2024-6-10 15:00 |
Brave New Coin is of the honestly held opinion that cloud mining websites BlueskyMiner.com, Sunminer.com, X.CGmining.com (also know as CGMining or CGMiner) and GlobaleCrypto.com are scams. The scams are similar to others from Fancy Crypto, GBitcoins, HappyMiner, and AMGCrypto. There is a long history of cloud mining scams in the crypto space, and after conducting thorough due diligence we believe Bluesky Miner, Suuminer.com, X.CGmining.com and GlobaleCrypto.com are all illegitimate.
Brave New Coin is also of the honestly held opinion that Tophash.net is a scam. The site has existed with zero traffic for several years, then began heavily promoting via press releases in early September, claiming it has been in operation for several years. Parking domains like this is a common tactic in the cloud mining scam space.
Brave New Coin also believes the following ‘cloud mining’ websites are also scams.
simpleminers currencyminer bluestoneminers sfcrypto.com gemminers.com kkminer.com gdmining.com Astmining.com Marmining.com Slomining.com Chainmine.org Cgmdminer.com (CGMD) Heliosfund.io Coolcatcoins.com Hashminer.pro Ecosminer.com Easymining.cc Kumining.pro Byteminings.com Background To A ScamSunminer launched its scam in November 2023. X.CGmining.com and GlobaleCrypto.com launched their scams in early August. In terms of the others on the above list, as of the 17th of May the Gbitcoins site has disappeared, along with its victim’s funds, AMGCrypto disappeared around the 30th of May. HappyMiner disappeared early in July. Fancy Crypto is still operating.
If you want to get your crypto to work for you then you can earn interest from players like Nexo and Crypto.com – check the current interest rates here. Or you could investigate crypto trading bots, many of which have copy trading tools – so you’ll be making the same trades as expert traders. We would never recommend cloud mining as the probability you will be scammed is almost 100%.
We advised x.CGMining.com we believed it is a scam and received the following response. “CGmining is headquartered in the UK. Company information can be found at www.gov.uk/United Kingdom Companies Register Inquiry System. We have data centers all over the world, and all mining capabilities are supported by physical mining machines. We have millions of registered members, and we bring them great rewards. Therefore, CGmining can assure you that we are a reliable and legitimate company.” The only true statement here is that there likely is a company registration in the UK as the UK’s companies office is notorious for allowing fake company registrations.
X.CGMining.com is a fairly standard mining scam, as is Fancy Crypto and all the others mentioned above. A cheap-looking website with spelling and grammar errors and zero contact information, along with claims of millions of satisfied customers and multiple facilities operating worldwide.
It is very similar to another recent cloud mining scam from Star-Miner, and earlier iterations of the same thing from IDMining, USDminer and Muxminer. We also believe that the same criminal enterprise is operating some of these scam sites simultaneously.
Importantly, many of these scam sites often do pay out on small investments. This is to lure the victim deeper in. For example, a $20 investment might return $30 in a matter of days, but when the victim ups their investment to $1000, suddenly there are problems with their account that require more cash to fix – and on the scam goes.
In early May BNC was approached from two different anonymous gmail addresses and asked to place an article about about Gbitcoins on our website. This is the same as the approach we received from Star-Miner in 2022. When we asked for a simple verification of company details from Star-Miner the sender replied “We’re a legitimate company. We’re legal. As long as you agree to publish our article, we will pay you immediately, don’t worry at all.”
Stepping back even further, the entire Star-Miner operation was almost identical to another cloud mining scam ‘Hashbiter.com’ which Brave New Coin identified in 2021. The Star-Miner and Hashbiter.com websites are no longer active but their set up was the same. We were approached from an anonymous gmail address and asked to place a press release or article. When advised we would not do so because it was a scam the anonymous writer said “If you expose us on your website, I will sue you.” When asked in what jurisdiction they would be bringing the case they responded “Please help us put a press release on your website, and I’ll give you money, I’m not going to press charges.” Despite it being an obvious scam, dozens of crypto “news” sites have already published articles about Gbitcoin. The screen grab from AHREFs shows just the sites with domain ratings of over 50, but there are many more.
Source – AHREFs.
Other Crypto Cloud Mining ScamsAnother scam from TRX mining took a different approach – targeting YouTube influencers and offering to sponsor their channels in return for a positive review of their fake cloud mining projects. Brave New Coin’s YouTube channel received a version the following email from over 20 different anonymous gmail addresses during December 2021: “Hi dear, I watched your channel is great, our company decided to sponsor your channel, leave your telegram or WhatsApp, let’s talk about prices and details.”
YouTube influencers are the target promotional channel for several TRX mining scams.The instructions for making the video includes the following sentence: “Your video can not include the words like: illegal, scammer etc. Sentence like:” I’m not familiar to this site, be carefully to deposit.” is prohibited. All the negative words are prohibited.” Of course they are, because nobody likes all the negative words.
Scams like those above are just the latest iteration of get rich quick scams targeting crypto users. In October 2021 Brave New Coin investigated USDminer and Muxminer. At the time USDminer claimed to have been operating since 2016 and had over 36 million registered users. However, the USDminer website was only registered on the 23rd of September 2021 – so 36 million registered users in three weeks was simply not credible. As at the 22nd of December 2021, USDminer was still live – claiming 38 million registered users and offering lots of Christmas deals. USDminer.com is now offline.
Star-Miner claimed to have launched in 2014 and according to its chat support people, the reason there is no record of it online prior to this is because “This is our new domain name”. When asked for their previous domain name they responded “I can’t provide it to you temporarily, thank you.”
Muxminer’s scam was a little different to the typical cloud mining scam, in that it was supposedly selling mining rigs. Muxminer claimed it was sponsored by Kraken, but Kraken confirmed to Brave New Coin it had no association with Muxminer and was not a sponsor. Muxminer also claimed to be sponsored by tech giants Honeywell – but the scammers operating the chat support at Muxminer appear to have got confused about their own lies – and denied being sponsored by Honeywell in a live chat, at the same time as the Kraken and Honeywell logos appeared as sponsors on their homepage.
Confusion at Muxminer chat support.
Both USDminer and Muxminer embarked on aggressive advertising campaigns and were actively supported in their efforts by multiple crypto media outlets, as Gbitcoins is now.
Dating apps are another channel used by cloud mining scams – as this post on Upwork revealsThe following is a guide to identifying a crypto-mining scam.
How to spot a cloud mining scamBrave New Coin began investigating cloud mining scams in March 2021 when people claiming to be from XMiner and Miner Plus asked to run a sponsored article about their cloud mining services. Over the course of our investigation we found that cloud mining scams such as Hashbiter, Xminer, Miner Plus, Pageminer, Nhash, Muxminer, USDminer, Star Miner, and now Gbitcoins all exhibit some combination of the following red flags.
Their locations don’t exist XMiner claimed its physical address was 1809 Hall Street Las Vegas, Nevada 89101. There is no such address. Miner Plus claimed its physical address was 217 Summit Boulevard Birmingham, AL 35243. This address is real and is occupied by a Trader Joe’s supermarket. Pageminer says it is based in Iceland. The ‘Iceland’ lie is common in these frauds as scam victims think Iceland is very cold, which is good for mining, and has abundant low cost electricity. Nhash claims a head office in London and mining locations in Iceland, Switzerland and Russia.The Miner Plus HQ address is actually a Trader Joe’s supermarket.
Years in business Miner Plus said it had been operating “for over five years”. CuteStat showed the site was “1 month and 3 weeks old.” XMiner claimed it had been operating since 2016. Data from AHREFs showed the site only began generating backlinks in early February 2021. Nhash claims to have been operating for 3 years, but as mentioned above, its website is only a few weeks old. USDminer says it has been in operation since 2016, but like Nhash, its website is only a few weeks old. Star-Miner claims to have been operating since 2014. Data from GoDaddy shows it was registered in February 2022. Number of satisfied customersXMiner claimed over 600,000 users. Miner Plus claimed “Over 1200,000 Users” (whatever that means). Hashbiter claimed over 700,000 investors. USDminer says it has over 36 million registered users. Star Miner claims “more than a 3 million users worldwide.” In our experience, these customer aquisition numbers are completely unrealistic in the time frames these sites have been live.
USDminer claims to have registered 36 million users on a website that is less than a month old.
Their staff & customers don’t existThe Miner Plus management team on the ‘About Us’ page were all fake. Director of Investments Mike Katz, for example, was actually “Cool Business Man In Black Suit” from the Storyblocks.com photo library.
The fake Miner Plus management team
Mike Katz is actually “Cool Business Man” from a stock image library
The management team featured on the XMiner About Us page were actual people from a real company (not XMiner), who confirmed to Brave New Coin that their identities were hijacked and they were taking legal advice.
No details of the management team featured on the Pageminer website exist anywhere else on the internet. Nhash and Hashbiter have no staff profiles at all – a typical scenario on the ‘about us’ page of mining scam websites.
Star-Miner lists people who don’t exist as its CTO and COO – and curiously, has its fake ‘COO’ Nigel Nevin also appearing as a satisfied customer in its testimonial section – alongside a picture of equally satisfied customer Jennifer Aniston who is identified as housewife “Lorelei”.
Fake staff and customers at Star Miner
Website backlinksMiner Plus and XMiner had few, if any, naturally occuring backlinks to their their websites. Instead, data from AHREFs showed that both websites went from zero backlinks to hundreds over the course of a week in early February. All appeared to be paid for.
Miner Plus backlink profile from zero to hundreds in a few days.
XMiner backlinks profile shows almost identical rapid growth.
Data from AHREFs shows that both Pageminer and Nhash also went from zero to hundreds of backlinks in a matter of days. Muxminer, USDminer and Star-Miner show similar growth curves.
Their offer is not realisticOne offer (since deleted) was for a customer to deposit $2000 for 30 days and have $2680 returned. Compounding monthly this would equate to an annual APY of 408%. This is an interest rate far in excess of what other legitimate crypto investment schemes are offering, but is typical of a scam.
Identical website constructionAlthough Miner Plus and XMiner claimed to be separate organizations based on opposite sides of the US, their websites were both built using the same template – “CryptoCoin – Bitcoin Crypto Currency Wallet and Mining Template” – available from Theme Forest for $15.
Media responsibilityBrave New Coin is approached frequently by advertisers who, after conducting due diligence on, we decide to err on the side of caution and not run their campaigns. Bad actors continue to make up a large part of the cryptocurrency world and their activity has picked up significantly during the year.
We do our best to weed them out but we would not go so far as to say that no scam ads have ever appeared on our website. Our advertising feed for the Brave New Coin website and You Tube channel comes via Google Ads and we have identified scams in these ads in the past – and written about them.
In the case of XMiner, Miner Plus and other scams mentioned above, the following media outlets have run articles, sponsored posts and press releases about one or other of these organizations (and this is not a definitive list).
Bitcoinist.com
AMB Crypto
Live Bitcoin News
NewsBTC
Coindoo
BTC Manager
Tech Bullion
CoinPedia
E-Crypto News
Ripple News
CryptoVerse
Tron Weekly
Blockchain.News
WorldCoinIndex
CryptoNewsz
CoinGape
Cryptopolitan
While some of these media outlets did mark the post as sponsored with a disclaimer, most did not.
This is a timely reminder to anyone considering investing in any aspect of the cryptocurrency world that you must conduct your own due diligence – even if you are getting your information from media you trust (we include ourselves in this). Bottom line? Crypto scams are at an all time high, so tread carefully.
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