Image source: Getty Images
Investors lost over $4 billion to OneCoin leaders.
Cryptocurrency investing can be an adventure. There are over 12,000 coins to choose from, the market can post dramatic gains or losses in a single day, and crypto projects range from the world-changing to the ridiculous.
Volatility is part and parcel of crypto investing. Getting caught up in cryptocurrency scams shouldn’t be. Sadly, crypto’s short history is already littered with stories of fraudsters, and OneCoin was one of the biggest. OneCoin’s leaders stole more than $4 billion from investors around the world over several years.
What was OneCoin?
OneCoin was a Ponzi scheme posing as a cryptocurrency. Launched by self-styled cryptoqueen Ruja Ignatova in 2014, the scam attracted millions of investors over a two-to-three year period. Through flashy launches and catchy messaging, the glamorous Ruja convinced people in 175 countries to buy packages of educational materials and OneCoin tokens. She told people they were going to get rich and made them believe they were a part of something big. Sadly, the “something big” turned out to be a big scam.
OneCoin claimed to be a cryptocurrency, but it never even had a blockchain behind it. It used multi-level marketing (MLM) to…
