The Rise of Crypto-Currency and the Fraud that Follows
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As someone who’s always kept my ear to the ground on crypto currency, it’s been a wild ride seeing this past year. Bitcoin surged, and alt-coins became main-stream. Elon Musk calls himself the Dogefather, which relates to Dogecoin and how he, other influencers, and surprisingly…Reddit has been able to help the meme-coin surge from less than 1 cent, to, at the time of writing, 38 cents. With crypto becoming mainstream, it was also inevitable that cyber-crime would rise as well, with new ways to take advantage of everyday people who don’t research what they’re buying as much because someone with a blue checkmark said that it’s worth buying.
In comes Moonscope:
I first came across Moonscope on TikTok from an “influencer” T Steezy.
Example 1: T Steezy (@tsteezytv) Official TikTok | Watch T Steezy’s Newest TikTok Videos – TikTok | https://archive.org/download/moonscope/tsteezy-1.mp4 – WebArchive in case TikTok gets deleted
Example 2: T Steezy (@tsteezytv) Official TikTok | Watch T Steezy’s Newest TikTok Videos – TikTok | https://archive.org/download/moonscope/tsteezy-2.mp4 – WebArchive in case TikTok gets deleted
Example 3: T Steezy (@tsteezytv) Official TikTok | Watch T Steezy’s Newest TikTok Videos – TikTok | https://archive.org/download/moonscope/tsteezy-3.mp4 – WebArchive in case TikTok gets deleted
In one of the videos, the influencer says that him talking about the coin was not as a promotion, it’s just something he thought was going to take off. That wouldn’t be so far fetched if his videos wasn’t just as old as the coin. For reference, the domain name for the “coin” was created on the 27th, and the first “not promo” was posted on the 29th.
Domain Registration: Google Domains – Find out who owns this domain | WebArchive Version
It’s very clear from looking at the coin that it was suspect from the beginning. At the time of writing, the largest token holder had 90% of the total supply, which has dropped significantly to 40% after that fact was called out by various users on TikTok. MoonScope (MOONSCOPE) Token Tracker | BscScan
As you can see with all of those tweets that were retweeted by the “official” Moonscope account, all the accounts are brand new, and they have have tweeted gibberish, or just random stuff that doesn’t make sense compared to actual users.
So, who exactly is Moonscope? Unfortunately that’s unclear because (and this is another HUGE red flag), the domain has contact privacy enabled, so we can’t see the person or company behind Moonscope. The only information we have about it is who they say they are, and we can already see from the information gathered so far that we can’t take what they, or anyone connected to it say at face value.
Moonscape Domain Contact Information
So what can be done about this? Report any influencers you see sharing this scam-coin to the SEC at this link: https://acadia.sec.gov/TcrExternalWeb/faces/pages/accept.jspx (you can tell it’s a legit link because of the .gov ending, but if you are weary of clicking links (as you should be, Google SEC Violation reporting and you’ll get brought to the same page). Please report influencers promoting it to the SEC as this violates the law, and it causes harm to people who don’t know not to trust stuff like this, and they try to buy into it to get rich quick because someone with a blue checkmark told them to. The SEC also does take this stuff seriously: SEC.gov | Two Celebrities Charged With Unlawfully Touting Coin Offerings .
