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In 2021, HyperVerse, then “HyperFund,” promised investors heaven. Steven Reece Lewis, the CEO of the Australian crypto fund, explained in a series of promotional videos how investors would increase their holdings by 0.5 percent daily. HyperVerse would use a virtual world in which trading takes place with virtual money and NFTs, i.e. unique virtual objects.
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Several thousand private individuals took advantage of their opportunity. Some did so immediately with all their savings. But it’s now clear that HyperVerse was a scam. Pure fraud. Initially, investors received their promised profits, but the flow of money soon stopped. Typical of a so-called pyramid scheme, in which the contributions of new investors are used to pay existing investors. However, since this requires constant exponential growth, such a pyramid scheme is doomed to fail.
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The HyperVerse website still exists, but there isn’t much left of the crypto fund. Even CEO Steven Reece Lewis is nowhere to be found. In fact, the man probably never existed. The Guardian comes to this conclusion based on its own research.
Some investigative journalists from the British newspaper tried to delve into Reece Lewis’s past, but quickly got to the bottom of it. In one of his videos, the man suggested that he had more than ten years of experience at Adobe and Goldman Sachs. But it turns out that no one at these companies has ever heard of Steven Reece Lewis. And the universities of Leeds and Cambridge, where Reece Lewis is said to have studied according to his CV, do not know anything about his existence. Unfortunately, the realization comes too late: investors may have lost their money forever.
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HyperVerse is not an isolated case. Crypto fraud has become increasingly common in recent years. This is primarily because there is little or no regulation in the crypto market. And it remains a relatively new concept: Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, only came onto the market fifteen years ago. Many people are unsure how it works, making them more vulnerable to scammers.
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“Invest in knowledge”
So if you really want to invest in crypto coins, it is important to be aware of these dangers. “Investing in crypto coins can certainly be safe, but you have to know what you are doing,” says Gwenn Busseniers, the founder of Cryptoschool.be. “You can’t just compare it to the normal financial world. A minimum amount of self-study is really necessary. Only purchase Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies through recognized crypto exchanges and never respond to advertisements encouraging investing via social media.”
Levi Haegebaert, crypto expert and author of the book Bitcoin for Beginners, agrees. “When starting crypto, invest in knowledge first and only then start buying. It is important that you always remain in control of everything you purchase. Companies like HyperVerse that promise to simply deposit money and let it take care of itself cannot be trusted. As with other investments, when talking about guaranteed profits, you should be careful. Because as always, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t true.”
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