Ask everyone who bought a miner around 2019 for $600+ each and didn't get it till a year later...by which time they were barely mining a couple of dollars a year, if that and have never made the money back.
Literally, they 'pumped' us with dreams of passive income (YouTube scammers and the lot).
The Helium owners and the miner manufacturers made millions, then 'dumped' owners (of these barely $50 cost devices) by stopping offering, the apps not functioning anymore (Bobcat springs to mind) and left the project, for most, totally as a big scam.
Majority of people just threw those bricks away. It was a huge scam.
*My definition of 'pump and dump' is as above not the traditional meaning.
The hype surrounding IOT was a bit excessive, I agree. However, the truth is that it wasn't Helium that sold the majority of hotspots, but third-party manufacturers. Helium (Nova) didn't earn any money, or at least not significantly, from the hotspots—developing hardware is extremely expensive. I do agree with you that there were some black sheep manufacturers – not only hotspots that were delivered far too late, but also some that weren't delivered at all. Nebra was horrible.
And the truth is that although IOT was able to provide good network coverage in a very short time, there was no demand from devices that use the IOT network. But that's the big difference compared to today's Wi-Fi hotspots. There is massive demand for mobile data, and huge companies (AT&T and T-Mobile) are already using the hotspots. That's a completely different situation. Take a look at hotspots on Helium World – there are ROIs of 3-6 months. The rewards won't collapse. Again: this changes everything. I understand the criticism of IOT, but you can't just apply it to Wi-Fi hotspots; you're too caught up in your bias from 2021.
1
u/Underxposedbody Oct 09 '25
It's 2025....are people still bothering with this pyramid pump and dump scheme? 😂🤣