Why Bitcoin’s Imitators Are Scams
Welcome newcomer. You’ve of course heard of Bitcoin. And you’ve probably heard you can make or lose a lot of money on it. This article is intended to help you not lose money by explaining how to avoid falling for the biggest scam that separates newcomers to Bitcoin from their wealth. That scam is called “Crypto”.
Bitcoin is an invention of profound ingenuity, serving the very valuable purpose of being sound, incorruptible money for anyone in the world to use. However, Bitcoin is complicated, new and about money. That creates fertile ground for predators looking to separate newcomers like you from their money.
Because Bitcoin is incorruptible, these scammers must trick victims into handing over their money for something other than Bitcoin. They do this by making imitations of Bitcoin they call “Crypto”. Sadly, they’ve gotten away with tricking lots of would-be buyers and holders of Bitcoin into trading money for these often completely worthless imitations.
If you’re brand new to this, how are you to know if something that claims to be newer, better, more technologically advanced, or even just as good as Bitcoin is making a valid claim? It’s not easy, but there is a three word credo in the Bitcoin community that gets right to the very core. That credo is “DON’T TRUST. VERIFY.” The ability to verify every single thing in Bitcoin is what makes it incorruptible.
The strategy of scammers is to obtain your trust with bogus or irrelevant claims, and then to betray it by giving you bogus or irrelevant tokens in exchange for your money. Curiously enough, these scammers will often want Bitcoin for their tokens, which right there might tell you everything you need to know.
The typical “crypto” scam thus almost always has a smooth talking, charismatic character at its helm, trying to gain your trust. Whether it’s a boy-genius who speaks in incomprehensible techno-jargon, a libertarian rebel, a guy in a business suit with a nice accent, or someone dressed up like a magician, if there’s someone in charge who you have to trust, that’s the person who’s going to make money at your expense — that’s the person who made the tokens that they’re trying to get you to buy.
Any “crypto” which has spokespeople, leaders or institutes must put its trust in these people, and thus so must you. As a result, that “crypto” lacks the single most important feature which is at the heart of Bitcoin — being incorruptible by human beings — because Bitcoin puts no trust in human beings.
Any “crypto” claiming to be better because it came after Bitcoin and has improved on some feature is luring you away from what matters most. New bells and whistles are irrelevant because TRUSTLESSNESS is the only important and necessary condition in this space. Thus, any “crypto” that relies on trust in some group of human beings is not a step forward from Bitcoin, but a step right back into technologies that existed before Bitcoin. It is therefore not an advancement beyond Bitcoin, but a regression to the condition of the world before the invention of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin has no spokesperson, no leader, no institute. Bitcoin puts trust in nobody. That’s the genius of its invention. It is a system free of trust in human beings. This is why Bitcoin is often referred to as a “Trustless” system.
You can read Bitcoin’s white paper and with a bit of effort understand how Bitcoin works to achieve Trustlessness. You can’t for any other “crypto”, because none are trustless. But don’t take my word for it. Verify.
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Want more? This entire series (plus a 26th bonus article) is available as a pdf or kindle ebook at https://swanbitcoin.com/whybitcoin.
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This is article eleven of my Why Bitcoin series.
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