The Allure and Risks of Bitcoin Collection

Let’s face it, everyone wants Bitcoins. We buy them, collect them, mine them, invest them, and wager them, all to gain more, because the potential of Bitcoins becoming an even bigger thing is just upon the horizon. Our hope in Bitcoins excites us, and pushes us to continually increase our balance. But, sadly, some collectors are a little unscrupulous in how they gain them, and some are not above stealing them, if they think they can get away with it.

Theft Within: How Scam Bitcoin Mining Sites Exploit Investors

Theft is also an issue with Bitcoin mining, with, ironically, the mining site owners being the deceitful collectors, and the investors the ones stolen from. Many scam mining sites have already come and gone, and taken their investor funds and earnings with them. And today, many such sites still exist, and more rise up every few weeks, offering huge returns to new and naïve Bitcoin collectors, waiting for them to take the bait and invest big in schemes that couldn’t possibly return what they claim.

In an effort to identify fake mining sites, some cynical investors are quick to say that all mining sites that offer high returns are scams. Yet some such sites have been going for many months, even years, and are still paying out, proving that getting a good return on your Bitcoin investment is not always a fantasy.

Transparency vs. Performance: Are All Opaque Bitcoin Mining Sites Scams?

Other untrusting investors state that any mining site that isn’t fully transparent on how the mining is performed – such as displaying live videos of mining operations – are scams. Yet this rule too eliminates some sites that have continually offered stability and good returns. How they manage to offer such compensation is truly their business, and something they are likely to protect in the interests of remaining profitable. As they say, the proof is in the pudding, and continual profitability and growth cannot be ignored.

Here are a few to consider…

Is the website actually located where they claim to be based?

A common indicator that a site is not being truthful is when they claim to be based in a particular location but their website is located somewhere completely different. Several websites, such as Site24x7, will show you a website’s location based on their domain name. If a website is located in a completely different country then chances are that the site is fake.

Is the website DNS record hiding the registrant’s identity?

Some website registrants hide their email address in order to reduce spam, but the only reason to hide all the registrant details is to avoid people knowing who owns the website. Services offered by affiliate registrants Domains By Proxy and WhoIsGuard hide these details, and a site that uses them has an obvious problem with transparency, and are more than likely offering fake services.

There are many WHOIS websites available to check a registrant’s DNS record. One such site called Domain Tools shows a complete listing.

Has the website information been copied from another site?

So far, there seems to be one common trait amongst fake site owners: they don’t seem to have the smarts to write their own bitcoin mining information, and tend to copy from other mining sites.

If you copy some random text from their About Us or FAQ pages and place it in a search engine, you might actually find another site that uses the same sentences or even the same paragraph. This is a clear indicator that the site is a fake.

If a fake site owner takes the initiative to write their own blurb, you can also usually see that what they’ve written doesn’t quite make sense, or worse, that English is clearly not their first language.

Are they having problems paying out?

There is no better indicator to a fake mining site than an investor having problems withdrawing bitcoins. Since reported earnings are actually profit, there should be no reason for a site not to give that profit over to those who earned it. If payments are not forthcoming, this clearly indicates that the site owner is utilising those profits for their own purposes or are running a Ponzi scheme. Not paying out is usually the last thing to happen before a site disappears.

If you find such posts, then it’s time to look for a different site to invest in.