Hold up, this isn’t as ironic as it first sounds. We know the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are all over cryptocurrencies at the moment. They want to encourage taxation, regulation and of course consumer safety. With many such authorities taking steps towards harsh regulation, we have always passed comment on how we believe the answer to our problems is education. In short, you can spend time and money to block scams, fake ICO’s etc but this will just drive crime underground, making it hard to detect. Through education however, users are equipped with the skills they need to find scams and learn how to avoid them/report them. It’s a liberal view, but its something that could really make a difference to how people interact with cryptocurrencies, overall, it could make us all safer internet users. The SEC, seem to have taken some aspects of this onboard, maybe they have been checking Crypto Daily out, perhaps we’ve inspired them? Check this out- https://www.howeycoins.com/index.html This is a website created by the SEC to promote a fake ICO. The website is fully equipped with a fake whitepaper, fake testimonials, fake contact details and even a fake team.

“We anticipate OVER 1% daily returns, with DOUBLE 2% returns on Tier 1 investors in pre-ICO stage secured purchases. The average registered coin return over a two-month period in 2017 was an amazing 72%. Based on market conditions, including record-setting prospects in both the digital asset and travel industries, we expect surpassing that BEFORE the Tier 2 offering closes. HODL! We also forecast a minimum growth rate of between 7% to 15% annualized, making HoweyCoins attractive for long-term investment. In addition, HoweyCoins can serve as a GUARANTEED hedge against inflation and market loss.”

This little extract has been taken from the pages testimonial section, have a read of it, it sounds familiar right? To cut a long story short, you can go on to buy coins in the HoweyCoins ICO, however when you choose to do this, you are redirected to a webpage on the SEC website, titled; “If you responded to an investment offer like this, you could have been scammed – HoweyCoins are completely fake!” Check out the page for yourself, if you don’t fancy navigating to it through the HoweyCoins page: https://www.investor.gov/howeycoins The webpage produced by the SEC gives users a really solid description of scam ICO warning signs, the page uses a ‘red flag’ system to highlight some aspects of the HoweyCoins page that very much relate to real scams that you will find when browsing the ICO-sphere, so to speak. Without going into too much detail because of course, you can check the SEC page out for yourself, we think this is a really novel approach towards providing people with an education. Okay, so us reporting this maybe takes the edge a way and some of the surprise when you go to buy HoweyCoins and are then told it is fake, however, this still shows off a concrete example of how easy it is to fall victim of a scam and of course, how easy it is for people to set up scams that are masked by professional looking websites etc. Well done SEC you almost had us there. Remember, trade safe and do your research. Many ICO’s can offer lucrative investment opportunities and in turn, can help fund very innovative ideas and practices. If we teach each other, we can foster a healthy trading and investment environment which in turn will encourage cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology to continue to grow.