Most Popular Scam Methods in Crypto

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(Edited)

Authored by @hetty-rowan


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We've all dealt with it at some point, whether it happened to you, or whether you only heard it from others. The fact is that today there are many scammers active in the financial world. Both in the traditional financial world, and in the crypto world.

Who doesn't know the stories of the people who have received a text message from their bank, where you have to log in with your bank details to secure your account. Or a text message that has been circulating here in the Netherlands for a while where you have to log in to supposedly confirm the monthly costs of your checking account. In both cases, there are victims who have logged in unsuspectingly, and saw the balance of their account disappear like snow in the sun.

There are also many scammers who called you and wanted to know your login details because supposedly a large amount was written from your account, and they wanted to retrieve it, but that was only possible with your login details. These things have been happening for years since the advent of online banking, and it remains to be aware of them.

But it is not only in the traditional financial world to pay attention. The world in which perhaps even more scams occur is yes, the crypto world. And I am 100% sure that we have all had to deal with this. Directly or indirectly… unfortunately we all know it.

We are at the beginning of a new year. And a very good crypto year is expected. It seemed to me that now is the time to draw your attention to the most commonly used Crypto Scam Methods, and what you can pay attention to so that you don't become the next victim of this.

What you should always keep an eye out for is: Fraudulent Ico's

During an ICO (a lot of) money is raised to support the projects and to be able to launch them worldwide. In the cases of a Fraudulent ICO, the white paper of another crypto was quickly copied, launching a large-scale marketing campaign. Raised a lot of money, and then they leave never to be found. Modern Tech managed to raise the careless sum of 660 million dollars in this way. Too bad for everyone who has put their money into this, they have unfortunately never seen anything in return ... OneCoin, PlexCoin, Confido, Centratech, Benebit, Vernam have also been examples of Fraudulent Ico's where the investors have lost their money and this just shows how important it is for everyone to research BEFORE investing in an ICO. Don't let the fancy words fool you, do your own research! Before taking the plunge, look for information about the team behind the ICO, a clear roadmap, vision, white paper, and anything else you can review.

A second common scam is the: Fraudulent Exchanges

It seems to be much safer if you land on an exchange. But unfortunately this is not always the case. Because there have certainly been exchanges, and there will be more, that cannot be trusted. It is up to you to assess whether an exchange can be trusted or not!

The reputation of such a crypto exchange is sometimes difficult to determine, but in recent years there have been a number of exchanges that have been a lot of hassle and that you should avoid being on the safe side.

Here is a list with some of them:

  • Nettocrypto
  • Capital coins
  • Coinquick
  • Btc cap
  • Patrimoin Crypto
  • Cryptos currency
  • Ether invest
  • Eurocryptopro
  • Finance mag
  • Good crypto
  • Mycrypto24
  • Gme crypto
  • solutions
  • Crypto infos
  • Cryptavenir
  • Gmt crypto

If you prefer to do business with an exchange, it is also wise to do your own research here.

Exchanges that are known as safe include: Binance, Huobi, Kraken, Coinbase, Cex, Bitvavo, and feel free to add your own experiences here. What you can pay attention to here is the difference in price. What are the costs to use these exchanges and the withdrawal fees, etc.

A method that is very inventive, and is now popular

Simulating Platforms or People

Impersonating platforms or people are without a doubt the most sophisticated way of swindling. By creating a fake social media account in which scammers pretend to be the director, owner or spokesperson of a legitimate crypto company, many people have already lost their crypto.

In recent years, many variants of fake accounts have come by from giants in the crypto industry, such as Elon Musk, John McAfee, Vitalik Buterin and Barry Silbert.
One of the market leaders in crypto trading, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has also been imitated. By putting an identical replica of the platform online, criminals also managed to loot a considerable sum of money.

Currently, I myself receive a DM from a Crypto.com Announcement almost daily asking to log on to the website. It's annoying because I know it's a scam DM, I block them daily but the next day there's a new one. Too bad for the scammers for all the effort they put in, they do not know that my Crypto.com account is not available anymore… I did not look at the website in the mail myself, I do not click on any links in this way. But I have heard from other people that the website is an almost exact copy of the Crypto.com website.

And luckily I am attentive enough this time, yet it is a way you have to watch out for and unfortunately many people have fallen for.

Now almost a classic, but still a danger in itself:

Hackers and unreliable files!

Not directly related to crypto, but somehow it is. Everything that happens online carries some degree of risk. Hackers are always on the lookout for systems that are poorly secured to do their job there.

In the case of downloading untrustworthy files, these hackers are given a big helping hand. In fact, it's like opening your front door wide open at night and having a flashing "LOTS OF MONEY IN HOUSE HERE" sign next to the open front door.

If you are unlucky, hackers will find out a lot of personal information, login details for your e-mail, bank accounts, private keys for your crypto and much more with which they can steal a lot of money. Always be careful when downloading files on the internet! It will be an open door for most I hope, but a forewarned person counts for two!

These scam ways are the ones I could think of first. If you know more ways I would like to hear them so that we are all warned, and safely should be able to be a nice 2021 ...

Because the general expectation is that the bull will continue to run in the coming year, and we want to enjoy that after all the years, in where we wrestled with the bear!

A Happy 2021 without Scams!



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51 comments
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The scammers on all crypto discord channels pretending you won some BTC...
Some messages are really well worded and you could easily fall for it :(

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Annoying isn't it? Sometimes it's really quiet with those messages, and as soon as bitcoin is on the rising path, the DM's start to explode again.

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You're right, I recall having a lot less of these when BTC stayed for a while around 10k

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Congratulations @lbi-token! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

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(Edited)

In this case always happen in airdrop program which giving us big rewards and many benefit with join into their presale sh*t token, when they feel getting target value for scamming people they will walk away. Sadly it happen to me once in 2 years ago. Or maybe just for rake in a lot of dozen people's into their channel for referral programs and channel marketing interests for their benefit. This case often happens on telegram airdrop and twitter airdrop.

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Oh yes, this kind of scams you have to be aware of indeed. It's one of the main reasons that I'm not on telegram anymore.

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Shame on these people for doing this kind of crap!

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Yes ... but even if it's one person that falls for it, they have made some quick bucks. And I'm sure that there are more people falling for it. That's why the warnings against this scams are important.

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I block so many links because my main priority is to protect my account from phishing scam.

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Being someone who lost Ethereum for several ICOs in 2017 and invested in Bitconnect scam, the security is the primary concern in crypto-world. There is no one/institution to back you up there. Once the transaction is confirmed, you take %100 of the risk.

Never use the same mail and password for unreliable platforms and exchanges,
Never invest in project that you cannot check the developers.
Do not give your money if they promise you incredible returns.

Not earning is much better than losing at all 😌
Security matter...

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Exactly that ... And unfortunately to say, but you are not alone in this. I think we all lost money at one point in our crypto journey. We all had to learn to pay attention, and we all still have to be aware of these scams. We learn, but so do the scammers.

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The motto I live by is "out the blue, not for you".

That's to say, if you receive any message/email etc out of the blue (you weren't expecting it) then it is not for you. Don't open anything, block, report the email and always contact the genuine supplier/bank separately if on the phone.

It's always good practice to just default "No answer" when a private number calls your mobile. If it's important and genuine, they will leave a message and you should call back on the number from the official site if it's a company you have done business with before.

Education and preparation against scams is a powerful tool to have in your locker to make sure the scammers don't steal the contents of it!

Thanks for the informative article!

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Nice motto ... I like it!

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Haha, I think I first heard it on Watchdog in the UK. Mark Albright I think the presenter's name was, did a feature on being on the lookout for scams and said something like that. Pretty straightforward but easy to forget when you're getting hustled and having every fear tactic imaginable thrown at you.

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I think this one is quite common on developing countries that have low literacy on crypto. It's your typical ponzi scheme only with crypto as a front for "investment". They use the standard pyramiding form of recruitment with incentives on referrals. They have organized websites and facebook groups targeting fools that want quick money and are interested in crypto without doing their own research.

A lot of people actually get fooled from this and each scheme lasts for about 3 months until securities and exchange commission gives a crackdown of operations. A new fake company functioning as investment for Bitcoin emerges every 3 months.

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Ah yes, the piramiding with incentives on referrals is quite common indeed. Lots of people working their a$$ off ... and get nothing in the end.

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I don't feel sorry for people that want the quick money and fail at it. Some lessons are best learned the hard way.

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Important topic and something to always be aware off.
Luckily I've never felt victim to a scam yet but the scammers certainly will continue to try.
That's one of the things I love about Hive, though. The total transparency allows me to check if somebody is who he claims to be, if he holds the assets he claims to have, and obviously if he has a reputation as a trustworthy member of the community.
Ultimately, this still means you guys could simply disappear with my hard earned LEO but at least it's a lot less unlikely to happen then in a lot of other (crypto-)places ;-)

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Ultimately, this still means you guys could simply disappear with my hard earned LEO but at least it's a lot less unlikely to happen then in a lot of other (crypto-)places ;-)

Don't give us idea's 🤣 But no, @silverstackeruk is the only one who is in control of the funds. And as all the Leo's are powered up in the @lbi-token account, it's not something you have to be afraid for.

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This post is golden! I was just talking to someone about how even though its not our "responsibility", anyone w/ a good heart that has been in crypto for a while feels a bit of an obligation to shield newcomers from all the scammers. We know the bulls bring em in droves smh

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Thank you ... glad you like it. I like you call it 'golden'.

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Although I have never fallen victim to such fraud, your tips are certainly helpful! Impersonating platforms is very prevalent. Checking out the legitimate crypto company should be a practice.

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It should be something you do automatically before you even consider to invest in something you don't know yet. It can save you from a lot of misery, and painful loss

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Thank you for your engagement on this post, you have recieved ENGAGE tokens.

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Scams also seem to pick up with the new ATH's of coins, people just have to try and be very careful about where and how they use their account names and passwords. I am one of those that never click on unknown text messages.

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So much talent for doing something bad, when that willingness could be directed to doing good things.

Shame on those people.

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Isn't it often that very talented people use their talents for the 'wrong' things.

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and we need to keep in mind that scammers are constantly evolving and more are turning to cryptos

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Scammers are evolving all the time, and more newbs will come in crypto too.

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The more money there is, the more scammers there will be. Educating ourselves about it is a must!

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Educating ourselves is the only thing we can do to keep the funds SAFU.

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I almost fell for one scam, it was in the early days of steem during the ICO mania of the last bull. A new coin called VIVA and an exchange to support it. Fortunately for me I'm Scottish and we are notoriously tight with money so I decided not to invest after much deliberation. They were so persuasive, the big trick they had was to pay influencers on steem itself to lure you in. The influencers were being paid, they didn't necessarily know it was a scam but in the end a lot of people were fooled.. So, as far as I am concerned there can never be enough scam warnings!

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Lucky you that you decided to not invest at all. And yes it's always a good thing to be warned about scam again. We humans tend to forget things after a while.

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(Edited)

A Happy 2021 without Scams

Unfortunately scams will always be there and only increase in 2021 and beyond.
The more important are post like these to make people aware of these and new scams.

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In that way I meant Happy 2021 without Scams ...

As long as we watch our steps we can prevent ourselves from being scammed.

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This was a great post with a lot of good information for people who are just getting into crypto or looking to branch out a bit. Things are changing so fast in this space that it can be hard to know what is a risk and what is legitimate. I appreciate that you laid a lot of this out for the masses. I have re-leo'd this post so that hopefully as many people as possible can see it.

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Thank you for your kind words and for the re-leo.

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ioo.PNG

Hi guys!! xD can u help me haha i was too used to send my leos that i sent back my LBI to your account HAHA can you send them me back? thanks!!

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They are done manually so it will be done when SSUK gets back online.

That is why we say it could take up to 12 hours to get the tokens in your wallet.

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if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

the year 2021 is going to be a year marked by crypto-currency thefts or investment frauds. you have to drive very carefully in the middle of this crypto highway.

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Exactly that ... with the bulls out, I expect the scammers will be out too!

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This is quite a learning article upon the fraudulent entities in the crypto world and I didn't think of them and the way they've spread their tentacles. Probable this is why you should hold your crypto and keys secured and a hardware wallet should be an investment that everyone should do to ensure that. My NANO X is on its way as a Christmas gift and hopefully I will be more confident afterwards.

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That's a very nice Christmas gift and I hope you will fill it in confidence. Yes it's for sure a way to be more confident.

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There's definitely a lot bad stuff out there that's why I'm pretty much sticking to hive based stuff or things on coinbase. I would love to hop in all that new stuff out there but I have no idea what to trust. So I'm just hoping that Hive will make it out of the pack.

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There are some other "cool" ones like the spam messaging on discord with links telling that they give away BTC. How naive to be to believe that someone is giving a big chunk of BTC away?

Or some others that have been done in here is where they create accounts with a misspelled letter so that you think you are sending it to some exchange or a service but it lands in a scammers wallet.

My favourite remains the fake sites that resemble real exchanges. Always double check the link on top.

Thank you

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