted that Kay of FaZe has a particular penchant for promoting cryptocurrencies that have ended up that way, the likes of Coffeezilla, SomeOrdinaryGamers, and Barely Sociable, all of which Kay of FaZe promotes.

Eventually, in early July, the Los Angeles eSports organization FaZeClan announced the results of its self-investigation, with four members expelled for alleged crypto fraud, one member expelled, and three others receiving outright suspensions.

MILF Tokens

It would be remiss not to penalize Adin Ross for promoting the MILF coin.

Ross is a popular Twitch media personality with millions of followers on the platform, but he himself is an unabashed scammer.

Offhandedly posting how much money he's made in whatever program he's in on social media is a common trick for Ross. In the past, Ross promoted online casinos in this way, which is why he has been criticized over the past year, and in May of this year, Ross followed the trend and entered the world of cryptocurrencies, starting to promote a virtual currency called MILF Coin.

As usual, Ross took to social media to show off the tedious process of buying the cryptocurrency by posting the hundreds of thousands of dollars he had been paid through MILF Coin. However, just three weeks later, when it came to this investment opportunity, the messaging from Ross's mouth changed starkly.

"By the way, that MILF Token I did a while back, it was shit! I've told you guys not to buy that shit." Ross said with a laugh during a livestream."

As of press time, the MILF coin has lost about 98% of its value from when Ross promoted it.

Meme Coin Coin

Last year, it was unlikely you'd come across a tweet about the new Meme Coin program without a reply from the fake Elon Musk Twitter account.

This year, fake press releases took the scam to a new level.

On two separate occasions in 2021, fake press releases from global retailers tricked the media into publishing fake news that the company would begin accepting cryptocurrencies.In September, a fake press release announced that Walmart would begin accepting Litecoin. Just a few months later, a fake press release claimed that Kroger would accept Bitcoin cash as payment.

However, neither story was true. The fraudsters behind these fake documents were able to successfully distribute this fake news through large press release companies, where they were disseminated to mainstream news organizations and reported on. As cryptocurrency advocates continue to seek validation and legitimacy for their young industry, the scams claiming to provide this validation and legitimacy will continue to grow.

These actions drew criticism from former stockbroker Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street), who in an interview with The Sun warned investors not to put their money into cryptocurrency Meme Coins such as Doggy Coin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) because Shiba Inu and Doggy Coin are worthless jokes.

Poly Network (a decentralized trading platform)

The virtual currency scam of the century, Poly Network's heist of the century, must go unnamed in 2021.

This summer, a hacker discovered a vulnerability in Poly Network, a decentralized financial platform, that enabled them to transfer more than $600 million in virtual currencies to their accounts.

However, it's hard for a sum that large to disappear without incident. In the weeks that followed, the hackers reached out to Poly Network and claimed that they had been intending to return the money, and Poly Network cooperated, even going so far as to refer to the hackers as "Mr. White Hat" (the righteous hacker) in an attempt to use them to find the security flaws in the platform so that they could be fixed before the evil actors showed up.

In the end, it was good that the hackers kept their promise to transfer most of the cryptocurrency funds back to the platform, which prevented Poly Network and its platform users from incurring greater losses.

What did the hackers gain from this? Firstly, they escaped any possible adverse repercussions for carrying out the biggest cryptocurrency heist in history, and secondly Poly Network offered a $500,000 reward to the hackers who returned the funds, which is a lot of fame and fortune.

Africrypt (a virtual currency investment platform)

According to offshore media reports, in the middle of this year, the founders of Africrypt, a South African cryptocurrency investment platform, Ameer Cajee and Raees Cajee, were confirmed to have lost their lives, and along with them, 69,000 BTC (currently worth around $2.3 billion), in what may become the largest cryptocurrency scam in history.

Africrypt is reportedly a cryptocurrency investment platform founded in 2019 by two South African brothers, Raees Cajee, 21, and Ameer Cajee, 17, targeting an audience of high-net-worth individuals and celebrities.

Like any other scam, Africrypt promises incredibly high returns for investors, and has even claimed to offer 10% daily returns. The company is so good at targeting its victims that most investors see it as the secret key to wealth and freedom. It is this target market that has given Africrypt access to a circle of other wealthy investors in the past, with its clients investing an average of $105,000 and some as much as $1.4 million.

In fact, Africrypt was already plotting a run in April 2021, with the Cajee brothers claiming that their investment firm had been hacked and that all of their clients' accounts had been compromised, and pleading with them not to take legal action as it would jeopardize their recovery of cryptocurrency, and seven days prior to the run, Africrypt employees were already unable to access the backend of the system, at which point everyone gradually became anxious. The Cajee brothers eventually disappeared from public view along with 69,000 BTC.

Lawyers representing investors claim that as many as 69,000 BTC were stolen by the Cajee brothers. If this is true, Africrypt would be the largest cryptocurrency scam to date. However Brandon Top ham, the relevant head of South Africa's Finance Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), has said that crypto assets are not legally considered financial products, and as such the agency is currently barred from launching a formal investigation.

The stolen NFT

Jeff Nicholas' story is small compared to the amounts stolen through the other scams mentioned above in this article, but it's still worth mentioning.

Nicholas is the owner of three NFTs (apes, cats, and dogs, computer-generated artifacts, respectively), and he buys these unforgeable tokens to prove ownership of the items to which they are attached.

Nicholas says that under the guise of providing technical support, the scammer purged the NFT Ape, Cat, and Dog from Nicholas's wallet over the course of the next hour. According to Nicholas, the scam losses totaled about 150 ETH, or about $480,000 USD.

When NFT was first stolen, Nicholas tried to spread the word to inform others not to buy his stolen NFs, and the platform OpenSea locked Nicholas' assets in the first place, but the scammers had already preemptively sold them to the highest bidder, and while Nicholas theoretically still has a chance to get them back, he'd have to buy them back with real buy it back with real money.

In hindsight, although the blockchain shows that he no longer owns them, Nicholas claims that the undisputed records on the blockchain are irrelevant and that he is the true owner, and Nicholas ends up denying the very basis on which NFT advocates claim to assign any such value, namely trust.

There will be many more new types of scams in the cryptocurrency world in the future, and it's important for everyone to take precautions to protect their assets. (END)