Ethereum scammers disguised as Vitalik Buterin are out to steal your coins

You might want to be extra suspicious in case you receive an email from Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, cordially asking you to send money: chances are someone is trying to scam you out of your funds.

Buterin has taken to Twitter to warn his followers that malicious actors are pretending to be him in order to trick unsuspecting cryptocurrency rookies into sending them their coins.

“ If you get an email that looks like it’s from me asking for ETH, please do NOT send,” the founder cautioned. “Either contact me first or if you’re lazy just assume it’s a fraud.”

As Buterin goes on to explain, the scammers – posing as him – claim his “laptop literally died” before proceeding to ask for funds – until he has had a chance to access his “cold wallet a week from now.”

Perhaps due to its growing popularity, the cryptocurrency space is flush with various scams and phishing traps these days.

Earlier in January, there were tons of suspicious copycats of popular exchange desk Binance on Google. The majority of these pages were designed to forward visitors to the official Binance site – but via a referral link.

Those curious to investigate some of the active cryptocurrency scams on the internet ought to check out the Ethereum Scam Database here .

Meanwhile, don’t get too excited if you get some mail from Buterin: it’s about as special as getting an investment opportunity from a Nigerian prince.

Stay tuned for the launch of our new channel, Hard Fork, where we will be taking a deep dive into everything cryptocurrency and blockchain.

Shady cryptocurrency touting Ryan Gosling as their designer raises $830K in ICO

This is a pretty wild case: A shifty cryptocurrency startup which used a stock photo of Hollywood actor Ryan Gosling for the headshot of their lead graphic designer has managed to raise almost a million in an initial coin offering (ICO).

Miroskii – as the company is called – has since attracted the attention of Reddit with its crafty marketing shenanigans.

But things actually get worse: as pointed out by numerous users on Reddit and Twitter, it appears that the shady cryptocurrency startup used ripped images for pretty much all of its team members.

But unlike the fake Gosling – who goes by the name Kevin Belanger according to Miroskii – the rest of stolen photos featured no celebrities.

CNET has since dug up more evidence showing that pretty much every photo which appears on Miroskii has been snatched from real people (with different names) who have nothing to do with blockchain or cryptocurrency.

Here are a few examples:

But if this wasn’t enough, there are even more red flags.

Miroskii has yet to share its white paper with its investors. Its website reads that the company will offer users their “own decentralized bank” with support for credit and debit card providers like Visa, Mastercard, and American Express, but its white paper is still “coming soon.”

Instead, all investors have to consult with when making a decision whether or not to pledge their money is a shoddy roadmap, with practically no informational value whatsoever:

“ Miroskii Coin is developed and brought to business by the experts from China, Hongkong, Singapore and Japan to ease the crypto revolution in financial products,” the company’s marketing promises. “It is developed under its own highly secure encrypted decentralized blockchain technology.”

“Miroskii coin is been tested, approved and accepted by most of the industry giants who has already started using the MRC (Miroskii Coin) in their closed B2B sector,” it continues. “As per the high demand from these industries we were requested to start the first ICO stage for intuitional companies only.”

“Its time to be a part of the Crypto Revolution,” it concludes. The typo is theirs, for what it’s worth.

But here is the most shocking part: this fraudulent effort has raked in more than $830,000 from over 380 naive investors.

While scam campaigns are nothing unusual in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, it is puzzling that such a poorly put together swindle can bring in close to a million dollars.

For the record, other than its half-assed website and still upcoming white paper, Miroskii has a total of seven followers on all of its social media accounts combined: that is Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

It remains unclear whether the investment data displayed on the Miroskii page is indeed authentic, but it might very well be.

A quick Google lookup reveals the company ran a small PR campaign, ultimately securing a paid press release deal with cryptocurrency-oriented outlet NewsBTC . So it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility that Miroskii has somehow managed to attract real investors.

Think twice before you blow your pocket empty on Miroskii – it might not be all it purports to be. There have been a number of botched cryptocurrency initiatives to abruptly vanish into thin air after running an ICO: Miroskii manifests a concerning number of the same symptoms.

Don’t be too surprized if it’s the next one to pull a Houdini.

Clarification: The fake Gosling was first spotted by @ CryptoShillNye .

South Korea is considering closing local cryptocurrency exchanges (again)

Reuters reports that policymakers in South Korea’s parliament said that they’re considering shutting down domestic cryptocurrency exchanges, following the steep plunge in value of major virtual currencies over the past couple of days.

The news comes just days after we heard just the opposite. After South Korean law enforcement agencies raided the offices of local cryptocurrency exchanges to investigate alleged tax evasion last week, various government bodies including the official residence of the President announced that trading wouldn’t be banned in the country the next day.

Today, South Korea’s chief of the Financial Services Commission said:

In addition, Bank of Korea Governor Lee Ju-yeol said at a news conference that “cryptocurrency is not a legal currency and is not being used as such as of now.”

That doesn’t bode well for currencies like Bitcoin, which dipped below $10,000 in value for the first time since last month, bringing it down to less than half what it was worth in December 2017. According to Coindesk, tanking cryptocurrencies caused $300 billion (on paper) to be wiped from investors’ accounts in just the last 36 hours.

South Korea is the third largest market for Bitcoin trades, and is home to more than a dozen cryptocurrency exchanges. The country is said to have around two million users of cryptocurrency apps . As such, the effects of its government’s decisions concerning how it’ll regulate exchanges will have a major effect on the market across the globe.

All eyes will now be on South Korea as it mulls its position on the matter: more than 212,000 citizens have signed a petition to stop the government from clamping down on cryptocurrency trading, and any petition with more than 200,000 signatures prompts a response from officials within 30 days in the country.

China is also said to be planning a ban on access to foreign cryptocurrency exchanges from within its borders, according to a Bloomberg report from earlier this week; the country has already banned local exchanges.

HODL , I guess.