Bitcoin chancers go all out for Dragons Den moguls – and they fall for it! (or do they?)

We have all seen the trail of destruction left by Bitcoin and other digital asset chancers over the last ten years.

Everything from the Middle Eastern snake oil salesmen who morphed from illegal gambling and binary options boiler rooms operated by semi-literate crime gangs who are lower down the evolutionary ladder than most of humanity from their dusty shacks in Tel Aviv to the ICO scams operated by the very same people, and the more sophisticated cheats who operated ‘exchanges’ that do not really exist, on which real money can be exchanged for a currency that does not exist, enabling the owners to run away with no recourse.

We have all seen the Silk Road and MtGox train wrecks a few years ago, and nothing but rebellious mavericks with impulsive personality disorders repeating the word ‘crypto’ – itself a word which does not exist in any language – several times per sentence, hyping up a nefarious, anarchistic movement which in many cases is here today, gone tomorrow.

There have been many FX brokers which have caught a serious cold too. Just two years ago, two brokers offering cryptocurrency CFDs lost over $57 million in one week, which was kept very quiet as the egg on the face of both of them had to be wiped off by shareholders.

FinanceFeeds continues to maintain that cryptocurrency in most of its applications remains a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes and that it should be avoided.

However, over the last few months, a really odd direction has begun to take place in that most banks, exchanges and even central governments – the European Union and China – have begun to go very rapidly down the cryptocurrency route.

There is media propaganda everywhere about it, and even though we all have seen the past decade’s worth of filth emanating from the cryptocurrency underworld, large entities are taking to it with almost messianic verve.

Yesterday evening was no exception, and popular television show Dragon’s Den, in which extremely successful businesspeople who own vast and well known empires are pitched new ideas in just 5 minutes by entrepreneurs, after which the ‘Dragons’ have to decide if they are going to invest or not, has been targeted by scammers, the show’s name being used falsely as a fraudulent attempt by a Bitcoin scammer to gain credibility.

Dragons Den did not endorse this Bitcoin fraud, nor did they endorse any of the others that scammers have tried to associate with Dragon’s Den over the years.

The two non-entities who have never worked in the electronic trading industry and call themselves ‘software engineers’ just like all of these Bitcoin chancers do (I am a proper MCSE/Cisco systems engineer, I have spent all my career since 1991 developing trading systems for banks and the likes of PwC and I can tell you most Bitcoin people are not software engineers, just like most ‘FinTech’s are not really technological – Ed).

Today’s report in a low end marketing publication told of a low rent display of superlative-infused nonsense involved Ms Meaden and Mr Jones – both people that nobody can fool – fighting each other off with a metaphorical stick to invest in BitcoinDigital.

The equally absurd news report that came after it was encouraging people to trade on this unknown quantity, saying that ‘you can make profit easily’. I’d like to see what the FCA, a regulator which frowns upon crypto trading, would have to say about junior hacks giving out such poor financial advice without a license to do so.

“The idea was simple: allow the average person the opportunity to invest in Bitcoin, even if they have absolutely no prior investment, blockchain or technology experience” said the report this morning.

“The user simply makes an initial deposit in to the platform, usually £250 or more and then the platform will allow you to make trades when it detects the value of Bitcoin will rise or fall due to multiple factors that influence price. All you have to do is fill out a short form to get access to the system” said the news report.

Please wait whilst I scratch my chin.

These two ‘entrepreneurs’ intend to make money from their platform by charging a small commission on only the profits a user generates. They asked the Dragons for £750,000 for 25% of the company, valuing the company at £3,000,000.

BitcoinDigital’s assertion is that Deborah Meade asked them “If your system automatically makes profitable trades with Bitcoin, why not just keep it for yourself and get rich?”.

“Good question”, replied one of Bitcoin Digital’s founders. “Simply put, we are just programmers and we only have close to £40,000 between us both so far from the system. If we manage to get funding from the Dragons, we can invest a larger sum of money and gain returns faster.”

Heard it before? So have I.

After her initial deposit of £250 was made, the platform went to work by automatically placing limit orders on her investment, which started buying low and selling high. Within 3 minutes, she had successfully increased her initial funds to £273.18. That’s a £23.18 profit in 3 minutes (almost 10%).

“I’ve heard about Bitcoin and the massive amount of money you can make from it, but I’ve never bought any. I had no idea where to start. This was really easy, I can just use my credit card to deposit money and it buys them for me.” Deborah said according to the BitcoinDigital scammers.

This is absolutely unbelievable. Deborah Meaden, a lady with incredible expertise in business, who immediately sees through all potential flops would never do such a thing.

Ms Meaden is aware of these fraudsters attempting to use her good name to their nefarious ends and has published a full statement disassociating herself with them and their claims on her personal website.

Ms Meaden didn’t fall for it at all, because it did not happen. BitcoinDigital is using Dragon’s Den’s name to try to add credibility, just like other cryptocurrency scammers have tried to use celebrity business people such as Simon Cowell in the past.

According to this false report, all of the Dragons were immediately impressed by how easy it was to make money. The platform handles all of the trades automatically and because the price of Bitcoin is quite volatile, there are numerous opportunities to profit.

“Bitcoin is so hot right now and if somebody like Deborah, no offence Deborah, can make money from it, I’m all in. I need to have a piece of this. I’m going to make a huge offer, £500,000 for 25% of the company.” Peter Jones said. No he did not say that at all.

If you can sell this snake oil to Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden, and they believe that this is the fast route to profit having tried a weighted demo account, and they believe that once a live account is opened they won’t lose their money, you can sell it to Warren Buffett.

“Before the entrepreneurs even had a chance to respond to Jones’s offer, Deborah Meaden interrupted with a smile on her face and said: “I’ve gone up to £398.42 after just 8 minutes” said the false report.

Yes. And my hair is green. This whole thing is fake, to add credibility to Bitcoin by associating it with business moguls.

At this point, the report said that all 5 Dragons were eager to invest. A bidding war quickly emerged between Touker Suleyman and Peter Jones. Suleyman improved on Jones’ offer, by £1 million for 25%, whereas Jones hit back with a revised offer of £2 million for 20%, effectively valuing the company at £10 million.

This should demonstrate exactly how powerful selling the crypto dream really is. Especially when the reports about it that associate it with Dragons Den are fake.

Our hope is that Dragons Den and its producers put a stop to BitcoinDigital using their good name illegally.