CryptoCoinsNews1 began its life as a MFA2 website that took the daily fecal matter which reached the top of /r/bitcoin, rewrote it and regurgitated it back into the reddit system for upvotes, views and of course, Adsense revenue. The site looked like the creation of your typical Digital Point native, full of articles with poor English and straight up duplicate content stolen from other websites.
This was the MO for CCN during much of 2013 but towards the later part of the year, that changed. In October, 2013, CCN began pumping altcoins such as Worldcoin to its visitors in what they called the CCN "Investment Club". In exchange for a payment of 0.1 BTC and an email address, CCN promised to readers a weekly analysis of “various altcoins listed on exchanges such as mcxNOW.”
As of December, 2013, the investment page was changed to reflect that the club had reached over 500 members and included a disclaimer which stated that while the CCN Investment Club tries to bring users the latest information to assist with trading decisions, they take no responsibility for any losses incurred and that members and readers agree to the T&C3. Being that CCN is known for bullshit, it included an image of an office building to give users the impression that the newsletter and website was being run from a business district instead of some dump in India4. To date, the payment address5 has received 27 transactions for a total of 1.499 BTC. The page still remains on the CCN domain boasting “more than 1000 members. ”
Clearly not making any significant amount of bitcoin with the investment club scam, CCN cleared the decks, began purging a lot of the duplicate content and shitty articles that had plagued the site since its inception and began advertising for journalists on sites such as Freelancer and CCN itself. The purge concluded with an apology letter which promised that going forward, CCN would provide its readers with quality articles.
CCN brought in an editor by the name of Kyle Torpey who previously worked as a copywriter and SEO specialist. Kyle Torpey has written articles for the likes of Business Insider, VICE Motherboard, Let's Talk Bitcoin as well as appearing on Max Keiser's Keiser Report in March of 2014 where he pumped Auroracoin. This goes a long way to explain how a blogspam site such as CCN managed to get itself included in the Google News directory and the success it has since enjoyed because of that.
Well would you look at that, would you just look at that, blogspam in Google News6.
After going through countless iterations of free wordpress themes, CCN settled on a design that would allow it to sell not only worthless banner spots to scammers7 but allow the same scammers to publish the scam in their own words under the guise of "sponsored articles."
For example, on the 29th of September, 2014, CCN accepted payment of $2508 to publish an article by Rhinoceros Laboratories where it advertised its assortment of products designed to scam CCN readers. When people commented that hey, this looks like a scam, instead of removing the article, CCN just distanced themselves from it by publishing another article that suggested it might or might not be a scam and through their disclaimer, leaves it up to the reader to find out9.
David Parker10, Caleb Chen11, Kyle Torpey and the other shills who write for CCN do not get to distance themselves from scams by simply including a dubious disclaimer yet charging thousands of dollars12 to the scammers at the same time. CCN writers might claim they are not affiliated with said scammers but they are in fact complicit in such fraudulent activity. CCN are the shills for the grifters that advertise on their website.
Update 21/12/2014 – Kyle Torpey has alleged he was pressured not to talk negatively about altcoins, threatened to have his pay withheld and short changed on his last payment from CryptoCoinsNews. Although he did not provide proof of this, when his most recent articles published at Inside Bitcoins are compared alongside the continued fraud that occurs at CCN, I am inclined to believe him and put his previous work at CCN down to naivety.
CCN. ↩
Made for Adsense. ↩
That being the T&C itself, no link to an actual page drafted by someone knowledgeable in writing such things ↩
Although a Freelancer profile makes it possible that the owner lives in Norway. ↩
1NzwcBTbLTFhcfR1hC3PHhCuKsdnG9dzQ3 ↩
Not to suggest that this is anything other than par for the course when it comes to Google ↩
Worthless because a legitimate business would not pay to advertise here. ↩
Pricing as per https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/advertise-with-bitcoins/ ↩
The reader typically finds out by placing a pre-order and receiving nothing ↩
Director of CCN ↩
Long time editor ↩
A sidebar banner 300*250 costing USD $3000 a month ↩
Would appreciate it if the part about me pumping auroracoin was removed because it didn't happen. I said it was a good idea in theory, but it would fail due to the fact that the citizens receiving the coin would just immediately sell them. In case there's any confusion, here's an article I wrote on the topic on March 4th: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/auroracoins-market-cap-highly-inflated/
Auroracoin's market cap has declined 98% since I wrote that and was on Keiser Report (at least last time I checked the price).
It's interesting that is the only part of the article you take issue with.
Basically this article is spot on. I always thought CCN was spammy at best, sometimes worse.
Stop trying to be relevant by appealing to the rabble and shills.
similar situation with Edward DeLeon Hickman and Cointelegraph
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=808029.0
a lot of these people posing as reporters are really investors/shareholders. In The Real World, there are laws preventing these sorts of abuses.
There are other stupid things related to his company Pacific Blockchain as well, you can read about them there
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=816841.msg9135562#msg9135562
don't know anything about Cryptocoin News, but they did run the Jeff Garzik NXT article.
Well, if people didn't play at reporter and turd up the news… We wouldn't have had to become newsmen.
It's a big part of the problem. Lack of objectivity.
Edward Hickman of Honolulu, HI is, according to his own statements a cryptocurrency developer, some sort of administer of commercial justice, and an investor in the notorious jl777 ponzi schemes.
Coincidentally, his articles feature gushing reviews of jl777's products that mostly go unexplained. Here it was shown that Edward is a shareholder in jl777's ponzi schemes.
Very interesting. There's nothing wrong with being a person that does something and also being a writer on the side or vice versa. There is however a tremendous problem with a failure to separate these things without disclosure. There's an even bigger problem with straight up astroturfing a scam.
FACT: Mark Thacker of Pacific Blockchain claims that neither he nor Edward DeLeon Hickman know who jl777 is.
Basically their story is they promote for jl777 and have no idea who he is. Pacific Blockchain has branded several articles in support of jl777, and they disclaim any knowledge of his actual identity.
Does that sound legit to you?
Not at all.
In further disclosure, be aware that bluemeanie1 is actually a thief that Edward Hickman exposed, so he's hardly unbiased: http://cointelegraph.com/news/112643/the-mystery-of-the-missing-1000000-nxt
Just to also have hís agenda clear, here.
Oh, the plot thickens.
Just to be clear, these are CLAIMS that were formulated by jl777. These accounts which are typically anonymous continually repeat this claim over and over again. I have addressed these claims many times. Any thread in which I attempt to shed light on NXT they flood with these bombastic statements. It's been show many times that NXT has a fairly sophisticated marketing spam promotion operation.
jl777 has brought in millions USD in the retail of his ponzi schemes.
You sure throw around the "Ponzi Scheme' word allots. For someone so bent towards 'revealing scams and propaganda' you seem to forget definitions or even links to definitions and evidence.
Also, that scrap you got into the is very sad. By acussing him of money laundering, whether true or not, you are supporting a war on drugs which has broken up thousands of families around the united states.
Ontop of that you loudly condemn him for supporting tax avation tech, seemingly without any hesitence to the fact that your as supporting modern camufladged slavery. Taxes as cumilatieve, everything that we buy has been taxed 3 or 4 times on the way to retail with conservative estimates of 50%. For What, bubbled stock markets and an industrial military empire?
From everything that I read about you, You bluemeanie are a troll. If you are a representative of qntra, than you are your companie, but I'll hold my judgment of Qntra for now.
here are some pictures of Mark Thacker of Pacific Blockchain
bluemeanie1 aka moneroman88 aka Joshua zeidner has been funded with 1.000.000NXT(~100BTC) for work he never delivered. He has run away with the coins, all you need to do is google "joshua+zeidner+nxt+theft"
FACT: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=656116.0
He acknowledged receiveing thefunds using his PGP key on the nxtforums.
FACT:http://cointelegraph.com/storage/uploads/view/38a383937bb6036e0c012b8f4b257bdc.png
He is actively attacking various member of the crypto community and is posting bounties(using the coins he stole) for harassing and/or doxxing devs, community members and bloggers and also their relatives, friends or family.
FACT: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=806495.320
FACT: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=808029.0
FACT: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=809466.0
He is behind the moneroman88 account, as this screencapped slip-up has shown.
FACT: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=809466.msg9132247#msg9132247
In cryptography, and this closed community, trust is everything.
Joshua zeidner/bluemeanie1/moneroman88 has shown to be person not to be trusted.
Joshua zeidner return the stolen funds
Funny how the Blue Meanie stops posting for a while after someone asks him directly about the accusations against him. It's almost like he waits until a few other people have posted so he doesn't look like he's avoiding answering the question. His next post will, guaranteed, have NOTHING to do with responding to the post above.
As I said, it's funny.