The man behind the meme coin scam is actually Bitget!

The attention on meme coins in the cryptocurrency market remains high.

Currently, the total market capitalization of meme coins is approximately $44 billion, with a significant increase in trading volume, indicating increased user activity and interest in this field.

Meme coins are speculative and highly volatile, but their true appeal lies in the potential for substantial returns driven by community support and innovative features.

The top meme coins currently are Dogecoin and Shiba Inu. The former is widely recognized due to its cultural background and dominates the meme coin market, while the latter stands out due to its large community base.

The enormous returns for early investors in these two top meme coins have caused a sensation, indirectly leading new meme coins to attract investors and community attention by creating unique backgrounds and influences.

However, investors should note that while meme coins can offer good investment returns, they also come with significant risks, and investors need to be wary of meme coin scams.

Meme Coin Scams

Meme coin scams typically follow a series of specific steps designed to exploit the excitement and greed of cryptocurrency market investors.

Common Scam Procedures

1. Creation of Meme Coin: Scammers create a new cryptocurrency with an attractive and catchy name, often leveraging popular memes or trends to draw attention.
2. Hype and Marketing: The scam coin is actively promoted on social media platforms, cryptocurrency forums, and chat groups. Scammers may use fake endorsements from celebrities or influencers and create misleading advertisements to generate buzz and attract potential investors.
3. False Promises and Roadmaps: Scammers create well-designed websites and whitepapers outlining ambitious roadmaps, including utility, partnerships, and future plans for significant investment returns. These documents are often filled with technical jargon to appear legitimate.
4. Pump and Dump: The price of the meme coin is artificially inflated (pumped) through coordinated buying by scammers (sometimes using automated bots). This creates a fear of missing out (FOMO) among investors, prompting more people to buy the coin.
5. Exit Scam: In some cases, the creators of the meme coin disappear entirely after collecting investments, shutting down websites, social media accounts, and communication channels, making it difficult for victims to seek recourse.
6. Rug Pull: Developers withdraw all liquidity from the trading pool, making it impossible for investors to sell their tokens or recover their funds.

Warning Signs of Meme Coin Scams

• Anonymous Team: Developers who refuse to reveal their identities.
• Unrealistic Promises: Claims of guaranteed high returns with minimal risk.
• Lack of Transparency: Opaque project details, ambiguous roadmaps, and insufficient documentation.
• Aggressive Marketing: Overly aggressive promotion and hype without substantial facts.
• Pump and Dump Indicators: Sudden and unexplained price surges followed by sharp declines.

When investors encounter any of these situations, they should be alert, raise their vigilance, and avoid significant losses.

Bitget's Frequent Launches of Unclear Meme Coin Projects

Among the many top-ranked exchanges in trading volume, Bitget is arguably the fastest in launching new projects, with a significant number of meme coins introduced recently. Many of these projects have unclear situations and unverifiable team information, posing high risks.

Recently, Bitget launched several meme coins, including Biaoqing, APEcoin, Beer, and WATER coin. These meme coins share similar market volatility characteristics. WATER coin and Beer are backed by the same team, while information about Biaoqing and APEcoin projects is unavailable, seemingly appearing out of thin air.

This raises doubts about Bitget's cryptocurrency listing review system, as they promote and launch meme coins without investigating the team's situation and project information. Such behavior undoubtedly facilitates the completion of meme coin scams.

Bitget Suspected of Collaborating with Scam Groups

On June 21, a meme coin called WATER Coin raised over $41 million during its presale stage.

The project raised 200,000 SOL within one minute of the presale and 300,000 SOL within five minutes, worth about $41 million, making it the largest meme coin presale case to date, with over 26,000 wallet addresses participating in this presale.

On June 24, the WATER token was listed on Bitget, with a market value once exceeding $1 billion.

For a newly launched project without a clear endorsement, achieving such a dramatic funding amount is striking.

Notorious "German Prince" as the Manipulator Behind the Scenes

Investigations revealed that the team behind WATER is the same as the manipulator team behind the previously launched BEER meme token on Bitget.

BEER token, themed around beer, reached a presale of 30,000 SOL on May 20, worth nearly $5 million. After its launch, BEER token's price soared, with the highest increase reaching 30 times, and the market value peaked at $500 million. Currently, BEER token's price has plummeted to the bottom.

According to reports, the team behind BEER token includes German businessman Marcus Prinz von Anhalt (commonly known as Prinz Markus), who is famous for his luxurious lifestyle.

In 2006, he spent millions of dollars to acquire his new name Marcus Prinz von Anhalt through adoption by a prince's wife. Since then, Prinz Markus has liked to call himself the "German Prince."

In 2014, Prinz Markus was sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion and fraud and was also charged with money laundering, tax fraud, and human trafficking.

From Prinz Markus's social media, it can be seen that he has recently been enthusiastic about investing in the cryptocurrency field. After BEER token was launched, he repeatedly endorsed it.

Currently, Prinz Markus has 7.74 million followers on Instagram, and prizes from BEER's holding activities, such as CYBERTRUCK and private jet trips, free beer supply, etc., have been displayed on Prinz Markus's social media.

However, Prinz Markus's reputation is not good, with many people directly calling him a scammer on social media.

According to reports, another initiator of BEER is German entrepreneur Ben Bilski, a former professional swimmer who has won multiple German championships.

After retiring, he has continuously started businesses in the tech field, including founding NAGA Group AG (one of Europe's highest-valued fintech companies). Ben Bilski resigned as CEO of NAGA Group AG in March this year. Public information shows that Ben Bilski is also enthusiastic about cryptocurrency investment.

In addition to these two German entrepreneurs, Gotbit Hedge Fund is also behind the manipulation of BEER. Gotbit has explicitly stated on Twitter that it has cooperated with BEER and helped BEER with market capitalization management.

Gotbit is a hedge fund specializing in helping tokens achieve market capitalization growth. Previously, on the X platform, blockchain detective ZachXBT stated: "I would be cautious about any project cooperating with the market maker Gotbit Hedge Fund because a leaked report shows significant issues with their services. Gotbit claims in this document that its strategy in the initial few minutes of the price discovery phase is to drive the price up to 10 times to create FOMO and accumulate as much buying power as possible, to the extreme, and then sell all tokens at the subsequent peak."

From BEER's price curve, it seems to conform to this manipulation strategy.

Manipulation Team Continues to Dump and Build Rat's Nest

The initial increase in BEER token was quite exaggerated, but as the team frequently sold, the price plummeted. As of June 25, the price of BEER token has fallen by more than 90% from its peak, and the market value has fallen back to around $50 million.

According to LookonChain monitoring, BEER team's related addresses have sold more than $3 million after the price was pushed up.

After the WATER token was listed, it surged nearly tenfold in a short time, and then plummeted within a few hours. As of June 25, its price dropped to a minimum of $0.00097, below the initial offering price of $0.0016.

In addition, the development team seems to have replicated the rat's nest operation on BEER. According to LookonChain, the development team has transferred 844 million WATER tokens to 11 wallets that did not participate in the presale.

Investigation found that these 11 wallets have sold WATER tokens worth $2.36 million and still hold tokens worth $1.75 million, which are being sold continuously.

Bitget Lists WATER Coin Despite Known Risks

Despite experiencing the market fluctuations of BEER coin and knowing that the Water coin team is the same, Bitget still listed Water coin.

This behavior is puzzling. Knowing that investors might fall into a significant scam, Bitget chose to list Water coin, contrary to other major exchanges.

Whether Bitget reached some consensus with the team behind Water coin is unknown, but it is certain that Bitget did not prioritize users but rather focused on its own interests.