Our CEO does not actually exist. Please give us your money anyway.

The crypto scams keep piling up. Like HyperVerse and its ghost CEO, which cost gullible investors $1.3 billion.

Yet another crypto bro, sitting on a pile of bitcoins. Source: Midjourney.

I'll just say it: There has been no greater scam in the history of the Internet than cryptocurrency. Yes, there are legitimate uses for the technology, but it's been an absolute goldmine for scammers, flim-flammers, swindlers, charlatans, hucksters, and con artists of every size and shape.

Exhibit A: Meet HyperVerse CEO Steve Reece Lewis and his impressive resume.

A screenshot from a HyperVerse launch event video. The "Credibility" stamp in the upper right corner is <chef's kiss>. Source: The Guardian.

Of course, nothing in that above slide is true. In fact, nothing at all about Steven Reece Lewis, including his actual existence, appears to be true. The Guardian went on a hunt for the elusive Mr. Lewis, and they would have had better luck locating Waldo in a warehouse filled with barber poles and candy canes.

A brief career summary of Reece Lewis, which was presented in a video launch for potential investors, said he had worked for Goldman Sachs, sold a web development company to Adobe and launched an IT start-up firm, before being recruited to head up HyperVerse by the HyperTech group....

Guardian Australia has confirmed that neither the University of Leeds nor the University of Cambridge has any record of someone by the name Steven Reece Lewis on their databases.

No records exist of Steven Reece Lewis on the UK companies register, Companies House, or on the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Adobe, a publicly listed company since 1986, has no record of any acquisition of a company owned by a Steven Reece Lewis in any of its public SEC filings.

It is understood that Goldman Sachs could find no record of Reece Lewis having worked for the company.

Guardian Australia was unable to find a LinkedIn profile for Reece Lewis or any internet presence other than HyperVerse promotional material.

Yet that did not stop B-list celebrities like Chuck Norris, Steve Wozniak, and former boy band singer Lance Bass from recording videos endorsing Mr. Lewis and his company. The Guardian surmises that these 'endorsements' were in fact video greetings generated using Cameo [1], an online service where has-beens and never-weres will say almost anything for a couple hundred bucks. [2]

Here's the Chuckster, offering one of his Cameo video greetings. After a convincing presentation like that, I would totally whip out my checkbook and invest in anything he told me to.

Mo' meta, mo' scams

HyperVerse was supposed to be a metaverse that would rival Facebook's upcoming 3D virtual world, as well as others like Fortnite, World of Warcraft, and Roblox. Per the Guardian:

Investors in HyperVerse were able to buy “memberships” with minimum returns of 0.5% a day, with a 300% return over 600 days. Incentives were also offered for recruiting new members.

Does that sound like a Ponzi scheme to you? Because it does to me.

Facebook's vision of the metaverse, an animated, interactive, and pants-free environment in which no one exists from the waist down. Source: Metamandrill.

Shocking absolutely no one except the people who got conned, HyperVerse went belly up, taking more than a $1 billion of investors' money along with it. Also not surprising: The company's actual, nonfictional founders — Ryan Xu and Sam Lee — are involved in multiple other crypto ventures of a dubious nature. [3]

Tales from the crypto

When most people hear crypto, they immediately think: Bitcoin. And why not? It's what everyone talks about. Bitcoin simply an alternate economic platform for people who despise government-controlled "fiat" currency. But Bitcoin's only real value is as a highly volatile, supremely speculative investment. [4]

There are many many many other forms of crypto, some of which do serve a useful purpose. They're an essential part of the Blockchain, a technology that lets you record transactions in a permanent, public, and secure way. [5]

Without getting too geeky: Think of Blockchain as an operating system, like Windows or Mac OS or Android. Bitcoin is an application that runs on that OS, analogous to Word or Garageband or Candy Crush. There are hundreds of other applications that run on Blockchain that are not designed to a) make someone rich, or b) make someone else poor.

One potential use of Blockchain is to verify that you are in fact who you say are in environments like the metaverse. (Hence the whole HyperVerse scam.) Pile that on top of the FTX fiasco — the allegedly secure crypto exchange which imploded in November 2022, vaporizing nearly $9 billion in consumer funds virtually overnight — and literally dozens of other crypto scams [6], and you have good reason to be skeptical about anything involving cryptocurrency. [7]

Wherever there is money to be made, there will be scams, and the supply of gullible marks eager to be duped appears to be limitless. The Internet, with its infinite capacity for fakery, anonymity, and near-total lack of accountability, is an especially powerful vehicle for running con games. Crypto is the same, only an order of magnitude worse.

And if Chuck Norris ever tells you invest in something, that's an excellent clue to take your money and run.

Ever fallen for an Internet scam? Confess your sins in the comments below.

[1] Cameo is also home to such illustrious personages as Rudy Giuliani and George Santos.

[2] I think that would make a fine marketing slogan for Cameo, don't you?

[3] Per a prior Guardian story: "In addition to the HyperTech schemes, Lee has been involved in the promotion of further apparent investment platforms, including StableDao, VidiLook, VAV, V.E.N.D, and We Are All Satoshi."

[4] Bitcoin is a bit like a Ponzi scheme in that you only make money by having more suckers buy into it after you have, thus raising the asking price. The trick is knowing when to get out. It has made some people very rich. I am willing to go out on a limb and say that most of them are people you wouldn't want to be trapped in an elevator with.

[5] That's the extremely simplified explanation. I will eventually get around to the "What the **** is Blockchain, and why should you care?" post I've been meaning to write for the past year. Stay tuned.

[6] California's Department of Financial Protection and Innovation lists 133 crypto scams, with more being added all the time.

[7] And I haven't even gotten to NFTs (non-fungible tokens) yet. Oy gevalt.