There are multiple ways you can become rich with cryptocurrencies (short: crypto), like Bitcoin, Ethereum and others. Check out your most popular options, some are even without any risk others are legal:
Create your own cryptocurrency and scam your investors out of their money.
Create your own trading/investment platform for cryptocurrencies and scam your customers.
As an influencer: get huge payments to promote new cryptocurrency-scams, so that others can scam your followers.
Pump & dump scams.
As an investment guru: sell overpriced guides on how to get rich with cryptocurrencies.
As a hacker: you can abuse weaknesses in a cryptocurrency implementation or take all the money from investors.
Buy a cryptocurrency and hope that the price increases.
Let's go through all options:
1. Create your own cryptocurrency and scam your investors out of their money
This is a well established strategy. You create a new cryptocurrency, pay influencers and gurus to promote it and then run away with the money of the investors. Happens very often and you have a high chance of success as cryptocurrencies are not that well regulated or controlled, but this strategy has the downside of being criminal and immoral. Don't do it.
2. Create your own trading/investment platform for cryptocurrencies and scam your customers
This happens also regularly. You create a new trading platform where customers can buy cryptocurrencies. Those are also often not that well regulated or controlled, especially if you choose the location for the headquarters well. You can show your customers fake accounts if you manage their accounts, like in a regular ponzi-/pyramid scheme. Again, the downside is that this is criminal and immoral and you shouldn't do it.
3. As an influencer: get huge payments to promote new cryptocurrency-scams, so that others can scam your followers
Many influencers follow this strategy. They get huge payments to promote anything and don't do their due diligence on what they promote or just don't care about their followers losing all their money. To implement this strategy you need to obtain many followers first and lose all your morals, not caring about your fans. You make less money compared to the first two strategies, but might still become criminal by promoting scams, not disclosing advertisement-payments or performing financial advisory services without licence. It is also immoral.
4. Pump and dump scams
This is an old (illegal) investment trick which also works brilliantly with crypto. You buy stocks, then hype them. As everyone buys this stock, the price increases dramatically and you can sell it for a huge profit. The downside here (apart from being criminal and immoral) is that you need some money yourself to buy the stock and you need to already be influential.
This seems to be similar to the first strategy, but you can do the pump and dump scam also without creating your own cryptocurrency. In this case you need a lot of momentum to manipulate the market (e.g. by having a huge social media fan base) or having a large company which could announce to accept the cryptocurrency you already bought before (or even being the president of a country). The more money you can invest before the pump (it helps to already be really rich) the more money you make.
In an unregulated market like crypto this might not be illegal (I am not a lawyer), but still highly immoral.
5. As an investment guru: sell overpriced guides on how to invest in cryptocurrencies.
This strategy is similar to the influencer-strategy, but easier to implement. Instead of creating a huge follower list, you just need to buy advertisements where some actors pretend that they made huge gains with a cryptocurrency and you will share this secret if someone buys your guide or seminar. The advantage here is, that it might not be criminal but still is pretty immoral - don't do it.
If you invest the money for your customers (invest $250 now and receive $13 254.12 in a few days risk free (hint: there are no risk free investments which have these payouts)) this often transforms into strategy 2.
6. As a hacker: you can either abuse weaknesses in a crypto-currency implementation or take all the money from investors
This strategy is often successful. Although it requires skill and knowledge but pays out big and you might have the biggest chance for a huge payout and if you are lucky stay anonymous . The biggest downside is, that it is in general highly criminal (sometimes it could even be legal) and immoral and you still have the risk of being caught.
Another strategy often followed in this context is to take over a popular influencer account and then post a message like: "Send me 1 bitcoin and I will send you 2 bitcoin back." No one who sends any bitcoin will receive anything back. If you see a celebrity post something similar it's best to assume that their account was hacked. If other people comment that it works, please assume that they are fake accounts owned by the criminal.
7. Buy a cryptocurrency and hope that the price increases
This is the only non-criminal and moral way of getting rich with cryptocurrencies. So you heard of the wealth a few people obtained with crypto and want to be rich too. Some other reasons might include:
You like that Bitcoin lost 14% value in the last 12 months which for some reasons sounds better than the 15% gain of a boring MSCI World ETF. You also don't care that Bitcoin was outperformed by many stocks even in its best years.
You heard of all the scams and all the people who lost their money with gambling in crypto and feel generous giving some money to criminals. In the end, money is never lost or created, it just moves from one pocket to another pocket. In general, it moves out of your pocket if you follow strategy 7.
You might realize that playing the lottery bears a much smaller risk and still has a higher chance of a huge payout. But playing the lottery in a regulated market seems so much less fun than playing with all the criminals.
You think that Bitcoin (or another coin) is the future because it is one of the thousands of cryptocurrencies which is one of the many applications of the blockchain technology. And you heard that blockchain is the next big thing.
You heard that someone compared Bitcoin to gold but secretly wondered if gold would keep its value if everyone could create their own gold. On the other hand, gold lost only 50% of its value from its 2013 high to its 2016 low - so maybe that was meant with the comparison.
For you cryptocurrencies are some kind of collectable, like trading cards or stamps, but digital. Like with trading cards everyone can create their own trading cards but this is not a relevant issue, as the value of the collectibles comes only what most of the other collectors think someone else thinks someone else will be willing to pay in the future (obviously the person in the future will use the same reasoning to determine a "fair" prize), same as with crypto. You could also use your fantasy currency to buy other digital collectibles like NFT. Sounds like a lot of fun.
You are wondering if all the crypto-fans understand the difference between a currency which is used for trading and an investment for which the owner hopes that the value increases, and why they still call it cryptocurrency. But since someone in the past did make some profits via crypto you don't care about the details.
You hate payments in ordinary currency which is pretty fast and usually works without a transaction-fee. But isn't it really boring, that you can send money instantly and for free via e.g. PayPal to your friends? Wouldn't it be much more fun to first pay fees to buy into crypto and then also pay a transaction fee of $50, $150 or even more, competing with other people for the "bank" whose transaction will be processed fast (tip: in general you have to pay more to get it faster processed, which will turn into lots of fun if many people want to sell at the same time when there is a huge drop in Bitcoin price, or an expected drop due to some external event).
You know all of this, but for some reason, you just gamble with some money and are looking forward to see, who will scam you and take your money. Like a high-cost lottery ticket, but without any guaranteed winners. Like a stock, but without any assets as in an ordinary company. Like gold, but without the uniqueness of gold, as anyone can create new cryptos. Granted it might also turn out, that no-one will scam you and you will make $200 million and then just forget the password to your money, and since there is no bank you can go to and no regulations, you have no options of ever accessing "your money".
If you decide to gamble with some money, please only use as much money as you are willing to lose and check the legitimacy of the currency and the trading platform.
But why are so many people promoting cryptocurrencies?
There are many people promoting crypto. Why do they do it? There are many reasons behind it, even without repeating the scams mentioned above:
Pyramid scheme / Ponzi scheme
As you realized, crypto is considered an investment. That's why you want to invest. You want the investment to go up, that's the idea behind investments. How do you make your investment go up i.e. make the prize of a coin increase? You could tell everyone that the prize will go down and everyone should sell their investment or you could tell everyone that this is the chance to get really wealthy and say the prize will go up to $100 000, or $1 000 000 000 or even higher. The first option would result in the price going down and you losing your investment while the second options will result in the prize going up and you making money. That's why everyone who owns coins has an intrinsic interest in promoting a prize rise, even without bad faith.
"Journalist"
The media likes to report on many things, that is their job (check out After Life by Ricky Gervais). Sometimes the media cares more about telling a story which generates ad-revenue than doing their due diligence, especially if they don't understand the topic but it seems like an interesting story. Just invite an "expert", let him talk about how awesome crypto is and which level crypto will achieve. Many terms you don't understand and care about, but it makes a good story. Everyone is reporting about it, so it must be interesting to the audience, doesn't it? Win-Win-Win: The media gets an article or air-time for a cheap price but lots of advertisement-revenue, the expert gets maybe some payment but also can promote his crypto-investment making money by increasing the price, the audience gets good entertainment and receives bad information.
Experts
There are many people making a living in predicting the future, even if you disregard all the esoteric stuff. Even when the expert is not invested and doesn't profit directly financially by a prize increase, there are many people who predict everything for any audience. Stocks will crash, earth will end, conspiracy theories, crypto will make you rich.
You might also be interested in what other financial experts think of bitcoin. Warren Buffett said in May 2022 that he wouldn't buy all the bitcoin in the world for 25$.
Final thoughts
As you noticed, there is only one moral way to get rich with cryptocurrencies and this is more like a lottery which you probably lose or gambling with collectibles. Some people win the lottery, most people don't, especially when you play against lots of criminals. Do your research before investing a significant amount of money and don't invest more than you are willing to lose.
Check out this pretty long but good video about NFTs, which in the beginning also explains many issues with crypto currencies.
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