When people think of cryptocurrency they often think of the big players like Doge and Bitcoin. But there exists another class of cryptocurrency which is both high risk and, if you’re lucky, high reward. You can multiply your money or lose it all in a matter of seconds or minutes. The two most common blockchains for these cryptocurrencies are Ethereum and BNB Chain. The two most popular memecoins are Shiba Inu and Pepe. And while it is true a lot of money is made in this market its also true a lot is lost.
I took a week long dive into this market and was amazed at what I found. According to blockchain statistics over 90% of the tokens launched in this market are scams. These scams range from honeypots (where you can buy tokens but cannot sell them) to various types or rugpulls. Also common is what’s called farming where a person creates a tokennand makes a bunch of promises then runs away with most of the tax money while the token dies.
As one could imagine in a market with millions of dollars in losses a day due to fraud that some people would be upset. And one would be right to assume that. Enter Scammers Nightmare, a group headed by Jeremy Ryan, also known as NFT Demon, the largest artist for NFTs on the BNB Chain. Jeremy formed Scammers Nightmare as a way to fight back against these scammers. “Most of these people are serial offenders” says Ryan, “They know that Telegram and Twitter have extremely weak enforcement so they scam out in the open”.
The group has been sending messages to corporate executives at Twitter and Telegram for over a week now trying to get some serial scammers taken down. Over the last week I’ve observed their tactics. All of the emails are extremely professional. And dozens of people are sending them. But the message is mostly falling on deaf ears. To date, Twitter has only taken down one of the scammers profiles while Telegram has refused to take down any of them or even acknowledge the group.
“By ignoring clear and blatant scamming on their platforms, Telegram and Twitter are encouraging the scammers. Emboldening them to continue their scamming.” Ryan says. But is this the case? We reviewed activity from the accounts starting from the date they were reported and in mere days these accounts have caused over 1,000 people losses of over $350,000 collectively. And that’s just the accounts that they reported. In response to the reports Twitter chose to retaliate against Ryan locking him out of his main Twitter account nftdemon420 and refusing to let him back in despite sending his ID and a picture of him holding it. The same ID pictured in a tweet he sent from his account in March.
So why are Twitter and Telegram allowing serial scammers free reign while retaliating against those fighting them? We tried asking both Twitter and Telegram and unfortunately the only response we got was a poop emoji from Twitter. A person would think Twitter and Telegram would want to work with such a group. After all security of their platforms directly affects users. Unfortunately it seems they would rather give scammers free reign. So are Twitter and Telegram supporting scammers? The evidence seems to point to a resounding yes. And each day they continue to lack enforcement is another day hundreds of thousands of dollars are lost by innocent people.
John Schultz is a blockchain consultant and independent author. The views expressed in this article are editorial opinions.