The Thursday March 15th Edition of The Cryptocurrency Novice Report

Welcome to The Cryptocurrency Novice Report for Thursday March 15, 2018.

Word to the Wise

Every day I stumble across another Bitconnect clone masquerading as an ICO. Today I found Cryptolux.

At first glance it appeared that Cryptolux was a legitimate ICO for a payment processing service. But almost immediately I noticed some things that didn't look quite right. Like this statement.

One thing I've learned over and over again the last couple years is Blockchain technology does not automatically make something "impossible to hack or fake". Being confident is one thing, but overstating your security measures is dangerous.

Wanting to learn more about Cryptolux, I opened their Whitepaper and began to read. I noticed a couple strange statement under the heading "Industry Issues and Problems".

I may only be a crypto novice, but it seems to me that ICOs without a poor business model would be a good thing. Also, that last statement certainly sounds more like a positive attribute, not at all like an issue or problem.

Further down in the Whitepaper, I stumbled upon this little gem.

Now I was starting to smell a rat. Ridiculous price predictions on a coin that was still in the pre-ICO stage? Why that sounds a lot like... no, it couldn't be. I jumped back to the website and there it was...

The infamous Bitconnect plan! In graphic form no less. The only difference between this and all the other Bitconnect clones was they replaced "lending" with gambling. Clever! But not quite clever enough.

At this point things were looking bad for Cryptolux in my book, but then I found this, the last nail in their coffin...

An anonymous team. The trademark of a scam. That was all the information I needed to be convinced that Cryptolux is just another clone of the Ponzi scheme known as Bitconnect, that robbed so many unsuspecting people of their money. Learn from their mistakes and stay away from Cryptolux. You'll be glad you did.

Money For Nothing

Today's free money is an airdrop for 5 free VME tokens from Verime.

To get your free tokens, just follow the link to start the bot and sign up for the airdrop. You will need an ERC20 compatible Ethereum wallet address to receive the tokens.

If you don't already have an ERC20 Ethereum wallet, you can get one from MyEtherWallet.com for free.

Verime is developing a digital identity verification process that allows companies to complete Know Your Client (KYC) and customer verification quickly, securely and online. Reducing costs and risks associated with manual verification.

The Report

The cryptocurrency markets have somewhat stabilized following yesterday's announcements that Google and Facebook are no longer allowing advertisements for cryptos and Bitcoins subsequent 11% drop. Let's take a closer look at our favorite coins...

Currently Bitcoin is trading at $8287 down 0.6% in the last 24 hours.

Steem is having another bad day and is trading at $2.07, down 10.9% in the last 24 hours. SBD is falling even harder and is currently at $2.24, down 15.2% since yesterday afternoon.

Currently on the Steemit Market, Steem is trading at 0.948 SBD. The price disparity between Steem and SBD continues to present the opportunity to rapidly acquire Steem by selecting 50/50 post reward payouts and then using your SBD to purchase Steem. Take advantage while you can, before SBD returns to the dollar peg.

The supply of liquid Steem fell by approximately 100,000 Steem since yesterday. Currently there are almost 77.2 million liquid Steem. While we are still near historically high amounts of liquid Steem, the amount of liquid Steem has been slowly but steadily falling for over two weeks now. This reduction should help push the price of Steem higher over time.

Please note: I am not an investment professional. The information I present here is only my opinion. I do not encourage you to invest in any coin I mention, especially those featured in the Money for Nothing section, since most of these are not going to make it and may even be a scam. I only suggest you claim the free airdrops offered, nothing more.

Until next time...

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