KeepStake Claims to Have Raised $55 Million (It’s a Lie)

The scam project, billing itself as a future-proof staking payout pool, offers Ethereum and crypto token holders a guaranteed payout when they stake to the KeepStake pool by offering users a fixed one KeepStake token (KPSK) every 100,000 blocks (approximately 15 days). This KPSK is supposedly interconvertible with ETH and pegged to one ETH/KPSK — essentially offering stakers $120 worth of ETH for their investment.

We believe early adopters should be rewarded.

Like + retweet + tag 5 friends
Then join the $215 KPSK airdrop: https://t.co/ofDqUAtSzG

or

Own an Ethereum address worth over $94 in ETH + tokens?
You can earn ETH rewards of up to $300 a week: https://t.co/P9fCk3qKjL

(50% filled) pic.twitter.com/swc6VElkD9

— KeepStake (@KeepStake_io) November 12, 2018

KeepStake currently claims it is airdropping 20 percent of the total supply of KPSK to users who like, retweet, and tag their friends in the above tweet. As of this writing, over 7,000 people have liked and retweeted the post. Furthermore, the project took the chance to advertise its ridiculous staking system, which it alleges can earn users up to $300 per week after staking just $94 — equating to 319 percent profit in a week, or 49,200 percent profit in a year.

Suspicious, Very Suspicious

Being not particularly original, KeepStake decided to go with the tried-and-tested method of faking its core team members in an attempt to appear more authentic. Unfortunately, this means that several unsuspecting individuals have had their identities misappropriated and will potentially be made the fall guys of yet another nefarious plot.   For this scam, KeepStake fraudulently enlisted the identities of none other than Simon Kim and Jason Chia — two relatively well-known ICO advisors who have been attributed to numerous successful crypto projects as of late. Chia, in particular, advised over 20 projects in the last year alone. Of course, to make due diligence difficult, KeepStake neglected to tag any LinkedIn profiles — preventing readers from discovering that absolutely none of their team make any mention of KeepStake on their LinkedIn profiles or social media (because they are not part of KeepStake). KeepStake also took the opportunity to borrow — or, more accurately, completely plagiarize — the entire Rocketpool whitepaper by deciding only to remove the team section at the end and replace all instances of “Rocket Pool” with “KeepStake” instead.

The Inconsistencies Stack

Despite only launching online a month ago, the website already attempts to provide some example cases — claiming users would earn 60 percent profit per year on their investment. This is massively lower than the 49,200 percent offered on Twitter. Using another common scam tactic, KeepStake also offers a suspiciously lucrative (but almost believable) referral system to entice as many users to the project as possible before it is found out. Using its Telegram channel and a system which allows the admin (KeepStake) to push updates about the project, the project offered as much as 0.5 ETH per referral if over 100 referrals are made. The project, having apparently raised $55 million in February 2018 in a private ICO, launched its website just under a month ago — opting to leave their domain registration details private. It is more than likely that KeepStake is, in fact, attempting to generate as much investment into its staking pool as possible before performing an exit scam. We strongly recommend performing extensive due diligence when investing in any project offering guaranteed returns, and always keep a healthy amount of skepticism when choosing your investments in general. Have you ever been scammed by a copycat project? Why do you think these types of scams are beginning to appear more frequently? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!  Editor’s Note: If you know about a scam in the cryptocurrency / ICO industry, don’t hesitate to let us know. We’ll dig into it and find out what these scammers are up to. Feel free to utilize the “Submit a Scam” button on BeInCrypto’s homepage.