Bitcoiners are very quick to warn people about the dangers of the "Steem Ponzi Scheme". It would be nice if they would expend the same energy to protect people from a very real and active Ponzi Scheme going on within the Bitcoin ecosystem right now.
Take a quick search on Youtube by following this link:
https://www.youtube.com/results?q=mmm&sp=CAI%253D
You should see something like this:
Watch one of the videos. Participants are given scripts to talk about how much money they made (on the order of 30-50% compound interest per month, completely unsustainable expectations).
Once you're done with the video, go back and refresh the search. See how many new videos there are already. This thing has completely taken over in Nigeria. And it's the reason for the explosion in interest in Bitcoin which I documented the other day:
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@demotruk/hockey-stick-chart
If you have any friends in Nigeria, if they are yet unaffected by MMM please warn them to thread carefully. If they are already actively involved, it may be hard to explain the danger due to our normal cognitive biases. The best approach may be to ask how much money they expect to have each month, to encourage discovering the unsustainability for themselves. Another approach would be to ask if they always know the person to whom they send their investment to is, ie. is it truly always another MMM participant, or is it possible they sometimes send their Bitcoin to Mavrodi?
Just uploaded.
Described as a "financial aid and donation exchange"
Driving up the bitcoin price...
I wouldn't want to hold bitcoin while this is going on...
Just reading your last statement and wondering if it makes sense....
There is a price stimulus in the form of increased demand (from whatever cause) and you say you are you want to offload you bitcoin? #smh
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Everything made sense except that part. If price is going up then I would want to hold BTC.
Thanks for the warning. There was a real Ponzi scheme called MMM that ran in Russia in the mid-1990s, making promises ominously similar to the ones made by MMM Nigeria.
MMM Ponzi Scheme Company.
More:
FYI, Nigeria is the home of those notorious 419 scams.
Closing with that FYI is so low and I dont see how Nigerian 419ers connect with a ponzi that you say was founded by a Russian.
Pu-leez!
With a population of over 200 million, bad eggs are guaranteed but permit me to ask, the HYIPs that suck the bitcoin out of people - those are run by Nigerians too? Or the Silk Road was a Nigerian invention too?
I am a Nigerian steemer and I do tell people about the risk. So does the MMM websites - yes plural for websites. There are MMM platforms for over 10 countries. All using Bitcoin!
I am just grateful for all this interest in bitcoin. More and more Nigerians are asking about other uses of crypto-currency. Be prepared...we are coming for Steem, the trading exchanges like poloniex, etc.
That's when the world will feel the might of 200 million HONEST, creative minds......and a few 419ers.
Indeed it is run by the same guy, Sergei Mavrodi.
It is?? Oh crap...
I sure hope there's a Nigerian Steemer her who can pass the word along!
This was a scam that was going on last year around this time don't fall for it they won't pay you back anything. Trust me I tried..
My dad is in a 401 Nigerian scam too, can't convince him out of it either. It's not the bitcoin one but the one were there is a large amount of money in an unattainable fund. The only way to get it out is by paying the charges on it to withdraw it. Then once you put your money into it supposedly you'll split this 10 million bounty 50/50% with this "nigerian governor"!
In this case at present, Nigerians are primarily the victims of the scam, not the perpetrators.