I Joined A Crypto Ponzi Scheme So You Don’t Have To!
Warning: Don’ try this at home kids! For educational purpose only!
Medium is hitting me, and probably you as well, with MANY of these articles “how I made 1 gazillion dollars passive income in my 250 years of life! S-U-S-T-A-I-N-A-B-L-E”.
Let’s pick one and see what happens. This looks good. 1200 USD per week is JUST what I need!
The article outlines many things regarding staking and sounds quite good.
It leads to the https://bakedbeans.io/. Lets have a look at the dapp UI we are presented with:
Lets check for some red flags:
- Page only links to telegram, twitter and bcs scan, no real names to be found anywhere (perhaps I missed them).
- 12% referral that seems to be deducted from the person that referred to you? Everyone is shilling it like crazy to make a quick buck and get out as fast as possible.
- 8% daily return. This means if you put in 1 USD and wait for 5 years you get 21 228 253.11 USD. Yes. 21 Million. That is what I will retire on I guess. BlockFi for example gives you 3% annually on your BTC. These loosers! Suck on baked beans!
- Contract is not audited and the wallet is full of strange NFTs and tokens.
- The UI is sleek and simple on the first look. BUT on the second look (especially after using it for a bit) it is build for obfuscation and very static. It uses a customized language to hide its intentions and the rates do not adjust / show you any real statistics that would be interesting. To be honest, if you want your scheme to run as long as possible it should be more accessible. Or should it?
- Wait, no possibility to withdraw all your funds when you have enough? So stuff is probably locked forever. But, just a guess right? Lets not search for the FAQ, there is no link anyways, that would be an unnecessary burden!
- Contract and Wallet content is only shown when the dapp is connected with MetaMask. Very lazy.
All things considered, basic economics tell us it is an (unknowingly?) Ponzi Scheme with bad design and obfuscation at best, a rugpull at worst. A 100% loss is most likely.
But since I am a normal human being with dollar signs in my eyes, I will ignore everything!
Now let’s invest! The “project” supposes to “RE-BAKE” the rewards every day for 6 days and then cash out the rewards. I guess to automate compounding would take the personal touch out and is intentional. Got to keep people off the streets!
1st day: Sat down after dinner and spend quite a while to set up a separate address with MetaMask (quick) and get Binance to authorize my roughly 0.25 BNB for withdrawal that I bought years ago and did not yet sell. It appears my last log in to this monstrosity of an exchange was a while ago.
2nd day. Just log in and click “Re-Bake” and pay a small fee. Good thing this in not on the Ethereum network.
3rd day. Forgot about it. Good me!
4th day. Remembered the Project and clicked “Re-Bake” again. Profits where listed and looked good! Feeling greedy. Should I put in more? No it is a Ponzi after all.
5th day, a bit more relaxed and feeling good about my life changing investment. Time to look into social media if the FUD is already going around. Not sure if the comment section of bsc scan REALLY qualifies as “social media” but lets have a short look:
So yea… the first fights are starting “you are using it wrong” and “its great” vs. “it is a scam”.
Lets have a look at twitter:
People start leaving because the daily percentages are not met. The rest clings to hopium or is shilling shamelessly.
I will ignore the telegram chat, its only people getting blocked for complaining and a lot of moonboy GIFs.
Perhaps it might be of interest how many BNB are on the contract:
So it is being drying up. But slower than suspected.
I managed 5 days so far on my “live changing”, “successful” and “sustainable” investment. Tough.
Let’s wait another day.
6th day. Pressing “RE-BAKE” and checking on my properly staked Polygon to make me feel better.
7th and final day. First time I will press the dreaded “EAT BEANS” button. I expect to say adios to my 0.25 BNB.
The total return was… drum roll: 0.009 BNB. FANTASTIC. I will not bother subtracting the fees payed, my original investment that is fixed and can never be withdrawn or even calculate what it should be.
So what now of my money? The only way out seems to let it run so the rewards are stacking up instead of compounding. That way it should take around a month until I have my full invest back. If the contract holds that long.
Perhaps one or two of the Baked-Beans-Moonboys will find their way here and scold me for “pressing the wrong button” or getting the “timing wrong” or being a “FUDer”. Yea well, guess what, the dapp is designed to encourage mistakes of this kind.
Now on to some final words. Of course it is a scam, a Ponzi Scheme and, most likely even illegal in most countries. Only the ones entering at first make ANY money at all. In this case at least you get some back, but you definitely loose your valuable time for pressing stupid buttons.
At the bottom of this lies a different problem. The nature of the society we exist in at the moment. Especially in crypto it is very tempting to ape in to some crazy new scheme. Don’t. Play it save. Pick the low hanging fruits. Do your research. It sounds boring and slow. But it will get you there. Not today, not tomorrow. But some day. Take your time. ALWAYS search for peoples hidden agenda. Most times they are diametrically opposed to yours. Learn from other peoples mistakes.
Scams and schemes like this are KILLING crypto. Crypto could be the future, but you are just killing it.
