The Duck Test: Erica Stanford's Crypto Wars Introduction Explained

The Introduction to Crypto Wars does not ease you in gently. Erica Stanford opens with a joke about ducks and then tells you that in crypto, the duck is probably a Ponzi scheme. That set the tone for the whole book.

I read this chapter twice. The first time I thought, okay, dramatic opener. The second time I realized she is giving you the survival guide before the horror stories start.

The duck test

You know the saying. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.

In normal life, that works fine. In crypto, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee tweeted a darker version: if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is a Ponzi.

Stanford backs that up with context. At its peak, crypto bubbled up to a $1.8 trillion valuation. Regulation lagged way behind the technology. The result was a Wild West in full public view. Mafia ties. Organized crime. Spies. Hackers. Opportunists. Scammers. All tangled together.

Multi-billion-dollar Ponzi schemes became normal. Projects were as likely to run off with investor money as to build anything real. Kidnappings. Extortions. Missing people. It sounds like a movie. It was the daily news for years.

My takeaway: in most industries, the duck test helps you spot the real thing. In crypto, the duck test helps you spot the scam. That flip alone explains why so many smart people still lost money.

Stories from a private room

This is the part that hooked me.

In December 2019, Stanford hosted Jamie Bartlett at a Crypto Curry Club Christmas lunch. Bartlett was deep into The Missing Cryptoqueen, his BBC podcast about Ruja Ignatova, founder of the OneCoin Ponzi scam. Ruja had been missing for two years. The FBI wanted her. Estimates put her haul somewhere between $4 billion and $15 billion.

Bartlett spoke under Chatham House rules. What was said in that room stayed in that room. For hours, he shared story after story from their investigation. Espionage. Unrequited love affairs. Organized crime. A real-time whodunit about where a woman with half a billion dollars and a taste for plastic surgery could be hiding.

The room was electric. I could feel that even just reading about it.

After that lunch, more stories started coming out. Crypto Curry Club members, all industry experts in their own way, knew things they had never said publicly. Some scams were dead. Most were still live. Still scamming billions from ordinary people. Still advertising on Google and Facebook and Instagram.

Stanford started talking to these people. Many had death threats or relentless online harassment for what they knew. They would not go public again. The risk was too high. But they gave her enough breadcrumbs to dig deeper. She even got into active scam chat rooms to watch these operations scam each other and their victims in real time.

That is wild. And it explains why this book has details you will not find in a press release.

The $800 billion bubble

After Bitcoin took off, thousands of new cryptocurrencies appeared out of thin air. Anyone could make one for almost no money or effort.

The fundraising method was called an ICO, initial coin offering. Project names ranged from Jesus Coin to Sexcoin to PotCoin to TrumpCoin to Catcoin. I am not making these up.

The hype around quick riches inflated a bubble that hit over $1.8 trillion at its peak. Most ICOs had zero real-world use. Gains were huge and made no sense. People saw early Bitcoin investors get rich and wanted the same thing.

Law enforcement later classified over 98 percent of ICO projects as scams, failures, or money losers. Stanford calls this period the making of an $800 billion bubble. However you count it, the scale was absurd.

It reminded me of the dot-com bubble, except with less accountability and more anonymous founders. At least Pets.com had a website you could visit.

Show me the money

Not every project blurred together. Some stood out for the wrong reasons.

They threw the wildest parties. Flew investors around the world. Put them on luxury yachts. Raised billions. Built massive followings.

Here is what confused me reading this: the people running these scams were not always charismatic geniuses. Some had no public face at all. Fully anonymous teams. And people still threw everything at them.

The human cost is brutal. Millions fell for these scams worldwide. People lost houses and life savings. Some lost their parents’ retirement money. Elderly victims went back to work. There are stories of suicides and destroyed families.

On the other side, the scammers bought diamonds, supercars, yachts, and villas. Stanford does not flinch from showing both sides.

Who will they get next?

This section hit me hardest because it is about right now, not history.

The scams in this book are still running. Some are the same operations. Some are near-exact copies built by the same people. Active scam groups sit on every major browser and social platform.

Stanford’s point is direct: you are not immune. Scams do not always look like scams at first. Some are sloppy and obvious. Others have professional marketing and smooth websites and sales teams that could sell anything.

She says the book will answer questions like:

• Why do some scams grow massive while others fail?
• How do you tell real opportunity from “too good to be true”?
• Why do people fall for them?
• Why do some keep investing even after a scam collapses and founders face charges?
• How do a small number of people spot a scam in seconds?

I want those answers too. That is why I am reading the rest of this book.

A lot of shades of grey

Stanford makes an important caveat early. This book is not only about scams. Crypto is not always black and white.

Traditional banks have sometimes made it nearly impossible for legitimate crypto companies to operate. Some projects got hurt by factors outside their control. Fast growth left small teams out of their depth when Bitcoin prices swung hard.

Some chapters cover clear fraud from day one. Others cover projects where intentions shifted over time. A few, she argues, were not scams at all. Just bad decisions, bad luck, and a banking system that did not know what to do with them.

I appreciate that nuance. A book that only screamed “scam” would be less honest. The gray areas are where a lot of real investors got hurt without a clear villain to blame.

Some hope

The Introduction ends on a lighter note, and I needed it after everything else.

Scams with big promises and early payouts exist in every industry, not just crypto. If this book saves one person from losing money, Stanford says, it did something good.

She also believes in the technology itself. Crypto has real potential to help billions of people locked out of traditional finance. The final chapter, “Crypto for the People,” is her attempt to show that upside.

Things move fast in crypto. The book was current when written in 2021, but cases evolve. Some missing people stay missing. Some scams rebrand and keep going. That is part of why retelling this book still feels relevant in 2026.

My honest reaction

The Introduction works because it does three jobs at once. It warns you. It pulls you in with stories too strange to invent. And it admits crypto is not all bad.

The Jamie Bartlett lunch scene is the emotional center. The duck test is the practical center. The $800 billion bubble is the historical center. Together they tell you: pay attention, this industry ate people alive, and it is not finished.

I am going into Chapter 1, “The Wild West,” next. If the Introduction is the warning label, I have a feeling the first chapter is where the chaos really starts.

Book: Crypto Wars: Faked Deaths, Missing Billions and Industry Disruption
Author: Erica Stanford
ISBN: 9781398600683 (paperback), 9781398600690 (hardback)
Publisher: Kogan Page, 2021

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