I Believe Social Media Gossip is Why Some Enter into Cryptocurrency

It would be interesting to think about how people got into cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. I watched the documentary Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King on Netflix, (read the review here). The documentary really showed this one fact--social media gossipers make poor financial advisors (read here). The trend to join stuff like the Quadriga-CX scam or how Ruja Ignatova (who's still missing and probably still alive) got a huge following.

BBC News also shows how Ignatova's Bitcoin following was developed by social media gossip:

Why have so many people continued to believe in OneCoin, despite all the evidence?
Investors often told us that what drew them in initially was the fear that they would miss out on the next big thing. They'd read, with envy, the stories of people striking gold with Bitcoin and thought OneCoin was a second chance. Many were struck by the personality and persuasiveness of the "visionary" Dr Ruja. Investors might not have understood the technology, but they could see her talking to huge audiences, or at the Economist conference. They were shown photographs of her numerous degrees, and copies of Forbes magazine with her portrait on the front cover.

I really felt that I might've fallen for cryptocurrency if it wasn't for one thing--it's too good to be true. The promise of instant riches, the hype, and so on spread through gossip. The gossip can either be personal or through social media. People will buy the hype of how crypto works. It can start with gossip that, "I just invested X amount and I got Y amount." It's pretty much how gossip can help a Ponzi scheme move. I'd call cryptocurrency as a digital Ponzi scheme--only a few people ever get the fast returns promised. I even heard that cryptocurrency ends up robbing X to pay Y.

This is why social media gossip is your most unreliable source. Sometimes, a review can be so convincing but ask yourself, "Is it too good to be true?" The same goes for those incredibly annoying play-to-earn ads. I decided to install one of them and found out that it's ad-intensified. It's all about fooling people into downloading it to give the developer the ad revenues. That's why play-to-earn games are too good to be true (read here). The same goes for cryptocurrency--it's too good to be true so why even start with it?

References

Documentaries

"Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King", Directed by Luke Seewell, Distributed by Netflix

Websites

"Cryptoqueen: How this woman scammed the world, then vanished" (November 24, 2019)
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50435014

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