Is Yieldnodes A Scam?

Scams, Ponzi Schemes and Rugpulls

By now, we’ve all seen dozens of rug pulls, scams and otherwise in the crypto space – and because Yieldnodes are offering such high, consistent gains the obvious question has to be – is yieldnodes a scam or Ponzi scheme?

It’s absolutely possible, so I recommend doing as much research as you can

Through my research, conversations with the team, and 2 years of depositing – I’ve concluded that Yieldnodes is unlikely to be a scam

As with any project, I initially trusted them with a small amount of capital, then a moderate, and now a sizeable sum

My strategy was cautious: deposit a sum, wait 8 months for it to double, withdraw my original capital and then ride ‘house money’ – now I simply harvest the monthly yield and my capital is protected

Could I have gotten richer by going all-in? Absolutely! But safety is more appealing to me long term

I’m going to lay out the things that have given me confidence to deposit my capital with them (again, money that I’m happy to lose). I’ll also add caveats to most of these points too:

Those people are now wanted criminals, so jail time isn’t always a deterrent to would-be scammers. When they could do this all anonymously due to the nature of crypto, it certainly reduces the chance they’re not scamming anyone, but not all the way to 0%

2. They put a huge amount of effort into keeping the user base informed about current projects, challenges, security issues and regulatory steps.

On average I receive two emails per month detailing how YN is doing, how the wider Deconomy group is doing and updates on ongoing talks with the Swiss government to full regulation.

The obvious caveat here is that they could just be making it all up. I’m generally impressed by the level of transparency the YN team show – and I think they go above and beyond the level of communication needed to maintain an illicit Ponzi Scheme.

3. Security and user interface choices suggest significant effort to maintain a legitimate business. In late August 2021 hackers attempted to brute force several YN user accounts.

2FA (2-factor authentication) saved the day, but there was no need for the YN team to notify the community and encourage continued 2FA usage if the company was in fact a scam. 

4. Investor in-person audits. A number of prominent community members are invited each year to YN HQ (or in the pandemic, via Zoom) to review to inner workings of the company and to meet the team in-person.

I like the idea of these, and they do go some way to add legitimacy, but there are a few obvious drawbacks.

Investors are just that, investors – they’re not necessarily technical enough to understand what they’re being shown. Also, the board of Enron courted investors in the 90s with dodgy audits, so again, these in-person audits add legitimacy but don’t reduce the risk to zero.

5. The wider Deconomy community. Deconomy is Yieldnode’s parent company (as far as I can tell operated by the same team) and maintains some really interesting and verified projects.

In particular, they totally renovated the failing Sapphire coin project when they purchased it, and turned it into a stable, useful crypto project that shows real long-term promise.

Similarly, Deconomy has purchased and developed a number of coin projects that serve really unique and interesting niches.

6. The parent company Exceptional Media LTD is registered in Malta, and everything checks out

For me, these individual points don’t guarantee safety on their own but add them together and I’m satisfied that Yieldnodes is a moderately low risk to my capital.

There are a few further points I want to let you know that factored into my considerations…

2. They do operate an affiliate commission structure (which is how this site is funded). This can be taken in two ways – affiliate commissions are often equated with a Ponzi, whereas I see them as a marketing expense.

The latter seems to be the case with YN since they don’t seem to advertise anywhere (except a modest AdWords campaign).

I’ve also worked in a number of legitimate industries where the commission reward is much more aggressive than the 5%-on-deposit YN offer.

The argument can be that this allows YN to grow organically through the crypto community based on incentivised recommendations… but I can see the opposite argument too.

3. Various aspects of the business raise questions – Exceptional Media, the parent company is registered in Hong Kong, but operates from Malta.

This isn’t the best, but it’s certainly not illegal and is probably for tax purposes.

Also, Stefan appears in the ‘Paradise Papers’ – again not, the best look, but it’s certainly not evidence of anything illegal, probably just tax sheltering

On the flip side, you can connect with the team over on LinkedIn – the reason we can find out any of the above information easily is that they’re all transparent with their identities. So make of that what you will.

Conclusion

Overall, I feel that Yieldnodes has a fairly good chance of continuing its program for many years to come – I actually think the main risk to the business is regulation, just the same with most crypto projects

That’s not to say that I would go all in – at the risk of giving advice, I wouldn’t put your life savings into this project – though I think that’s always true of anything you’re considering putting your money into

Please proceed with caution and only make a deposit if you feel sure – or do what I did and start with a small amount to test the water… it seems like it will take a long time, and in many ways it is, but in the grand scheme of your life, taking a year to test the reliability of Yieldnodes cautiously could be the best thing you ever did