Bitcoin Global News (BGN)
With rising interest in the Crypto and Blockchain space, the
Belgian government has launched a website to educate the public on
Crypto fraud. In that the Blockchain space is fraught with scams,
that are apparently only 4% reported, it would seem that such an
offering could only be good for the future.
What inspired the Belgian
government departments called the Federal Public Services Economy
and the Federal Services and Markets Authority to start such a
website, were the local reports of citizens losing around $2.5
million in 2017, to Crypto scams.
According to reports that were
supposedly done by these departments, this is where the previously
mentioned 4% comes in. The FPSE and the FSMA have even gone so far
as to estimate that Belgian citizens have actually lost an average
of $152 million a year, although this number does not seem to have
been confirmed by any hard data as of yet.
The key aim of the website, which
the departments have called, “Too
Good to Be True,” is teach the average investor how to
recognize whether a Crypto project is a scam or not. In connection
with this, an original report by Cointelegraph mentions the
specific examples of a project promising guaranteed returns as well
as “big profits,” and celebrity endorsements.
They also talk about checking
whether the project has some sort of a “valid license,” although
with global regulations as they are, it’s not clear exactly what
this refers to. On the one hand, an all-encompassing Crypto or
Blockchain license does not exist but it is possible that the FPSE
and the FSMA are speaking in a more abstract way.
Above all, what is arguably the
website’s defining feature is that it offers users the option of
reporting companies that they think are scams as well as some sort
of feature called a “scanner,” which is said to look over websites
to see if people have already complained about them in any
fraud-related way.
As the website is in Dutch, it is
difficult for a non-native speaker to understand but after a quick
look, it also became clear that “Too Good to be True,” is running
one or more social media campaigns to promote what it is doing.
Finally, such a look also confirmed that most of the site is
devoted to simply educating its readers about
what Crypto is as well as what Crypto scams are.
Don’t despair if you’re currently
living in a country that doesn’t speak Dutch. According to the same
report by Cointelegraph, in May, the SEC actually put a fake ICO
forward in order to show the masses what scam ICOs look like, first
hand. If you’re interested take a look at Howeycoins.
Tech industry professionals like
Howard Marks, the co-founder of Activision/Blizzard Entertainment,
claim that this fake ICO stems from the SEC feeling like their
efforts, up to now, have been for naught. More precisely, this is
mainly due to the fact that ICOs don’t seem to be heeding the SEC’s
guidelines related to selling securities.
According to Howard Marks, the name
Howeycoins, is a direct reference to what is called The Howey Test
in the world of traditional finance, which boils down to a
simplified way of determining whether a market asset may be
classified as a security. At the same time that this test exists,
one could make the point that the reason that Crypto projects
aren’t heeding SEC guidelines, is because they aren’t quite sure
what they are.
While this fake ICO is a good step
towards preventing the mass scamming of future Crypto investors,
its success depends on the word getting out about what it is and
why it is important to pay attention to. Furthermore, as mentioned
above, since we still don’t have clear guidelines across the board,
it is tough to know how to do business within the lines. Until the
SEC does create clear regulations that are accepted by the industry
as a whole, then we will have to live in our current purgatory, for
the foreseeable future.
By: BGN Editorial Staff
News:
Cryptocurrencies
Blockchain
ICO Scams