Tag: bitcoin

Markethive

Ways to monetize your social media followings

Ways to monetize your
social media followings

Turn your social media presence into a way to generate revenue — even if you don't have a massive following on Facebook or Twitter.

   Social media has not only revolutionised the way that people communicate

and stay in touch; it has completely transformed business and marketing practices as a whole. Over the past five years, social media websites have become some of the largest and most meaningful pieces of the digital marketing puzzle. While many still maintain that social platforms are for communicating and not slinging products, others would vehemently disagree; just look at Facebook, Instagram and other networks’ efforts to integrate e-commerce options.

Generating revenue is, by many standards, the sole reason why many attempts to accrue millions of followers; massive awareness often leads to either sponsorships or sales. Either way, cash is the ultimate goal. But is it possible to monetize moderate social followings that don’t reach into the hundreds of thousands and beyond? You bet it is. If you’re ready to start having your social followings work for you, here are five ways to turn your social presence into a bona fide stream of revenue.

Create an online course that educates your followers

E-learning is a gargantuan industry that’s poised to grow exponentially over the next several years, reaching $325 billion globally by 2025. Those who have been watching this trend know that now is the time to double down on their own expertise and create a course to offer their audiences. Kajabi, an e-learning platform that boasts a wide array of powerful features for marketing, selling, upselling and hosting digital learning courses to students, recently published a story on its blog about one of its “heroes” (a person who turned their passion into a profit through Kajabi’s offerings) that clearly shows anyone can turn their social audience into customers and advocates.

Makeup and design artist Tiffany Bymaster was introduced to Kajabi by her mentor, who had already achieved massive success through the platform. Bymaster had no email list or social following at the time, but knew her skill set was stellar. She began making videos on how to grow a person’s outreach process — mostly just to help herself become comfortable in front of the camera. Once she set up her Kajabi website, these videos actually became part of her course training materials. From there, momentum started to build as her social presence grew and her online training program took flight. Today, Bymaster has now launched three successful programs which have earned her $80,000 in the past six months. Bymaster is a perfect example of leveraging social to create revenue, as her method incorporates my next two points.

Unveil new products and services to your followers

In order to generate sales from your audience, you need to have something to sell. By posting about new products or services on social media, you are giving your offering a much larger platform to reach prospective buyers. If you want to significantly extend that reach, start running Facebook ads for your products using Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences. This will allow you to target the most relevant individuals to help boost your sales. If you want to add a layer of “exclusivity” to your product releases, you could give your social audiences early access to products and deals so as to create a sense of urgency and privilege.

Integrate video into your marketing stack

Video content is en Fuego. Everywhere you turn there is video content, articles about video content, and even videos about video content; it is becoming inescapable. Nearly every social platform is currently generating billions of video views per day; even Snapchat has broken the 10 billion daily view marker. The point is that video content is becoming a marketing necessity — especially when you consider that explainer videos increase a prospect’s likelihood to purchase by 1.81 times.

Videos help increase your chances of monetizing your audience, as the content is engaging, educational and often entertaining — the marketing trifecta. Leverage this by creating video content about your products and using live streaming services like Facebook Live to connect with your audience and explain exactly how your product will help them reach their goals and make life simpler.

Become an affiliate to market products to your audience

Affiliate programs are another sales model that is increasing in popularity. Becoming an affiliate advertiser for brands like Amazon is a relatively simple endeavour which allows entrepreneurial-minded folks to acquire advertising materials for various brands to market to their audiences. These adverts can be circulated across an individual’s blog, website, and yes, social media accounts. Affiliates are paid a commission based on the revenue their particular set of ads generates.

Just be sure when you are promoting these links to your social followers that you are honest with them about your affiliate status and the items you are highlighting; pandering will get you nowhere, except maybe unfollowed. Create long-form reviews on products, and let your followers know your honest opinion; as a bonus, you can even create video content on these items to boost your engagement.

Create a Facebook shop and sell right through social

Social media platforms are integrating all sorts of shopping options for brands and consumers to take advantage of. One of the most comprehensive and in-depth social selling toolkits comes from Facebook. By using Facebook’s shop section, you can list physical products directly on the platform for followers to browse and buy. It just doesn’t get any easier to reach so many people in such an efficient and effective manner.

Selling has never been so easy

The digital age affords brands and entrepreneurs a vast array of options for generating income in a much less back-breaking way than past generations. These are only a few of the many ways that you can monetize your social following and build an online business.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Essentials for a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy

 

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

The Cold, Hard Truth About Social Media Marketing

The Cold, Hard Truth About Social Media Marketing

  

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
 

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Does Your Company Really Need to Focus on SEO?

Does Your Company Really Need to Focus on SEO?

  

Q: Is search engine optimioptimisation important to your digital marketing strategy?
A: Yes and no.

Firstly, let’s break down SEO as I think businesses and marketers have a tendency to overcomplicate it, which results in an overwhelming feeling of "this isn’t for us" or "we don’t have the expertise/time for this." Actually, SEO is quite simple when you dispel the SEO myths and break it down to its core fundamentals: on-site (changes you make to your actual website) and offsite (things you do outside of your own website). On-site SEO is simply the process of making your website search-engine friendly. This includes tactics like optimising your title tags, publishing great content and being strategic about your website’s structure.

Offsite SEO is the process of getting validation from other websites that your website is useful to searchers. The best way to do this is by earning backlinks — in other words, having other websites link to your website (Note: it’s very important that you don’t try to earn what Google calls "unnatural" links — this could result in a penalty if done at scale!)

If that doesn’t make sense, perhaps my blind date analogy will work. Let’s say you’re at work and you see a cute guy or girl that you like. They showered, combed their hair, put on good clothes and perfume, and you like the look of them. What they’ve done is nail their on-site SEO. In other words, how they look on face value to the searcher — or in my analogy, the person looking for love. Naturally, you ask another colleague what the deal is about this mystical human. You learn that they completed their MBA at Harvard, are on the lacrosse team, and they volunteer every summer for a charity you support. What they’ve done is nail their off-page SEO — meaning, other people are telling you they’re great meaning your opinion of them is validated.

In my opinion, the most important component of SEO is on-site SEO. These are things that you can control, and on-site SEO factors quite literally tell Google what your website is about so that they know where to rank it in its search results. As for off-site SEO, it should always be secondary to nailing your on-site SEO. You have control of what’s on your website, so it’s much easier to focus on getting this right first, evaluating the results, and then look into whether off-site SEO is something you should think about doing. When it comes to improving your on-site SEO, the best place to start is by optimising your content for both users and search engines.

Content is important for a few reasons. First, if you don’t have great content, then you have nothing to share on social media, via email marketing, on your website, in ads or on affiliate sites to grow your marketing funnel. These are all core components of digital marketing and are the primary reasons you should be investing in creating content. It benefits your business on so many levels; it’s not just for SEO. When publishing content, the secret to maximising any on-site SEO benefit is being strategic with the keywords you’re using and the way you’re optimising for them on the page itself. Learn how to select the best keywords to drive more traffic, and then make sure you optimise your web page for those keywords to make sure you’re capitalising on all your hard work from an organic search perspective.

But most importantly, creating great content is actually what causes other websites to link to you. Consequently, this improves your off-site SEO metrics because people are more likely to link to your content as a useful resource or reference it as point of discussion. So focusing on great content kills two birds with one stone: it improves your on-site SEO and your off-site SEO. However, there’s a problem: Most people don’t really know what good content is. You may be thinking, “Oh, those people… I’m not one of them.” I’m sorry to break it to you, but you probably are. Head over to your company’s blog or Facebook page now. Do you see any posts that talk about the product or service that you sell? If you do, then you’re probably not doing content right to attract more traffic at the top of the funnel.

Here's one example. I wear glasses. If you’re an online glasses retailer, you most likely create content around new trends or top styles. For example, you might have a blog post titled: “10 Best Glasses Frames for Oval Faces.”Now, this may work for attracting people like me to your website, because I’m already aware of my problem (that I’m short-sighted), and I’m considering my options for solving that problem (I’m thinking about purchasing the solution). However, the largest opportunity for most businesses to scale their traffic and database is to use content to also attract people that don’t know they need your product yet. So, using the same glasses example: what would people that need glasses, but are not aware of this need, search for online?

They may search for things like:

  • Why do I keep getting headaches at work?
  • How to stop squinting at work?
  • Why are my eyes blurry?
  • What are those black dots I see on my eye?

An online glasses retailer that creates great content would already know this after doing buyer persona research and identifying their persona’s challenges. If you’ve not done so already, here’s a great free tool to create buyer personas for your business. They may create a blog post that has a few reasons why you may get headaches at work. Some advice they could give to appeal to this persona at the start of their buyer’s journey could be:

  • Leave your desk every 30 minutes and go for a walk
  • Turn your computer brightness down
  • Look at something in the distance every 10 minutes
  • Get an eye test to check on the health of your eyes

This gives the target buyer the option to solve the problem for themselves, without directly trying to sell to them too early. And in the event that walking, turning the brightness down, and looking in the distance doesn’t work, they may very well get an eye test and then buy some glasses from you after remembering how helpful your content was.

Now this is an exaggerated and accelerated example of someone moving through the three stages of the buyer’s journey: awareness (of problem), consideration (of options) and decision (on which product/service to use). However, the point is, when you create content that helps people and is great quality, they’re much more likely to share it on social media, link to it from their personal blog and tell their colleagues about it. If you can pair that with thorough keyword research and a solid on-site SEO strategy, then you have a much better chance of ranking well in Google’ search results.

So, while SEO is an important part of digital marketing for attracting traffic at the top of the funnel, it’s by no means the most important — SEO works best when you implement it as part of a wider content-led marketing strategy. Focus on creating great content and you’ll see benefits not only on the SEO front, but across all of your digital marketing activities.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Cryptocurrency Exchange Poloniex Set to Delist 17 Altcoins

Cryptocurrency Exchange Poloniex
Set to Delist 17 Altcoins

Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex

recently announced that it will be delisting 17 altcoins, effective May 2, which saw the price of the coins drop significantly.

On Twitter, the U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange said:

On May 2, 2017, the following will be delisted: BBR, BITS, C2, CURE, HZ, IOC, MYR, NOBL, NSR, QBK, QORA, OTL, RBY, SDC, UNITY, VOX [and] XMG.

Since Poloniex’s tweet, the prices of the listed currencies have dropped in value by between 31 percent and 92 percent over the past seven days. The biggest drop in value was C2, which is currently ranked 323rd on CoinMarketCap. Over the last seven days, it fell by 91.08 percent. Boolberry, who was one of the altcoins mentioned to be delisted, and who has had a 64 percent price drop over the past seven days, responded to Poloniex’s tweet., and asked:

“Hey Poloniex, anything we can do to avoid delisting?”

Coin Magi XMG, which suffered a 58 percent drop following the announcement, also reached out to Poloniex via Twitter, stating:

Poloniex Magi is with you for a long time. Last months volume is growing, new developments are in progress. Pls reconsider!!

Many, however, have taken to Twitter to either voice their support in the expected removal of the announced altcoins while others have voiced their anger in how Poloniex have handled the situation.

One person responded by saying:

They opened a company to make money … @Poloniex in the same breathe [sic] screw people over …

While another said:

Lol our hedge group only lost like $250000 in earnings in like 20 minutes … 11 failed transactions trying to close positions!!! All gone.

A third said:

@Poloniex who the F%^& makes these decisions? I see at least 4 with active develop, solid community & solid project that should remain.

Criticisms of Poloniex

In the past, the cryptocurrency exchange has received its critics about its security procedures. Last October, an anonymous security review undertaken by Xavier59, revealed three vulnerabilities after alleging that Poloniex had failed to reply to his emails with information relating to security bugs. Furthermore, last year, the exchange announced that it was suspending its services in New Hampshire due to that state’s digital currency regulations. It added the same suspension to the state of Washington earlier this month for the same reasons.

Of course, while the cryptocurrency exchange is considered one of the biggest, this latest news from Poloniex and its planned delisting of 17 altcoins is not going to do any favours for the exchange. It begs the question, then: is this the start of more delistings from the exchange?

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Bitcoin breakthrough? Russia moots cryptocurrency green light

Bitcoin breakthrough?
Russia moots cryptocurrency green light

  

Cryptocurrencies may be recognized in Russia by 2018,
according to Deputy Finance Minister Aleksey Moiseev.Moiseev says monitoring cryptocurrencies could be an instrumental tool against money laundering, and Bitcoin and other digital currencies could be recognized by next year as the central bank works with the government to develop rules against illegal transfers.

“The state needs to know who at every moment of time stands on both sides of the financial chain,” Moiseev said in an interview, as cited Bloomberg. “If there’s a transaction, the people who facilitate it should understand from whom they bought and to whom they were selling, just like with bank operations.”

Last year the idea of a national cryptocurrency had been considered by the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank, which would see the banning of all other virtual currencies in Russia. The idea had not been discussed by the Kremlin, however, according to Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov at the time. Russian officials had been opposing all virtual currencies, arguing their cross-border nature, transaction anonymity and lack of a supervisory body makes them the perfect vehicle for illegal transactions. In 2014, Moiseev suggested a ban on cryptocurrencies could be introduced because of their use to fund illegal activities such as money laundering, the buying of illicit goods, rendering illegal services or funding terrorism.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

The rise of cryptocurrency (and what the heck it even is)

The rise of cryptocurrency
(and what the heck it even is)

  

Cryptocurrency is making its entrance

and even though a lot of people don’t want anything to do with it, venture capitalist need to pay attention.

Coins unlike the ones you find in your couch

What’s an Initial Coin Offering? While it sounds like the beginning of an intrepid relationship with a metal-loving deity, turns out ICOs have nothing to do with actual coins.

No parents, no rules

ICOs, aka “token sales,” are part of blockchain technology fundraising. An ICO is essentially a crowdfunded cryptocurrency.

Tokens for new cryptocurrency are sold as a fundraising effort for technical development.

Whenever a new cryptocurrency is born, its startup parents arbitrarily decide its worth. After supply and demand smack it around for a bit, participants in the price dynamic testing then settle on a value.

Instead of a central government, the network of participants determines how much the cryptocurrency is worth.

Unlike Initial Public Offerings, acquiring a token does not mean owning stakes in the company.

Why VC firms care now

Although venture capitalists have been giving ICO the cold shoulder, things are starting to look up.

Cryptocurrency investors made bank last year, with some doubling their investments.

Investors see returns more quickly with ICOs due to the liquidity of cryptocurrencies.

Instead of waiting for a startup to playout via an IPO or acquisition, investors can bail if things aren’t going well.

It’s easy to pull funds—or profits if things did work out. All investors have to do is use a cryptocurrency exchange to pull their profits, then use an online service to convert this to real people money.

Who’s afraid of the dark(web)?

If this sounds sketchy, you’re not alone. Traditional investors aren’t really fans of the regulatory uncertainty.

The world of ICO can be full of scams and schemes, with little control over financials and strategy.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and friends are still investigating ICOs. But technically ICOs fall outside legal frameworks.

ICOs don’t offer equity in startups, and only give cryptocurrency discounts before they release them to the exchanges.

Additionally, ICOs are global, not national. Theoretically, anyone can invest on a semi-anonymous level. Oh, and they’re not funded by central authorities or banks either.

Reform and re-adjustment

Criminal activity is now mostly self-regulated within the community via crowdsourcing and external groups.

Some companies are even working to establish Know Your Customer frameworks and make ICOs Anti-Money Laundering compliant.

Those who support ICOs argue traditional methods of investing only benefit those already dominating the system.

Investing outside of the system provides more freedom, especially for startups.

ICOs mean startups can raise funds without worrying too much about looming stakeholders. Non-profits can also benefit if they want to build open source software to raise capital.

Call me ICO-shmael

From their humble beginnings, bitcoins are now worth around $1,120. Bitcoin’s market cap is around twenty billion.

Allegedly, half of that is owned by “bitcoin whales,” a group of less than one thousand people who bought into bitcoin early.

Bitcoin whales have a huge impact on most ICOs. Most live in China, but some investment and hedge funds also have huge stakes in bitcoin. Fortunately, some of the bitcoin whale’s profits are reinvested in innovation. Since 2013, over $270 million has been raised in ICOs. Overall, ICOs are dominating in crowdfunding, with most top raises coming in as cryptocurrency.

Though it’s still kind of murky and mysterious, blockchain technology is starting to be seen as more legitimate. Initial Coin Offerings demonstrate the success of an industry. As more investors become comfortable with ICOs, blockchain innovation will continue creating new possibilities.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Top Altcoins: All You Wanted to Know About Bitcoin’s Contenders

Top Altcoins:
All You Wanted to Know
About Bitcoin’s Contenders

  

Blockchain currency is revolutionising.

Since Satoshi Nakamoto unveiled his cryptocurrency in 2008, we’ve witnessed a proliferation of digital cash companies and codebases. Utilizing his public, distributed ledger, dozens of promising currencies have emerged. Only a select few have proven themselves as true contenders to Bitcoin, however. Here are the top 10 altcoins on CoinMarketCap (note that the list is changing constantly, especially in the tail part, with other altcoins like MaidSafeCoin, Golem and Augur playing musical chairs with others):

Ethereum

J.P Morgan Chase, Microsoft and Intel allied in order to create the fiercest rival to Bitcoin in circulation today: Ethereum. The main purpose of the endeavour was to program binding agreements into the Blockchain itself. This incarnated into the now-popular smart contract feature. Interestingly, Ethereum is not just a currency. It’s a Blockchain platform powered by the Ether cryptocurrency. The New York Times describes the technology as “a single shared computer that is run by the network of users and on which resources are parceled out and paid for by Ether.”

Ripple

Ripple attracted a great deal of venture capital during its inception. The Google-backed altcoin startup managed to pull in upwards of $50 mln from banking institutions, gathering an impressive $90 mln in total funding. Ripple is unique in that it allows for transacting with any unit of value, from fiat currency to frequent flier miles.

“Ripple provides global financial settlement solutions to enable the world to exchange value like it already exchanges information giving rise to an Internet of Value (IoV). Ripple solutions lower the total cost of settlement by enabling banks to transact directly, instantly and with a certainty of a settlement,” reads the company’s copy on their official website. Initially a middling contender, Ripple has gained momentum in the cryptocurrency market, seeing a marked surge earlier this year. In fact, Ripple experienced a 100 percent increase in value within a 24-hour period in late March.

Litecoin

Former Google engineer Charles Lee created this altcoin in an effort to improve upon Bitcoin. Namely, the speed to generate a new block is improved dramatically. Transactions are much faster. By the same token, however, this speed makes Litecoin’s Blockchain larger and more prone to producing orphaned blocks.

Dash

Dash, a combination of the words “digital” and “cash,” is the Internet’s cash-in-hand. Dash is quick. Its transactions are instant. “Your time is valuable. InstantSend payments confirm in less than a second,” Dash claims. By comparison, Bitcoin’s transactions can take up to an hour to process. GPU/CPU mining is no longer cost effective. In order to mine, you’ll need specific hardware, computers known as ASICs to complete Dash’s proof-of-work puzzles.

NEM

NEM is written in Java; built on an entirely new codebase separate and apart from Bitcoin’s open-source code. There are a few other intriguing differences from Bitcoin as well. In NEM, you harvest rather than mine. It’s essentially the same as mining in Bitcoin, only that multiple people profit — albeit in much smaller quantities — from a generated block. NEM introduced the proof-of-importance algorithm to the digital ledger. A user’s wealth and number of transactions are used to timestamp transactions. NEM has seen rapid growth in its valuation since the beginning of 2017 as the altcoin is currently being embraced in Japan.

Ethereum Classic

A parallel Ethereum platform exists and sustains a sizeable usership with a market cap hovering just below $430 mln. Why do two versions of the same platform exist? The Ethereum community fractured when a disagreement over how a technically legal theft of funds should be handled. The majority of users wished to change Ethereum’s code in order to get the lost funds back. A minority believed that Ethereum should not be tampered with or altered by third parties. Even in cases of users exploiting the smart contract feature to trick others, the Blockchain must remain “immutable.” Thus, the minority created the Classic version of Ethereum, which still survives and thrives.

Monero

Monero is geared toward those who desire greater anonymity. The cryptocurrency allows you to “send and receive funds without your transactions being publically visible on the Blockchain.” Transactions are completely untraceable due to Monero’s leveraging of ring signatures. Unfortunately, because of Monero’s emphasis on privacy, it has seen adoption by the darknet and other criminal organisations.

Zcash

Zcash, like Monero, offers greater privacy to users. Unlike Monero, transactions are shielded rather than made completely private. Meaning, the details of the transaction itself, such as the users involved and the amount traded, are hidden. Zcash does this by using a “zero-knowledge” proof that allows for parties to exchange funds without revealing each other’s identity.

Decred

Decred’s primary aim is to focus on “community input, open governance and sustainable funding and development.” The currency melds proof-of-work and proof-of-stake mining algorithms to ensure a minority of users do not own the majority of the funds and that decisions are led by the community rather than a handful of developers or early investors.

PIVX

PIVX stands for Private Instant Verified Transactions. Another open-source decentralised Blockchain currency, it is built upon Bitcoin Core. Like Zcash and Monero, PIVX boasts its heightened privacy and security. “[W]e believe that you have the right to exchange privately and securely, without interference from corporatocracy pressures, governmental influences, prying eyes, and nefarious individuals and movements,” PIVX contends.PIVX is highly volatile, experiencing massive spikes in trading volume and valuation as of March of this year. Again, because of the currency’s emphasis on privacy, PIVX is susceptible to criminal activity.

Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and the altcoins it has spawned, may bring about a new global economy. They allow us to transact in a peer-to-peer fashion, without third-party bodies governing us. Bitcoin introduced the Blockchain, but other developers are quickly improving upon Nakamoto’s idea. Some currencies have focused on speed, as is the case with both Ripple and Litecoin. Others have honed in on privacy, currencies like Zcash going so far as making all transactions private and untraceable. Each altcoin comes with its own strengths and weakness. Surely, we’ll discover more as time goes on. For now, these 10 currencies are at the top. Their fate could turn, however, at a flip of a coin.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Botswana Clinic Now Accepts Bitcoin As Cryptocurrency Takes Root in Africa

Botswana Clinic Now Accepts Bitcoin As Cryptocurrency Takes Root in Africa

  

Bitcoin is gradually taking roots in Africa,

although painfully slow. Nevertheless, there is refreshing news on a daily basis that makes the drive to push Bitcoin penetration in the so-called “hopeless continent” promising. From brave women promoting adoption to startups using Bitcoin and the Blockchain to provide financial inclusion and prevent piracy, the number is endless. It is a great inspiration to the ecosystem and Africa stands to gain a lot from the spread of the crypto revolution.

Meanwhile, in the Southern African city of Gaborone in Botswana, a private clinic known as Sharada Clinic receives Bitcoin as a form of payment for treatment. Run by Dr. Donald Ariisa, it is the only health facility in the whole country that accepts Satoshis.

Cointelegraph couldn't resist talking to Dr. Ariisa and sharing his story with our copious readers. When asked where and how he heard about Bitcoin, he explained that he quite honestly couldn’t remember. "I enjoy watching technology shows, and I guess it was from there," he recalled.

Inspiration

The medical doctor pointed out that what attracted and inspired him to accept Bitcoin as a payment for treatment was the fact that his clinic is focused on adopting technologies that allow for sustainability in offering accessible services. He, therefore, felt Bitcoin was a technology being embraced by the world and the youth, in particular, who may not have fiat money but may be involved in mining Bitcoin or working online for it. It is in that direction that his clinic is striving to give access to those type of users, or anyone who would like to try out his/her Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is freedom

Dr. Ariisa confidently insisted he is not fazed at all by Bitcoin's volatility. "All new technology is volatile, and there will always be early adopters that will prove the technology viable," he remarked. He adds:

"I wish to be part of the birth of a new currency that creates so much freedom for humanity."

The Southern African physician also maintains that very soon he will not be alone in the steps he has taken. It is in his opinion that Bitcoin will become more popular in his country, and more businesses and entities will accept it as a form of payment. "I'm always happy to see the satisfaction when patients pay for their healthcare with Bitcoin," he said excitedly. “My challenge is fully understanding the currency, but then again, we don't even understand the currencies we have been using for years.”

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Top 3 Types of Bitcoin Scams

 

Top 3 Types of Bitcoin Scams

TheMerkle Bitcoin Scam Types

 

It is not hard to see the cryptocurrency world has successfully attracted a lot of nefarious individuals looking to scam others. In fact, it appears there are more bitcoin-related scams showing up every single day. As one would expect, there are a few different types of scams that are more prevalent than others. Never change a winning tactic, according to criminals.

3. PONZI SCHEMES

Virtually every platform offering bitcoin investment should be treated with a lot of scrutinies. While there is a way for people to make money with other’s money  – trading altcoins, for example — no one has successfully done so on a large scale. Trading itself is a very risky business, yet it is also the most legitimate way to increase cryptocurrency holdings over time.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few large-scale investment opportunities, all of which will eventually turn into a scam. Ponzi schemes in the bitcoin world will always attract desperate people and shills, and there is quite an abundance of these programs available right now. Never trust any online platform claiming to let you earn money without doing anything.

2. MINING HARDWARE

The Cryptocurrency world is home to some great innovation, especially where mining hardware is concerned. Gone are the days of FPGA mining, as it is all about ASICs right now. There are quite a few companies who claim to manufacture hardware, and most of them will offer pre-sale discounts to anyone investing in that company. It is not surprising a lot of these companies offering pre-sales are complete scams, as most of them do not even have any ASIC research and development lab whatsoever.

One of the more recent scams revolving around bitcoin mining hardware goes by the name of Foxminers. The company provides no evidence of their mining hardware or research. Companies like these often trick people into depositing funds in the hopes of getting a cheaper new bitcoin miner. However, they will continue to delay shipping and eventually run off with the money.

1. CLOUD MINING

Perhaps the biggest industry of bitcoin scams comes in the form of companies claiming to run a cloud mining operation. One of the biggest cryptocurrency cloud mining scams to date goes by the name of HashOcean, a company that successfully paid miners for over a year until they finally disappeared and could no longer maintain paying out users accordingly.

Every cloud mining venture should be looked at very closely, as the number of legitimate companies can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Even then, ensuring a return on investment is virtually impossible due to volatile bitcoin prices and mining difficulty increases. Cloud mining can be somewhat lucrative if one is lucky, yet directly buying the cryptocurrency in question and holding onto it for the same duration as the mining contract will usually generate better returns.

Chris Corey CMO MarketHive

   April 28, 2017

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member