A few years ago, a friend’s son asked me what I know about bitcoin. “Not much,” I said. “Ah, Tito, I think I could help you,” he said.
He told me about this fantastic company that offered him a monthly 40 percent return on investment depending on the initial amount an investor would put in. He said if I were willing to invest, he would share the profit with me making it a win-win for both of us. He then talked about trading and cryptocurrency, which, when I Googled (while we were talking), came from the website of that company he was telling me about, word-for-word.
“I smell a scam,” I told him. He got mad and, with a disrespectful smirk, said the problem with me is that I’m afraid to try new ideas. He said crypto is the future, and those who will not embrace it will be left behind. He arrogantly told me that the company is a reputable lending company using blockchain and that he only asked me to invest because he needed people to bring in investors who could recruit more people to invest. I stopped him and said there’s a word for that scheme: pyramiding.
Feeling her son’s frustration, the mother told me to trust the boy, invest, and give the 16-year-old kid a chance. I said no. It’s a clear scam. My friend insisted that it could not go wrong, as the boy was promised more than one percent ROI per day no matter what’s the current price of Bitcoin in the market.
As I explained to the boy and his mother the dangers of going into something they…
