Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson has announced the formation of an internal action force aimed at countering scammers. This comes as a report from fraud prevention firm Bolster showed cryptocurrency scams almost doubled in 2020.
“One of the things we’ve been thinking about is setting up some sort of dedicated body in the Cardano ecosystem that does nothing but builds tools to help people report scams and propagate the knowledge that a scam has occurred.”
The Cardano Anti-Scam Task Force Nabs First Case
Last month, a frustrated Hoskinson hosted a live stream in which he warned the Cardano community of giveaway scams. He reiterated the point, one made many times before, that he nor Cardano will ever giveaway ADA.
“If you fall for this, you will lose your ADA, these are criminals, these are scammers, these are people who are trying to steal from you. Use common f*cking sense. You don’t get something for free. You don’t get something for nothing.”
Cardano is now taking an active role in combating the fraudsters with the newly formed anti-scam task force. Not only is it tasked with reporting and spreading awareness of scams, but Hoskinson also spoke about an investigative element to their operations as well.
“… do some targetted investigations into ventures that have entered into the Cardano space, that we feel may be fraudulent.”
Without going into specifics, Hoskinson said, following complaints raised by community members, the task force has investigated a fund suspected of fraud. Initial results indicate the fund in question may be a scam. However, he did not disclose the name of the fund at this time.
“We started conducting an investigation and the preliminary results indicate that that fund may actually be a scam. So in two weeks time, we’re going to release our first output of this internal working group.”
Crypto Scams Predicted to Get Worse in 2021
Fraudsters are flocking to crypto as markets continue booming. Research conducted by Bolster confirms that cryptocurrency fraud is on the rise. The firm points out that this is one of the most significant barriers to mainstream success.
Co-Founder and CTO of Bolster Shashi Prakash said crypto scams are the fastest-growing category of scams. He warned that this is just the start of a “new wave of digital theft campaigns.”
We continue to see scammers being opportunistic and designing campaigns focused on real-time, surging trends when people are likely not to be on guard because it’s so new.”
By analyzing 300 million websites, Bolster found more than 400,000 related to crypto scams over the last year. The firm predicts this figure will go up by 75% for this year.
Other key findings note that fake prizes, giveaways, or sweepstakes were the most prolific type of scam, with Bitcoin, Chainlink, and Ethereum being the top three most targetted tokens.
The Cardano anti-scam task force is a step in the right direction. However, as Hoskinson mentioned, it’s no substitute for common sense.
Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com