Last Updated on December 31, 2022 by Stephan Lindburg

Dragons’ Den Bitcoin

Popular entrepreneurial reality series Dragons’ Den has been appearing in many social media users’ ad feeds with a supposed Bitcoin opportunity that could make anyone rich in just seven days. This might sound like a great way to get in on the ground floor of an exciting new business opportunity, but it’s actually a completely fake news story made up to promote nefarious online Bitcoin scams.

Dragons’ Den Bitcoin Pitch – Have the Dragons Found the Next Big Bitcoin Opportunity?

Dragons’ Den is an enormously popular BBC program that first began broadcasting in 2005. On the program, renowned investors called dragons to hear pitches from promising businesses and decide whether or not to invest their own money in return for equity in the company. It’s one of many versions that spawned from the original 2001 Japanese program The Tigers of Money, with other prominent programs following the same format being America’s Shark Tank and the similarly named Canadian Dragons’ Den or Die Höhle der Löwen in Germany.

The show has featured nearly 20 dragons over the years, with Peter Jones being the only host to have lasted for the entire 19-season run. Regarding the fake news article we have identified (see image below), dragons Deborah Meaden, who first appeared in season 3, and Jenny Campbell, who appeared on the program from 2017 to 2019, have both complained on their personal websites about false claims. The choice of this show for the fake article relies on its wide popularity and the fact that contestants regularly pitch outlandish and unconventional business ideas. Other victims dragons include Steve Baxter, Andrew Banks, Frank Thelen, Carsten Maschmeyer, and Arlene Dickinson.

Dragons’ Den Bitcoin: Scammers Ride on Coattails of Award-Winning Program

The fake article details a segment of the show that didn’t really happen, in which the dragons hear a pitch from “Steve McKay”. This young upstart is presented as a crypto-genius and ex-software developer. Unlike other similar fake endorsements for Bitcoin scams, the subject, in this case, is completely imaginary. There is no Steve McKay, who is a “crypto genius”. The image provided in the article is a stock photo, and no other information exists about this supposed Bitcoin tycoon.

Within the same article, they claim that the Bitcoin scheme comes from a team of two university students, which features an unrelated picture of two former Dragons’ Den presenters. The entire undertaking is poorly coordinated, jamming logos for organizations like BBC Two, Daily Mail, The Sun, ITV’s Good Morning Britain, and The Guardian onto the page to make it look like these publishers picked up on the story as well.

Dragons’ Den Bitcoin: What Are These Bitcoin Scammers Really Up To?

The Sun, in particular, serves as a poor reference for the scam, with anyone searching for the story there likely to find an exposé on a similar scam several months ago. As previously mentioned, Deborah Meaden herself has denounced similar practices in the past, encouraging internet users to independently verify any supposed celebrity endorsements.

Constant warnings from networks and celebrities have done little to stem the tide of these types of fake endorsements, with popular figures like Martin Lewis, Pete Evans, and Floyd Mayweather appearing in similar phony articles. Get-rich-quick schemes like the ones we are constantly exposing on our website are quick to move on to the next figure as soon as their fake stories are caught.

These articles are pumped out ad nauseam by affiliate marketers who take a cut from every victim they direct to the Bitcoin scams they promote. Fake celebrity endorsements have turned out to be among the most effective methods for finding new victims, with the practice seeing wide use among all types of scams, not just Bitcoin ones.

Everybody wishes they could just get lucky and find the next big investment first, making huge profits for little effort. This scam preys on that instinct. Their article details a segment of the fictional Dragons’ Den episode in which the dragons try the app themselves, and the audience watches hundreds roll in over the course of just a few minutes, but it simply never happened.

Dragons’ Den Bitcoin Scam: Empty Promises of Easy Money

The core idea of what the scammers claim to offer is simple enough. If you actually read through the entire article, they promise automated Bitcoin trading through their app. Just deposit £250, and watch it grow. This is, of course, completely absurd. Nobody with that kind of technology needs £250 from you. They’d be selling it for billions. Always remember, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.