Bitcoin Forum

At first, I was planning to post this in my DYOR thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4388247), but when I noticed this scam risk on the Dutch local board (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5290680.0), I changed my mind as it seemed more appropriate to start a new thread for this.

Current prices are luring in many scammers to these boards.

Even if you have only recently discovered Bitcoin or only recently taken the step of investing in crypto, please DO NOT LET YOURSELF BE SEDUCED by these getting-rich-fast schemes. Don't let frustrations about being a late investor, cloud your judgment. That is exactly what these scammers are anticipating. But these offers are simply untrue, and at current prices, the only true risk is getting-poor-fast!

There's a very easy way to think soberly about these interesting business proposals.

Before accepting an offer that's too good to be true, just ask yourself this simple question: why would people want to share their part of the cake at the time when crypto prices are reaching all-time highs?

In the context of bitcoin's journey towards the second ATH it has the lure of crypto newcomers to enter. On the other hand, this is an opportunity for scammers to get many victims.
The scam continues with new schemes that make it difficult to identify especially for beginners. Scammers learn from past experiences how they are caught. Even these days, scammers are openly advertising their offers on various well-known content and social media sites. Sadly, we can conclude that scammers always get in the way of newcomers from learning how crypto works by causing some frustration in the beginning.

Not only do scams tend to increase, those falling for them tend to increase too due to the desperate nature of trying to get the new highly valued coins. However, as always its always recommended to stay away from things that sound too good too be true, and use backup options such as a trusted escrow to secure the deal. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the online world, relying on a third party escrow is probably essential, unless you're dealing with a significantly prominent user on the forums. Even, then there's only a few users that I would trust with large amounts of Bitcoin, and that's because they've got a proven record of handling larger amounts than I would trust them with.

I'd debate that price increase this fast will cut down on scams. No one is keen to get rid of their bitcoin when the price is soaring, which is really the catalyst for a scam to take place...the hodler has to be willing to give bitcoin to someone for any reason.

The scam attempts may go up, but i bet they'll be less successful.

As anyone heard of bitcoin scams recently? I haven't seen much in the news...would love to hear about what big bad things have been happening.

I haven't as well, and as btc's rise continues, I hope it stays that way so the only news on the media about Bitcoin will be positive. People prolly now know better that btc isn't some scheme to get rich quickly, if one didn't invest earlier on before this bull run started, you shouldn't get affected by FOMO, but carefully analyse the market, and when to get it next, but if you're looking to earn some from either giveaway (scams), Ponzi or any other quick means, then sorry, you're going to be scammed.

There might be something psychological going on here, people who get into Bitcoin at the times like these, where price skyrockets and sets new highs every day, they are so amazed by this that they lose all their critical thinking and fall victim of things like coin doublers. which they wouldn't do if it was a fiat currency that they are used to. Newbies don't understand that Bitcoin's decentralized and pseudonymous nature means that you should be extremely careful with every transaction that you make, there's no way to return your money once you have sent them.

It is quite normal for people to FOMO into crypto when prices are increasing. Take for example bitcoin keeps surging with very minimal retrace. News keeps going around with crazy predictions. If people are investing in bitcoin, it's less risky off course but with several shitcoins creeping up people will surely fall for scam.

The most important is for people to DYOR before jumping into investing in just any shitcoin pumping. Better to buy at the bottom than at the top then get rekt

Exactly. Here's another recent one, again in the Dutch local boards. At the moment we've got more investment proposals than active members in the Dutch boards ;D

Guy offers to buy BTC for fiat (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5211527.0). He's got only 6 posts, mostly in Russian, no Trust, no Merit etc. Impossible to prove he's a scammer, of course, but it's nonetheless fishy as hell.

Bitcoin scams on a small level never reach the news, and as indicated by several users scams seem to be more prevalent within local boards. Obviously, this doesn't make it true, and could be a placebo effect. But, just because you aren't hearing of it in the news, just means there hasn't been any large scale thefts. The news usually picks up on multiple hundreds of thousands worth of scams, or if exchanges, or wallets have been broken into. There's a huge  economy outside of exchanges, and that's where you'll see the petty criminals trying to scam small amounts of Bitcoin. This is why its so common for new users to be looking to scam, because they have no idea how to get into Bitcoin, or even earn it. So they resort to scamming others. This, obviously isn't true for the vast majority of new comers to Bitcoin, and the forum, and unfortunately these users are the biggest targets, because they may not know about trading precautions that should be followed.

Holiday + current price increase what makes scammers eager to deceive people that's why we need to be careful on trusting new people over the net especially if they are offering us something unimaginable return of profits. And it's good also to educate and open up a talk like this since if newbie could read this they can get an idea about those scams and learn something good for their investments here.

With the positive progress of the market, investors think that it will be a big loss and regret if they don’t invest their funds immediately. However, that fear influences their decision-making process with their investments. It usually leads to a negative outcome, as they are credulous in fraudulent investment schemes, with the thought of earning a massive gain. What they don’t understand is that defrauders are using the circumstance to trick their hapless victim to invest. Though they still fall for it, even if there’s an obvious sign that it is just an empty promise.

It actually makes sense though. The scams mostly advertise that they could multiply the victim's bitcoin by varying percentages, so it would make sense that due to greed from the increasing price and the attractive scam offer, that the victim would attempt to earn more money. History would simply repeat itself just as it did in 2017, with just a different group of people.

There is a lot of positive news today about Bitcoin's rise. Here greed works together with ignorance. Fraudsters on social networks and messengers promise big profits if people invest in their scams. However, today one can, in a sense, observe the times of ICOs, when many were in a hurry to invest in projects, watching the growth of bitcoin, and did not think at all about a complete check of all important flags by which can identify the scam.
I cannot say that people have become more literate. Newbies come, and they also fall for scammers.
There is only one effective method of not being deceived. This method is called its own errors. Only after experiencing everything on their mistakes, people begin to think and be careful. For all other advice, many remain deaf.

scam comes from the stupidity of people so easily making profits and believing them for all the projects that are offered to them. It is a mixture of ignorance, the desire to make a quick profit and greed.

All of them do not use the voice of reason. Rather, the appetite for greed rises, especially when hearing the stories of people who have made millions of dollars from the high price or from the fluctuation that occurs because of the price.

Chaff get rich quick is just nonsense, only a scam that takes advantage of the ignorance of others with the lure of getting a bigger profit. When the price of crypto or in this case Bitcoin reached a high price and almost reached a new ATH, many scammers began to spread their hopes to benefit from some people who do not fully know the world of cryptocurrency. and the most fraudulent at this time is the DEFI project which provides a get-rich-quick scheme with profits that can reach hundreds of percent.
We also have to be on the lookout for new projects that make promises of huge profits. Deception is everywhere and doesn't look at anyone.

FOMO kills the potential wins and also destroys a user's brain and controls it and when a 'newbie' or a 'noob' enters crypto, they only look for quick money because of the bad representation being served through the introducing people who tell them that "crypto is a gold mine, and you only need to jump in and find it". If things are done in a systematic way, it is sure that noobs can make money but falling for traps like 'withdraw somebody's btc, selling btc to or buying btc from an unknown user, etc.' should get stopped in near future.

Also, be aware of phishing websites imitating like the MEW or Uniswap. Popular crypto websites are favourites to be copied by scammers and changing just one letter or spelling in their domain name, to catch naive users. If you want to create your wallet, make sure you are on the legit site as there many fraudulent sites trying to rip users' funds. For newbies here, you can go to scam accusations board and check for potential scam sites (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0).

Good point, now that crypto is looking so greenish be prepared for unexpecting crypto projects that will come out of nowhere to raise fund, also there will be more scam bounty projects too, looking for inexperienced bounty hunters to promote their scam for them, now is the time to be ten times more careful

I noticed this in my social media feed, right around the turn of bitcoin price to 15k, more scams are popping up although they are not projects, most of them are HYIP showing the price of bitcoin in local currency as a proof that their investment is worth it. Good thing most of the projects do not attract any potential victims and if I ever see one trying to join the program, even if they are stranger, I message them directly to explain that what they are going in might lose them some money.

Increasingly fraudulent attempt at a time when bitcoin price are getting higher is normal in my opinion. This has been happening for a long time and even this effort continues when prices fall. Remember, scammer are never happy if they haven't hit their target. Therefore, being careful and aware as early as possible regarding fraud under the guise of investment is something that must be done. Don't force yourself to be greedy people, bitcoin is not a get-rich-quick scheme. This is a reasonable warning we say to anyone.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5263773.msg54846763#msg54846763
Made a couple of post on ponzi-scam I would not be elaborate if I used scheme in place of scam, currently there are millions of them every where, and the better Bitcoin, eth does the more people -Newbies- hear and join and the more those scams come in, one thing I know is those guys are not novice to crypto-coin they are well aware of the real crypto-coin and they use that to cook up there scams.

Same here. But just because we haven't heard news which regards bitcoin scams (yet) doesn't mean people should not be careful. I'm not hoping that there would be scams because of the price increase of btc but it's not impossible.

We know how things go and we know people. There will be someone who will do anything to take advantage of others. But with that fact, then we should not allow them to become their victim. Let's all be cautious everytime, especially it's the holiday season.

You're right, I've seen some people take advantage of this moment. I noticed some of the airdrops on their defi platform are also not clear and I think it is a scam. One that I tried to observe and test a month ago was Uniswap X. They gave conditions to join telegram and follow their twitter account. It turned out that at this time their telegram boot was not active. Yes I think they are just looking for followers for their telegram or twitter group and in the end they will sell them.  Even though we don't lose money, we lose time.

Believe it or not. Many people really want an easy money because they are so lazy to work their assets off.

Most of their victims are those newbies who are ignorant about how scammers work and moves in a some platform like the social media.

As bitcoin is in a bullish market right now, expect that people will become attracted to it and they will push themselves to have bitcoin. Investors should only focus on his on growth and success first before anyone else, so don't expect that they will prioritize giving you something that is essential and profitable in its season.

There has been a proliferation of recently awaken accounts creating ANN threads with malware under the ANN board due to the price increase of bitcoin in this bullish market. In addition, some DeFi-related projects with recycled and copied information with another DeFi projects have also increased this week. I do hope that people would be extra cautious today given that scammers are attempting to at least take advantage of this present situation.


Lots of malware threads created by recently awaken accounts have been plaguing the ANN board currently due to the bullish market. I do agree that there is indeed, a connection between the increase of bitcoin's price and the presence of scammers in general.

Are there any stats about this?

I've had two scam "risks" (meaning it's my suspicion without proof) on the Dutch board in only a few days. Since (some of) the local boards are less active than the general English boards, there's a probably a relatively high chance these scams remain unrevealed for a longer time.

Then again, since these boards are less active, the possibility that these offers are seen by vulnerable/newbie members is probably also lower.

I can't remember for myself, because it's too long ago now, but I can imagine that some newbies who have few experience about crypto whatsoever, first visit their local boards to learn more about crypto. If they find such an offer, without knowing the risks of scams (and the signals like Trust, self-moderation, ranks etc.), there's a chance they get scammed.

Has nothing to do with greed but with ignorance. Greed is not exclusively reserved for naive newbies, ya know. 8)

There's another fishy one popping up in the Dutch boards: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2520995;sa=showPosts

We normally never have this amount of activity (left aside suspicious activity) in our local community boards.

Anyway, I'm not going to bump this thread every time some loser posts something in the Dutch boards, but I hope everyone remains well aware of these risks, not only on his own local boards but elsewhere, too.

when I started bitcoin I also stumble upon this kind of scheme, me and my friend before it was 2017 before the big rally occur when bitcoin hits 20 thousand USD, they give a lot of promise, I see a lot of people bet their future and cry when they disappear until now they just make then vanish with the money, I think the problem sometimes is greed, and thinking too much of the result, they think this is the fastest way, with that scammers use their weakness to lure and take their money away, so I think no matter what the price, always consult the people who already know how to its and keep away from this scheme

Most likely all of the ICO projects are scam added to the scammers, fraud, hackers and phishers. There are many of them that could do it here by sending PM but to be more specific I do receive a lot of PM's in the telegram platform. There are really good for nothing scammers there and I do not know why are they so many knowing that thousands of users in the channel and they can do PM all of them if possible. I hate to see them but their presence are rampant and they take advantage on cryptocurrency. So this is why the OP's posts is one of the good posts to remind every member here to be more careful to these kind of people.

Most new people on here get the same experience by getting scam. In the beginning, we want to make instant money and lead us to join many programs that offers can give us big money in a short time.
But then, we get the scam and lose our money. It is happening not just when the price increases, but when the price decreases because many new people come to the crypto world.
Most new people don't have much experience and knowledge to know how to avoid the scam and make money with the right, so they get tempted by reading the offers that promise them to give a quick way to make money.
We only need to be careful when we read or hear about something that offers money instantly because that will not be possible to get if we are not working hard.

What a risk, i have been experience price increase and a later on, the coin been dumped, which has been a major problem. as for me, i still recommend bitcoin as the best cryptocurrency coin to invest at any given point. 

It is a usual trend when the price of something increases expecially when it comes to bitcoin. I heard someone telling an old man to come and buy bitcoin that he would make 50% profit after a month and ignorant people around were telling the man yes have you  not heard of Bitcoin. That is the latest way to make money. I just laughed. Ignorance kills and a lot of people are ignorant about the crypto world, this would make them get scammed quick because they want to get rich quick too.

It's that time of the year again. You are not the only one who's noticed BTC's price is flirting with its ATH again.

Keep your eyes peeled for scammers.

With the recent increase of bitcoin, scammers become more active and keep doing things to scam people, I've been scammed before on an investment website saying that it will double my money for only 24 hours but end up losing it all, I just realized that there is no easy money in crypto, everything that seems so easy money also seems to be scammed, so always make sure everything is good before you enter something. There are so many scammers in the crypto world and you are safe if you are knowledgeable enough.

Yes we know, now that NFT are trending so hot I've come across many fake NFT projects introducing their airdrops through platform like airdrop ninja, also I've seen some meme coins that are copy cats of shiba and few legit ones, I pity newbies the most cos some of them find it very hard to do research

Many people today get interested in bitcoin or the cryptocurrency itself because they want to get an earning too like the others some of them, of course, need to seek help from someone you already involved and know the different ways on it. Some of them get lured and scam because people know they are totally newbies. This is the reason why it is better to learn by ourselves because at the end of the day it's our decision we cannot blame even though we are scammed because still, they continue the transaction. Due to the high price of the coin for sure many people told that this coin will pump too, I saw this scenario to different groups and after an hour whales dump the price and they lose almost 1k$. Always make research before committing to the world of crypto.

There are two ways of learning from mistakes. First, learning from your own mistakes, and two, learning from others' mistakes. Ideally, don't make a mistake and learn from it cause you can learn from others that's why this forum was made. You can make your own research before actually jumping to the crypto world. I can say that the crypto world is really mean so we need to guard ourselves to avoid unnecessary unfortunate events. I should say thank you for this thread and warn newbies about scamming trials. Take care of yourselves cause it's a harmful world for those who don't care to read to know.

It's true that get rich quick schemes are everywhere you look on the internet. People should think twice before throwing their money away. Always be careful about what you're putting your money into.

The easiest way to scam has always been luring once greedy nature into what investment that would yield a double percent increase in short time frame. Don't be surprised many out there still don't know what Bitcoin is and some without this knowledge are eager to invest and they are always the target of this scammers. I wish more people get enlightened so we save them from the heartbreak