Scam Alert: London Bitcoin Forum Draws Complaints
An event called the London Bitcoin Forum scheduled for later this month has raised concerns in the bitcoin community of being a scam, as revealed by comments posted on Reddit and elsewhere.
The website for the event says it is scheduled for March 23 and 24 at QEII Centre, London, U.K. and will have 900 attendees and 60 sponsors. It promises powerful keynote talks, plenty of networking opportunities, demos and panels about upcoming bitcoin challenges and opportunities. There are several presentations scheduled for both days.
Prominent Partners Listed
Partners listed for the event include HSBC, Cisco, SamsungPay, IBM, GitHub, Barclays, Ethereum and more.
While the website lists a number of presentations, there are no speakers listed.
Tickets are £75 for students, £115 early bird and £160 late bird.
The website notes there are opportunities to be a speaker and to showcase your startup. Several Reddit posters noted displeasure after paying for tickets for the event.
Seeking Refunds
One Reddit poster claims to have paid 600 GBP to post a logo on the website and be part of a gift package after reading about the conference.
Much of the criticism was directed at a bitcoin news site for running an announcement about the event. That news site has removed the announcement. Other bitcoin news sources that ran the press announcement have removed it from their websites. One bitcoin news outlet stated that it should have vetted the announcement before posting it.
“It’s funny how no one does background checks anymore about anything,” one Reddit post noted. “I give it a decade and almost everyone will fall for Nigerian Prince in Space scam.”
Another Reddit post said they contacted the people listed as hosts for the event. They also contacted the web hosting company to get the event removed.
Some have noted that they got email solicitations from the London Bitcoin Forum domain. Some raised the question of why the scam wasn’t caught on to sooner, noting that it was strange that a conference announced itself only one month before the event.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
