We are all getting used to the idea of cryptocurrencies such as the attention getting Bitcoin and Ethereum, but there are also weird ones such as Shibu Inu which was started largely as a joke. The creator made hundreds of trillions of coins, so that they can only ever be worth a tiny fraction of a cent each.

To increase their value, various organisations try to buy up Shibu Inu coins and burn them i.e. destroy them thereby increasing the value of the remaining coins.

People even have burn parties where they all contribute some coins and communally destroy them.

Is that Weird? Yes!

This isn’t a scam – it’s all perfectly legal and people knowingly destroy the coins.

But, scammers want to join in of course – to make money at other people’s expense.

A scam email tells a story of people working together to burn Shibu Inu but first of all making millions of dollars.

They say you just have to follow the instructions to buy lots of Shibu Inu coins then join  2 projects where you will make hundreds to thousands of dollars each day as robots automatically trade cryptocurrency for you.

Then you donate some coins and it all gets burned, except for the dollars you made and hence keep.

This is a scam.

By getting people to buy lots of Shibu Inu coins, the scammers hope to push up the value so they can then sell theirs and make a profit. This makes the price drop and the recent purchasers lose money.

That’s the classic pump and dump scam.

You may choose to buy Shibu Inu as an investment or just to take part in the growth of cybercurrency, but don’t join anything advertised by cold calls or spam emails as these are almost always perpetrated by criminals.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.