Sometimes a scam is just a scam (𓂀)

Elena Vasilyeva on why crypto believers embrace conspiracies—and when they are right.

In crypto, paranoia is not a diagnosis but a survival tool. Boomers who trust the television are mocked, yet in specialist chats people seriously debate whether regulators work for Chinese communists, Satoshi Nakamoto is an NSA project, and if you go to sleep, Ethereum will surely rise. 

Don your tinfoil hat to see how conspiracy theories undergird the digital economy, why Larry Fink is scarier than reptilians, and what DYOR shares with religious ecstasy.

Drawing on psychological profiles of crypto users, investigations into account debanking and academic work on conspiracy culture, we ask: have we truly woken up—or simply gone collectively mad?

Beginnings

The crypto market is a perfect storm for conspiracists. It was born of profound distrust in traditional finance, the state and the printing press of the Fed. In a world where everyone is their own bank, myths about hidden puppeteers pulling bitcoin’s strings feel almost logical.

If, after more than a year in crypto, you have never wondered whether the “global cabal” is hunting your wallets, your immersion has likely been shallow. In a bear market, paranoia is a shield (“the market maker shaved me”); in a bull, it fuels FOMO (“insiders are loading up—get in now”).

The psychology of the Dark Tetrad: where distrust comes from

To be blunt, a study in PLOS One suggests crypto holders are a peculiar bunch. Researchers say investors are more likely to display the “Dark Tetrad”: Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy and sadism.

It sounds like a comic-book villain’s chart, but it explains the appetite for risk and disdain for authority. A crypto diehard does not trust CNN or the BBC. He trusts an anon called CryptoDegenerate69 with a pixel-frog avatar.

This fits neatly with the work of Ilya Yablokov, author of “Russian Culture of Conspiracy” (2020). Conspiracy is a tool of socialisation and a way to reclaim control over reality. 

When the state fleeced you in 1991, 1998, 2008 and 2014, believing that “the central bank is a scam” becomes empirical knowledge, not theory.

The world is chaotic, markets volatile. When a deposit is wiped out, it hurts to admit you aped a memecoin at the top out of your own stupidity. It is easier to believe “the market maker (a sinister Bogdanov on the phone) saw my long and ordered: Dump it.”

The world splits into normies (asleep) and the awakened (crypto folks). This is classic Gnosticism, as American scholar Michael Barkun argues in “A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America” (2003). 

He identifies “stigmatized knowledge”—truth that official institutions reject or mock. Here, it is the belief that fiat is paper backed by nothing but the regulators’ word.

We feel like characters in The Matrix. That sense of chosenness is a powerful drug, stronger than 100x on a shitcoin.

Operation Chokepoint 2.0: when paranoia turns out to be true

The irony of crypto-conspiracism is that sometimes the industry really is watched. The line between lunacy and insight blurs when banks are involved.
A case in point: Austin Federa, a former strategist at the Solana Foundation. In spring 2024 he tried to get a mortgage in New York. He says HSBC gave him an ultimatum: quit crypto or forget the house.

“How can I be a more reliable borrower by being unemployed?” Federa wondered.

Venture capitalist Nic Carter coined “Operation Chokepoint 2.0”: the notion that the administration of former US president Joe Biden, the Fed and the FDIC colluded to cut crypto off from the dollar system.

Sounds deranged? Of course. But then documents from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation surface (thanks to Coinbase’s lawsuit) showing regulators urging banks to “pause” work with digital assets. JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon calls bitcoin a fraud; corporate accounts are closed without explanation.

This is Barkun 101: conspiracy thrives in “systemic opacity”. Regulators need not pass new bans; “soft power” will do—informal guidance, calls and whispers behind closed doors. In that information vacuum a monster grows: we begin to believe the government is not merely inept but intent on destroying us.

Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election—he vowed to “shut Chokepoint 2.0 down immediately”—is read not as a political shift but as a win in a holy war against the Deep State. Which brings us to QAnon.

QAnon, Trump and NESARA: when scams meet politics

You may have noticed how neatly right-wing conspiracist slogans have fused with cryptotwitter. QAnon’s Trust the Plan is a twin of HODL.

QAnon’s worldview—that a satanic, paedophile cabal of bankers and Democrats rules the planet—maps onto libertarian hatred of centralised finance. New Lines Magazine has shown how the vintage NESARA/GESARA conspiracy (Congress secretly wiped debts and is preparing a new currency) mutated in today’s crypto scene.

Scammers tell audiences that the traditional banking system will collapse and salvation lies in a “quantum financial system” (QFS) and specific digital assets. They use social engineering, building trust over time before prising money loose. Victims receive phishing emails promising access to NESARA “humanitarian funds.” 

To secure payouts or shield savings from a dollar crash, people are urged to snap up XRP. The choice suits thieves: low fees and fast settlement ease the laundering. In conspiracist circles XRP is branded the currency of “white hats” (the forces of good), in contrast to bitcoin.

The investigation linked NESARA promotion to some US Republican politicians. In March, Arizona lawmakers Mark Finchem and Leo Biasiucci attended Quantum Summit 2, focused on NESARA and ufology.

Finchem openly urged investment in XRP and introduced a bill to create a state “strategic reserve” of digital assets in Arizona, proposing to recognise crypto as legal tender. He has called XRP his favourite asset; his office declined to comment on a possible conflict of interest.

Researchers note that conspiracy theories are flexible and adapt to market fashions. NESARA tropes merged with QAnon narratives. The audience is perfect prey for scammers—already primed to believe in hidden knowledge and imminent global change. 

Now chats teem with claims that XRP or Stellar is the very “quantum financial system” (QFS) set to replace SWIFT after the cabal’s inevitable fall. This is not economics; it is eschatology.

The conspiracist’s logic is inverted: because the SEC is suing Ripple and “choking” the coin, it must be the real deal—and XRP will become the world’s reserve currency. Tweets by Elon Musk or Trump are parsed like scripture, with typos mined for signals “to the initiated.”

Gold-bug economics and the Fed as enemy number one

It is hard to miss how dated bitcoin maximalist rhetoric sounds. British writer and crypto critic David Gerard rightly notes that a slice of crypto is a reincarnation of mid-20th-century gold bugs.

The idea is simple: the end of the gold standard was a bankers’ plot to steal wealth via inflation. Maximalists recycled the line, replacing bullion with blockchains.

Technology and ideology should be distinguished. The white paper is strictly technical, with no political slogans. Yet the context of the network’s launch hints at ideology. The famous message in the genesis block hash (“Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”) is read by many as more than a timestamp: a political manifesto. 

That technical document became a banner for those who see quantitative easing (QE) not as monetary policy but as malice.

Here Yablokov’s “conspiracy from above” fits perfectly. Crypto diehards view Fed chair Jerome Powell’s actions not as efforts to save the economy but as a coordinated assault on household wallets.

Folklore, magic and the sleeping Ethereum

Beyond politics, Reddit brims with “everyday magic”, showing the industry is not far from shamanism.

There is the “reverse indicator” theory: the market moves against a trader the moment he clicks Buy. Or the chestnut: “Ether only rallies while the holder sleeps. The moment you wake and check the chart, the correction begins.”

This is pure magical thinking. When technical analysis resembles astrology and fundamentals fail, it is easier to blame liquidation on higher powers than accept markets’ randomness.

DYOR as cargo cult

Do Your Own Research is the industry’s mantra. Formally, it is a call to fact-checking. Indeed, crypto offers serious tools: on-chain audits, smart-contract review, liquidity checks. But at scale DYOR has become a ritual incantation. Influencers say it to dodge responsibility when the hamsters get shaved. The hamsters nod, like and buy a memecoin on Solana.

For most retail punters, “research” means watching a YouTube video that confirms what they already want to believe. DYOR has mutated into a cargo cult.

The paradox: total distrust of institutions (“Bloomberg lies!”) breeds blind faith in anonymous Telegram channels. One feels intellectually superior to the herd because “the project is researched” (a thread on X was read)—but in reality it is just another propaganda funnel.

Within conspiracy culture, DYOR is the illusion of secret knowledge. You did not merely buy an asset; you researched it. You touched a truth hidden from the masses. It grants a sense of control in an uncontrollable casino.

Who created bitcoin: cypherpunks or the NSA?

Satoshi Nakamoto is crypto’s Holy Grail and its primal fear. Theories split into light (a lone genius) and dark. One of the most durable and grim is the hypothesis that bitcoin is a US intelligence project: an NSA operation.

Proponents note that the SHA-256 hash algorithm was developed in the NSA’s halls. The logic posits a “digital trap”: cash offers true anonymity; bitcoin, as a public ledger, enables total control. In this telling, Satoshi is not a liberator but the architect of a panopticon.

There are, of course, other takes, some exotic, others prosaic. Some suspect a collective of developers; others point to cryptography pioneers such as Hal Finney or Len Sassaman. Some go further, imagining an AI from the future.

As Yablokov suggests, the “invisible hand” is essential to conspiracist thinking. We struggle to accept that a global financial revolution could be the work of a few geeks. We crave a Grand Design.

Larry Fink’s Trojan horse

Once the enemy was the faceless banker. Now it has a name: BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink. Approval of a spot bitcoin ETF sparked not only price euphoria but dread among old-school cypherpunks.

The “Trojan horse” theory runs thus: Wall Street entered crypto not to profit but to seize control.

The feared scenario:

• regulatory pressure purges the field of “grey” exchanges;
• BlackRock rides into the vacuum in the shining armour of legality;
• after amassing enough coins, giants dictate rules at the mining level.

Here lies a real technical risk, not mere conspiracism. If large mining pools (say, US-based and compliant with the OFAC) start ignoring transactions from sanctioned addresses, the network would de facto split. 

Bitcoin would bifurcate into “white” (institutional, KYC-ed) and “black” (free but shunned by big players). Block-level transaction censorship is discussed in all seriousness.

In this view, ETFs are a hostile takeover of the decentralisation dream. And, looking at flows into IBIT, it is hard to say the theory is senseless.

Barkun’s conspiracy culture: apocalypse now

Lay professor Barkun’s framework over crypto and things click into place.

1. Stigmatized knowledge. When ECB president Christine Lagarde calls crypto trash, that is taken as proof of value. “If they trash it, they want to buy cheaper.”
2. Inversion of fact and fiction. A Reuters investigation is dismissed as FUD and a hit piece. An anonymous moon-thread is treated as insider intel.
3. Improvisational millenarianism. The end is nigh. Crypto folks expect Hyperbitcoinization: the old order (the dollar) dies in hyperinflationary flames and private-key holders become the new elite.

Preparation is not for retirement. It is for the end times. In this schema, the blockchain is Noah’s Ark.

Don’t Trust, Verify

Viewed through Barkun and Yablokov, one reaches a grim, amusing conclusion: conspiracism in crypto is not a bug but a feature. It unites people against a common foe—be it the SEC, the Fed or reptilians.

Yet investors really are watched at times. The key skill for a crypto user in 2026 is telling real regulatory risk from esoteric fantasies about quantum systems.

So wear your tinfoil hat with pride—but remember: sometimes FUD is just FUD, and a scam is just a scam, without the CIA. And, of course, do DYOR. For real.