Even Fraud Is Better With Blockchain

While opinions are divided as to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies being a massive fraudulent Ponzi scheme, there is no question that binary options are a scam, so perhaps it is no surprise to see binary options scammers trying to cash in on the hype currently surrounding Bitcoin. As usual, the scam is being promoted by email spam.

This takes you to a landing page promoting a magical trading system for Bitcoin, with glowing testimonials and guaranteed profits.

However, when you read the fine print at the bottom of the page, which I have enlarged for your reading convenience, the story is not so sanguine.

The disclaimer page is even more pessimistic. The worst bits are below. To save you from eyestrain the short version is "We are lying to you. Don't sue us if you lose all your money."

Binary options are presented as a bet on whether the value of a particular commodity will go up or down in a very short time period. However, you are betting against the broker, and they are the ones to decide if the market went up or down. If you download the software and sign up for the trading system you will be making bets against a company that controls the outcome of the bet. These scams let you make paper profits for a few days to encourage you to increase your investment, and then your luck turns bad and you lose all your money. If you try to withdraw your winnings while you are still ahead you will find it impossible, though. Any money you put into the system you are never going to get back. You are not even buying real Bitcoin (or whatever else the binary options system pretends to be based on.) Many binary options scams were based in Israel, so we were glad to hear that in October the Knesset passed a law banning binary options trading there. The FBI recently arrested the CEO of one of the Israeli binary options companies when she was visiting America. We hope that this new law may enable the FBI to work with Israeli authorities to bring more of the operators of this scam to justice.