Million Token Scam

I occasionally report on crypto scams, partly because of a general personal interest in the phenomenon, and partly as a warning to my fellow crypto brothers and sisters to stay vigilant. Unfortunately it's a given that any new technology or marketplace will be overrun by those who want to make use of the opportunity to get rich quick while said technology and marketplace are still unregulated and not well understood.

If you've been active in the crypto-sphere as long as I have (coming up to 5 years now), you've seen thousands of scams and pyramid schemes rob billions of dollars from unsuspecting newcomers who don't want to get left behind. Think back, for example, to when Ethereum launched and the whole ICO (Initial Coin Offering) hype happened. Hundreds, maybe thousands of white papers flooded the internet from new tokens built on the Ethereum blockchain, enticing persons and companies into investing in an idea for a coin. Yes, an idea for a coin, not an actual existing coin that's proven its utility. Some of the scams lasted for a while, enabling early investors to make a lot of money, further encouraging future scammers.

Remember Bitconnect? Initially released in February 2016, it was a high-yield investment program generating extremely high returns for early investors, and did so for almost two years. Of course it eventually turned out to be a pyramid scheme; after the platform administrators closed the earning platform on January 16, 2018, and refunded the users' investments in BCC (Bitcoin Cash) following a 92% price crash, confidence was lost and the value of the coin plummeted to below $1 from a previous high of nearly $500. If you started your crypto-journey after that, I highly recommend you look into Bitconnect's meteoric rise and fall: $3 Billion Dollars, 2 Years, Running From The Law. Bitconnect was a pure scam, one of thousands abusing newcomers' lack of awareness. We've seen the same happen in the NFT space by the way, so my advice is to tread cautiously.

Million Token from popular YouTuber (and millionaire) TechLead, isn't a full-on scam, but what I would call a semi scam. What makes this one kind of special and relevant is that it's been done in the relatively new DeFi space, which we all understand is the way of the future. The reason why it's a scam at all is that the project was started with a bold lie. Unfortunately most people who are attracted to cryptocurrencies, see it as a way to make some, or a lot of money, and not primarily to become involved in a revolutionary movement with the aim to decentralize power by decentralizing money. This mindset of wanting to become rich quick is expertly exploited by scammers who are inflicted with the very same mindset. And TechLead's Million Token is the school-book example of this.

First, TechLead repeats in all of his videos that he's a millionaire. I can't verify if this was true before he launched his own token, but it's clear that he at least made a big effort to portray himself as a millionaire. He is a millionaire now, after he has withdrawn more than $3 million from several wallets associated with his Million Token liquidity pools. Now, what is Million Token? What does it do? What problem does it solve? Well, nothing and none. Million Token's main selling-point is that there will never be more than 1 million tokens, each worth at least 1 dollar. Here's where the lie enters this scam; the lie with which he started the whole thing is at least an indication that he wasn't a millionaire before.

You see, in the video where TechLead announced his new token, he claimed that he put in a cool million dollars of his own money to guarantee the token's base-value of 1 dollar. This isn't true. Thanks to some investigative work by several fellow YouTubers we have definitive proof that TechLead only invested $50 thousand dollar. He's admitted this later of course. He had to. The rest of the money needed to guarantee the token's value, $950 thousand, came from the people, a lot them his own fans, who bought the token. And it has to be said in his defense that he never cashed in the million dollars that provide the token with a guaranteed minimum value. It's still a scam though, as many have bought the token at or near its peak-value of more than $220, and they now face a huge loss with the token valued at $6.5 at the time of writing. TechLead has cashed in more than $3 million over the backs of those who lost money on their investment.

I've mentioned how this project is a school-book example of scammers preying on the "get rich quick" mindset, so I've included the launch video as exhibit A; just listen how TechLead primes his audience by upping the urgency of this "opportunity," how you'll be missing out on a once in a lifetime chance if you let this slip by, and how he carefully keeps the SEC of his back by never calling it an investment, but a "social experiment" instead. He of course uses the mandatory graphics of a rocket-ship and the moon as well. I've also included the video by SomeOrdinaryGamers who did a splendid online investigation showing all the evidence on how TechLead became a millionaire in the space of a couple of months. Watch both videos, as they'll paint a very clear picture of a scam that's done properly by a smart person. It's not a stupid scam, and it's also not a complete rug-pull where the founder disappears with all the money, never to be heard of again. But he did scam his audience, leaving all of them, save the very early investors, holding the bag while cashing in millions for himself.

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