I'm posting this article as a public service. I'm sure most of the people here on Steem are familiar with how crypto-currencies are are fertile ground for scams. Below I'll share a little background in hopes that other folks can avoid my stupidity and experience some success, with a little patience and healthy skepticism you can make money with any crypto-currency.
A little background:
While I heard about Bitcoin years ago and I had planned to start mining but my Mother-In-Law moved in and shortly passed away from cancer. So I forgot about getting started in the midst of all the chaos. Fast forward to December of 2016 and Bitcoin came across my radar again and of all things, it was Freebitco.in the word "Free" grabbed my attention. It didn't take long before I was hooked playing this game. I opened a Coinbase account and subsequently dumped a shameful amount of money into the https://freebitco.in/?r=3809764 trying to win. Mistake number one! In retrospect, it was very, very, very stupid to gamble these coins away. I had I just held on to the coins instead given into greed I would have a lot of bitcoin right now :(
After losing so much I started looking at how I could make my own BTC and sadly poor research and ignorance only contributed to me losing more BTC.
I jumped into everything that I found when you mix my good natured trust/naivety and I have to be honest, greed. It didn't take long before I started losing more BTC. Investing in 10 different sites even with $5 to $10 each added up to a lot of lost money.
The besty decision I made was buying a mining contract at Genesis that has consistently yielded BTC every day. Everything else I put BTC into resulted in me losing my bitcoin. I bought into a few HYIP "High Yield Investment Program" and found BTC doublers and so-called blockchain exploit sites. The more BTC I lost the more irrational and obsessive I got about making bitcoin. All these sites are designed to steal your coin, plain and simple.
So I wanted to diversify my mining investments and I felt that some of the mining costs at Hashing24 and some of the other companies were a little more than I wanted to pay. I came across a site called splititmining.com. The site seemed to check out so I signed up and was actually getting payments regularly. In fact, the payouts and earnings seemed to be consistenttt with my contract with Genesis. However, I started noticing a few things that turned out to be true since the site has gone the way of the dinosaur today. They sent out an email claiming they were launching an upgrade to the website and the interface but the downtime has been going on for far too long and I can only assume they packed up and moved on for their next scam.
The moral of the story is saving money isn't worth going with an unproven company and when you've done research do some more. It's worth it to pay a little more to work with a company that has an established reputation.
As of this morning, this is what I find when I go to my cloud mining that was such a great deal:
So Hopefully some folks can learn from my frustration and lost funds. One of my biggest mistakes was not doing enough research. I can only say from this point you can never be too thorough when looking into companies that claim they can mine bitcoin. Go with established businesses like Genesis Mining: https://www.genesis-mining.com/a/712135
I also follow a few folks on YouTube that I think do a pretty good job of staying on top of matters relevent to crypto currency not to mention I fin dthem pretty entertaining to watch. Ryan B has a channel on YouTube called the Ryan B Hustle. He is quite adept at finding ways to make extra money but his main focus is how to make money in crypto coins plus I find him to be pretty funny. After I shared with him my sitation about the latest bitcoin scam drama he put together a really good video breaking down to do's and dont's when looking at Bitcoin mining companies and how to identify the scammers.
You can watch his video here:
Anyway thank you all for taking the time to read my thoughts about scams and such. I hope you all will upvote my article. I could really use the money since I need to recoup the $240 worth of BTC I invested in Splititmining.com
I Would also appreciate any kindness you could show via any of these crypto coins. Thanks and God Bless! One last thing I would love your feedback or thoughts.
Chris Gilbert
Again I would be profoundly grateful for any donations to help the cause
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