The Thursday February 8th Edition of The Cryptocurrency Novice Report

Recently, I've covered several types of scams such as fake cloud based mining operations, coin multipliers, Bitconnect and it's various clones. But today in Word to the Wise, I'm covering a new type of scam. Fake cryptocurrency exchanges.

Word to the Wise

At first glance, BitHashKey looks like a legit cryptocurrency exchange.

But as you start to look around it's hard not to notice the cracks is the structure. Right off the bat I noticed the tickers are all for amounts that don't match current market valuations.

Next, I noticed you can't see anything but their main page without logging on to the site. So for fun I created a dummy account with a fake email. This allowed me to get into the exchange and look around more. Clicking on a coin brought me to a page that looked similar to most coin exchanges, if somewhat simplified. This is where the real problems with BitHashKey started showing up. First, the 24 hour volume for every coin showed as 0.

Second, even though a coin had 0 volume in the last 24 hours, there were multiple transactions listed for the coin.

This was enough to convince me that this site is just a scam who wants you to send them some money to fund a trading account. But once you send them money, you'll never see it again. Stay clear of this and all scam exchange sites. If you take a little time to look around and use your common sense, you can usually tell the scams from legit sites.

Money For Nothing

Today's free money is another airdrop. This airdrop is for 500 Clinicoin tokens just for signing up and validating your email address.

Clinicoin is an interesting startup that seeks to be a reward token for performing healthy tasks. My current health insurance company has a similar program that it offers, where I can earn points for walking, visiting a doctor or participating in sports. I can then spend the points in their reward mall for various items like Amazon gift cards. So Clinicoin is offering a solution that many companies are finding valuable, but expensive to maintain. If you're interested, they have an extensive Whitepaper that goes into greater detail.

The Report

The broad cryptocurrency market is mostly up today as many coins are starting to recover a little from their month long Bitcoin hangover.

Bitcoin has been mostly up today. Currently it is trading at $8214, up about 2.5% since this time yesterday. Is this the stable point where Bitcoin will sit and gain strength for it's next push higher, or just a stopping point on it's plunge into the abyss? I have no idea, but really, neither does anyone else.

Steem is currently trading at $3.80, down just a few pennies in the last 24 hours. While SBD is currently trading at $3.28, down only 9 cents since yesterday afternoon.

The amount of liquid Steem again rose a tiny bit overnight. Only about 70,000 Steem total. Not nearly the increase of over 5 million Steem we've seen the last three Tuesdays, but still a continuing increase as we've seen the last few days, is never good and something I will continue to keep an eye on.

Please note: I am not an investment professional. The information I present here is only my opinion. Think before you leap! The only thing worse than buying a losing crypto is giving your money to a crook.

Until next time...

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