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Get rich quick crypto ‘gurus’ are targeting teens and fleecing them through ‘rug pulling’
Cryptocurrency titans make it seem easy for anyone to get 🎐rich off digita🌟l coins, and anyone who isn’t making millions in their free time is wasting an opportunity.
Crypto really is the financial Wild West. There are almost no regulations or rules in digital coins as there ♛are on the real-world currency exchanges and stock markets.
T🔜hat makes it all too easy for🦄 everyone from hardened criminal gangs to petty grifters to take advantage of anyone they can reach.
All too often, this comes in the form of a friendly face and the well-worn promise that you can “get rich quick.”
To anyone over 30, those three words will immediately set off alarm bells. But in today’s TikTok and Instagram-driven world of influencers and finfluencers (the financial ‘advice’ equivalent), they have flashy new wa꧂ys of dressing it up.
The latest vehi𝓰cle for roping people, all too often younger men and teenagers, is are so-called meme coins. Created from thin air with names which appeal to the public – playing off celebrities, politicians, trends or grabby mascots – they make big money for their creators and the influencers who peddle them, but usually nothing for those ꦓwho invest.
“The easiest way to make money is to deploy a meme coin, run it and then sell as soon as you see [profits],” Sahil Arora, who’s launched over🌳 100 of these coins and ꧋claims he’s earned millions, told The Post.
The crypto security firm Blockade sayღs most of the meme coins are scams, designed to have no lasting value.
Like others of his ilk, straight-talking Arora profits through a process known as “rug pulling.”
A coin is issဣued, prices rise quickly as people invest, then Arora, who, as๊ the creator, keeps a large percentage of the coins, sells at or near the currency’s height.
He makes money; those who have put money into💜 the coiജn lose; he essentially ‘pulls the rug out’ from under them.
“This ♑is the biggest casino on Ear🎶th right now,” enthused Dubai-based Arora, who bragged about being called a “super villain.”
“If you don’t get rugged by me🐷, you’re probably going to get rugged by someone else. So, you might as well get rugged by a person with a track record of some success rather than getting rugged by a random person on the Internet,” he bafflingly claimed.
Other, more recognizable influencers who have faced allegations of promoting meme coins and then leaving followers high and dry include Paul “Ice Poseidon” Denino, Faze Kay, and Haliey “Hawk Tuah Girl” Welch.
Denino has been accused of promoting a coin and walking away with $300,000,💧 which his . He said, “I did make $300,000, b🅺ut it was not at the expense of any fans or holders.”
accused of promoting a for a token called Save the Kids. He t꧟weeted that he had “no ill intent promoting any crypto alt coins.”
Welch achieved quick fame as the Hawk Tuah Girl and had her name attached to a crypto that earned millions for so-called ‘sꦬnipers’.
These are people w🔯ho use bots to monitor the rise of a meme coin and sell as soon as it is 𝕴close to peaking.
Welch’s coin $HAWK lost 95% of its value in minutes. According to Welch’s manager, s🎉he had no involvement in the scheme. To back it up, he pointed out she was cleared of any wrongdoing by the SEC and other government agencies, and she is also not named in a class action lawsuit against the c🐎oin’s operators.
While crypto is a growing industry and there are genuine alternative currencies lik🦋e Bitcoin and Ethereum, which have stabili🌺zed and held their value, many more are just scams.
“You get ‘influencers’ who are given [crypto] tokens in exchange for promoting them,” ,𝔉 a veteran crypto investor who will be appearing on anꦿ upcoming streaming show, “CryptoKnights,” told The Post.
“It should always be disclosed that these people are being paid to promote the coin. But not everybody has the moral com𒉰pass to do that.”
People who follow 🐻the influencer🐬s see them promoting a coin and buy into promises that it will “go to the moon” – crypto speak for gaining huge amounts of value.
“Everyone anticipates the price going up, and it does, because🐽 there is a big [group of people] buying into it,” a crypto consultant who goes by the name (who asked that his real name not be used) told The Post.
“The rich ge🐓t richer,” said Cryptony. “For one person to make money, another person has to lose money. That’s where it comes from.”
But, he added, “some influencers are using these opportunities to build up their brand🅠, r꧑ather than purely to make money from meme coins.”
Aiming for the young and naïve, “there’s an entire class of influencers who have built their entire net worth and become very wealthy by essentially showing off a lifestyle: Their private jets, their fancy cars,” said Chassé. “They’re saying, ‘Yeah, if you just watch my channel, you can be like me.’”
Anyone can even launch their own coins for a few hundred dollars via platforms such as . S✱uch was the case for one teenager who launched three coins on the platform and in less time than it would take to sit for a geometry exam.
But he did it through executing “a hard rug pull” — in anyone else’s language, scamming.
While young men seem most susceptible to all this, as told The Post, “They don’t care how old you are. They’re robbing people they don’t meet and never looking🧜 them in the eye. If they did, it might weigh on their conscience.”
Glenn Titus, a 41-year-old butcher from Oregon, can relate. He invested in multiple coins that have been rugged. “There were some I lost hundreds on,” he to🐟ld The⭕ Post. In the former scenario, he explained, “People [online] make it sound good, and the price keeps going up. Then suddenly you can’t sell what you have. They pretty much clean out the money and everybody’s screwed.”
Acknowledging that he can’t do anything except be more careful in the future, Titus admitted, “I’m pretty pissed off, honestly.” ꧂Now, he said, “I stick with the Bitcoin kind of stuff.”
Among the red flags to look for, according to Chassé, are those who show off their wea💃lth online. “You have to wonder where the money came from,” he said.
Multiple people who spoke to The Post made clear that meme coins are the equivalent of gambling. However, said Chassé, “at least in the ca🎃sino, you know that maybe 60 percent of the time the house wins. In this [crypto] casino, the house is going to win 99 percent of the time.”
