The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has received a series of complaints about cryptocurrencies. Romance scams, theft, scams, hacked accounts, you name it. According to the CFPB, over 8,000 cryptocurrency complaints have been received over the past four years. And there are not many places where consumers can turn to.
According to the CFPB, most of the complaints involve fraud. This includes “slaughter of pigs,” a romance scam in which hackers gain the trust of victims to set up cryptocurrency accounts and then empty them. You can scroll through the complaints on the CFPB website.
Here is a sample: “All my funds disappeared.” “…The mining page was a fraudulent mirror page of another company. It was a scam.” Wired…it was transferred to bitcoin and then to his cryptocurrency wallet please help me I am devastated.
But right now, there is not much the government can do. There are not many regulations covering crypto investments. For now, buyers are cautious, said Mark Hayes of Americans for Financial Reform, a bipartisan consumer group.
“These products are basically offered as speculative investment opportunities,” he said. “And consumers should know that.”
However, some of the current regulations should be extended to cover cryptocurrency companies, Hayes added. “If you are offering bank-like products like deposits and accounts, you should regulate them like banks.”
Some companies in the cryptocurrency industry have said they are open to more regulation. However, proprietary cryptocurrency products like NFTs require different regulations, said Farooq Malik, CEO of software company Rain, which transfers cryptocurrencies to corporate credit cards.
In the meantime, crypto consumers need to educate themselves and manage their own funds, he said. You can keep your assets in your wallet and blockchain.”
Relying on third parties to move cryptocurrencies exposes them to all kinds of fraud, Malik said.
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