One trader was able to multiply his capital by participating in ICO on decentralized platform. Another one got Bitcoin for participating in the experiment. But, there are also those who earn and have problems with the law. The crypto-industry is still in the development stage. Both on stock exchanges and in the field of regulation, there are many vulnerabilities that can used by ordinary traders and hackers for profit.
For example, on July 13, an unknown trader made more than $500,000 in cryptographic currency in half an hour. The initial placement of BZRX tokens on a decentralized UniSwap site helped him to do this. It works on the basis of Ethereum - this is the key point. The trader carried out a spam attack on the coin network when the BZRX launched. Thanks to this, other users were not able to take part in the token mail immediately, only late. During this time, the unknown bought almost 2 million BZRX coins, spending less than $150 thousand on them. Within an hour after the delay went down, the trader started selling crypto at an inflated price to clients of exchange. Thus, he was able to get 2,030 ETH or about $500,000. Another $50,000 unknown left in BZRX tokens.
A similar story took place in June. Entrepreneur Alistair Milne made an experiment on Twitter to check how long it takes to crack a cryptocurrency wallet. To do this, Milne created an address to which he translated 1 BTC, and then started sharing tips with his subscribers on how to access the cryptocurrency. The entrepreneur broke the key to the address with the coin into several parts and published riddles, the answers to which were to lead the experiment participants to win. But before Milne gave the last clue, he discovered that the BTC was missing from his wallet. Later it turned out that the experiment interfered by a user with hacking skills. He was able to find out the rest using the selection method or special services that help restore forgotten keys to cryptocurrency wallets. It took the hacker 44 hours, for which he earned about $10,000.
There are those who made a fortune in a more legal way. One of them was an American trader, Richard Dobats. Since 2017, he has turned $15,000 borrowed funds into $1 million trading securities and options using the Robinhood application. But, in this case the success was temporary, it continued until the crisis in 2020. Due to the collapse of the stock market, Dobats' fortune turned from $1 million to $7 thousand in a short period of time. Moreover, the trader had to take another loan of $30 thousand to pay off the debts.
Hacking skills played a key role in the first two stories. But it is impossible to categorize these cases as fraudulent. But, in the next two situations, the case has come to the official charges. For example, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, a resident of American Houston received $1.1 million in state support provided in connection with the Covid-19 pandemic.The money was to used to pay the salaries of employees - this stated in the application sent to the bank for a loan. But the investigation revealed that the company had no salary arrears, and part of the money received from the authorities spent on cryptocurrency.
Another controversial enrichment considered by the US court the day before yesterday, July 15. According to the FBI, the American Douglas Kim attracted millions of dollars in the crypto. Since 2017, he has offered his friends to lend him money for a "secure investment". Kim offered to invest in digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. In this way, he raised more than $4.5 million. But, the money was not spent on cryptocurrencies. Instead, the defendant lost some of it at an online casino. Now he faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
