Bitcoin Forum

For newbies,
As the title said, and already discussed many times on the forum how to prevent scams. Here is two strong policy that would prevent you being a scam.

1. Nothing is free in the world, so don't expect anything for free.

2. There is no such money-making machine that would multiply your assets within a day or month.

Hope you all get the point of what I want to say. Just keep in mind that two policies would save you from a lot of scams.

It will be like pay $100, you will get $200 in return, that is a scam.

It will be like invest $100, it will yield $10 daily or more, it is a scam.

High return are allows scam, I wonder where the people scammed think the scammers will get the money from, legit businesses can not be like that.

Besides the two points above, I'd like to point out one thing.

Don't give any seed keys and/or private keys to anyone. Pretend that the seed keys are your house or car key, you wouldn't give it to any stranger that passing by and they ask you to hand over those keys.

An exception could be made that if you want to inform your loved/trusted about your assets, so in case bad things happen your trusted one can have the possessions. The last thing is, you also need to have a spare key for it. Store it on any safest possibility method that exists.

Anything that promises you that you will earn money on your investment is a scam. No one can promise you that you will earn on your investment otherwise the whole world would be doing it. There is no guarantees in life and the sooner that people realize that the sooner that they will be more secure handling their money. Bitcoin is an amazing technology which allows you to have complete control over your money but that is not always a good thing because a lot of people do not know basic security and have not got the experience of life to handle their money. I think banks are a good way of handling the money of these people who do not have the maturity to control their own money yet.

As soon as you give away your seed or private key to a loved one you could be compromised. This is one of the issues with Bitcoin and there is no way of securely handing down your money to your family if anything was to happen without compromising the security of your Bitcoin by giving them your private key while you are still alive and using it.

The thing is, crypto ecosystem broke those rules for a lot of people and made them more likely to trust crypto scammers. People who used faucets or airdrops and viewed them as free money could then believe in those doubler scams, because they have already got something for free, and they ignore the crucial difference that the doubler scams require you to send your money first. Similarly, people who got lucky and invested in shitcoins during a pump are more likely to believe in "get rich quick" scams like cloud mining or trading groups.

One way to do this without compromising on privacy or security would be to create a new address and send a time locked transaction to it, with a certain nLocktime, then give the person the private keys to the new address. The address is currently empty, and in an event where something happens to you, they would get the funds at the specified time, except someone gets hold of the spending address and makes the spending txs invalid.

Your private keys to your active address remains secure with you.

In my country, Bitcoin is used by scammers. Anybody who doubts the too-good-to-be-true offers could easily be brought to the charts and the historical prices of Bitcoin and some altcoins and somehow be enlightened. It is probably enough for the doubts of a lot of people to be resolved once and for all once they see that it is indeed possible. Truth be told, the reputation of crypto being a get-rich-quick scheme has some factual basis.

The traditional market and its legit businesses cannot offer what the wild wild west of crypto can. That is why it is hard to instill in the minds of some that crypto or Bitcoin is not a get-rich-quick scheme when in fact the data shows so.

Bitcoin has, for example, tripled its price in 3 months. So if a scammer tells you that he's offering a double-your-money investment opportunity for half a year because he is a Bitcoin trader, there is actually data which shows that is very possible. This is probably the reason why it is hard to combat these scammers.

There are some relevant points that weren't mentioned above, and I'd like to share with you!

• There is no fixed income on cryptocurrencies, it is almost impossible for you to promise a fixed return on extremely volatile assets.

If you are offered, "Deposit 1 BTC and in 1 month you will have received 50% interest plus your Bitcoin, be wary of it, because there are high chances this type of "enterprise"" is some kind of pyramid or Ponzi scheme.

• An example that fits what I said above is, do not trust advertisements/publications by famous people (Vitalik, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and others), if you are offered the following condition, deposit 1 BTC at this address and in a week you will receive double the BTC, this is suspect!

Be aware guys!

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Source

Edit: This example has the "modus operandi" that i mentioned above.
Fonte: theblockcrypto.com (https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/118371/bitcoin-org-website-hacked-promoting-btc-giveaway)

Here is the tweet from @Cobra who is the site/domain controller

I would like to share this point, because this informations was taken from the local board that I participate.

Point number 2 could sometime invalidated by some of our traders or expert in defi. I am active on Twitter and lately seeing some achievement of their high gains within certain period of time. Well cant believe it right away, but if this is true then there are some could do it in such fashion. I dont know if this applicable for everbody but there are really exception with that policy.

I would like to add moderate your greed and always do your own research, there are a lot of projects that look great on the surface but will end up a dead coin in the long run, don't go for the hype and check if the developers have armies of shills to make the project in a hype.
always check what the project is bringing to the community and what is the reaction of the community on the project.

It makes sense, of course, to just go to a public restroom, of course have to spend a few cents.
What else says free up to tens of dollars.

If it exists, it's clearly a scam.

Effort, sacrifice, perseverance, thorough, diligent, knowledge, courage, that's a real machine to make money, rich and successful people take years to achieve success and start from the bottom, not a week or a month, if someone says to multiply money in a matter of minutes, it's called tuyul aka the devil.

This one is an important point, but there are sometimes exceptions to this rule. For example, when there is a need in spreading awareness about a project, it may well be justified to give away the coins for free. I am not talking about thousands of useless airdrops, where the only point is to enrich their creators, but take bitcoin as an example: in the past, it was possible to obtain a lot of bitcoin for free via bitcoin faucets. Another example is scammers themselves: they are free to join cryptocurrency space, they are free to create their own coin with unique features, they are free to profit off of it. The question of whether it is legal or morally justified doesn't seem to bother them, but given the nature of the ecosystem, you can't effectively prevent them from doing bad things.

1. Nothing is free in the world, so don't expect anything for free. And not all efforts are rewarded.
2. There is no such money-making machine that would multiply your assets within a day or month. Unless it is luck, the money earned by luck will sooner or later be lost because of strength.

Actually from my perspective i will would say that the only reason while people get ride into scam is because of much inquisitive to acquire or to secure a larger profit, secondly most times people like easy access to get ride to something without much stress, but base on my understanding i capture that anything that is not difficult to get leads into  a negative impact which will definitely come back with a remorse, any business transaction which the profit is three times higher than the capital during negotiation is absolutely scam from my personal taught.

Seriously lot's of people have been scammed just because they fall for this trick which people use to scam. And I believe those scammers are always after newbies, people that are just entering cryptocurrency and most of them don't really know about cryptocurrency and some are just hearing people saying cryptocurrency and they also want to feel amount and someone can just message them and use any of the listed Format for them and they will also send the person money and get scammed.

The thing is, this kind of victims are guilty of falling for the "crypto experts" scam, and it's particular with newbies, cause they are prolly new they believe there are crypto experts that can make quite an insane ROI in little or no time. That's basically why I do not like using the word "experts" around newbies, they tend to get the wrong message and it could cause them to make a mistake. Another area this problem stems from is "success stories", people hear one success story or the other, without even confirming the legitimacy and immediately wish to replicate it, but instead go on to lose their funds; new crypto users need to be more careful, less greedy and more hungry for knowledge, that's the only way they can avoid most of this scams.

This is a very strong policy for me (Common Sense).

Because there could be a free that is legit and not a scam, even though here in our community, there are some of them offering free giveaways or contests in Games and Round sections, so that is literally free or a website that has a legit running faucet.

But if you have common sense, you can simply sense if there is something want to scam you.  Bitcoin doubling is the most common scam and even now has been existed.  Always be careful dealing with unknown people on the internet sometimes can avoid you from getting hack.  On the other hand, hackers and scammers now are getting smarter, we should be careful with them use our common sense over greed.

Exactly, how could anyone believe that someone whom they didn't recognise or even know from long time will be sending them coins or will provide them funds without anything? There is nothing that comes free as said by you as it has some hidden cost associated with it which is likely to be hacking your personal details or scam you of funds.People usually lost because of the greed like get your free money ads make them attract towards scammers and then they regret it.Free money is available but only for hackers if you look on opposite side.So be aware of such malicious website and ads.They provide free giveaways and when you click on the link the virus hacks all the wallet.dat files on your computer giving them access to your funds also.Be safe.

The hackers usually display links like deposit your money and double or triple or even more within few days.This is purely scam and for these tricks they use twitter and social media accounts of some companies or renowned persons.Like in two cases which i remember was of Clown Musk where hackers portray themselves on the timeline and ask for coin deposit to double them which caused million of fund loss.The second one was redmi official page hacked and offering similar doublers which was scam.But the main thing is how the hell people believe that someone will double their funds so easily?

But yes your funds need to be managed and be safe by you avoiding any such types of scam.You will not get money but will also loose what you have.

Never store your cryptocurrencies in any place where you don't control the private keys, such as:
A cryptocurrency exchange.
Any online wallet, including online wallets in an exchange.
Any wallet on a web browser.
Any multi-signature wallet on a web browser.
Any paper wallet.
Any cryptocurrency ATM.

And that's the one thing many people fall to understand, and the reason they will still continue to be scam day by day. 

When one always expect easy way of making money such person is always seen as an advantage to scammers.

People who tend to multiple money in an investment scheme try to meet up with the promise of the first set of persons who invested with them to convince others that they are real. After getting more people who want to invest with them they will be no where to be found. That is there strategy

Actually if only one person offer them a too good to be true profit for sure many newbies will decline but unfortunately this kind of scams is organize by many people as they created a group to make their work success as they mostly posted a profit towards their investment on the platforms and this the one effective method to lure newbies. New boys in town should always put this on their head that there's no group of people can give them a huge amount of money without doing anything and if someone tells you that you can earn money even if your sleeping then turn down those offer since most likely its a scam.

I abide by these policies at all times. So far I have not been the victim of any major scammed. Those who are more greedy are the victims of more scammed. We should control our greed.

One place I think scammers strive and newbies or victims suffer really hard is on telegram, the rate at which people fall victims to scams on telegram this days is really alarming, there isn't a day without a new victim of scam in some of the many groups I belong in, and this is why I want to take this time to really advice newbies to not respond to random private messages on telegram, 99.9 percent of those private messaging you are scammers.

Group admins on telegram always have this warning that they never pm first, so when ever you have a problem and complained in a group, ignore all the random pms you get, just report and delete the message, if there be any you must respond to, do well to confirm from the group if the person pming you is truly an admin or a scammer, (which he or she might likely be).

And again, what ever link you click from telegram, never provide your personal information or wallet information like private keys, seed phrases and whatever information that will give a second party access to your wallet, always verify to make sure that where you are providing your wallet information is a genuine source and not some phishing/scam site.

In fact, paper wallets are amongst the safest ways to store cryptocurrencies and you surely have access to the private key. After all, a paper wallet is simply an address and its private key.
However, you have to know how to create it safely (choosing a secure and safe generator and running it on an air-gapped device).
Bitcoin ATMs aren't supposed to be used to store bitcoin. So, I don't think they fit in that list.

I was about to say this actually but you already state the obvious and in addition scammers nowadays are getting smarter to fall their victims with their bait. If only newbies won't be so greedy just because someone offered them a nice return doesn't mean it hasn't some risk and that risk they should be aware of because I'm sure what the scammers are after is your lack of sense of how to minimize/avoid the risk. And just like what the OP, said there are no free money in this world, either one of you is going to win and the other is going to lose.

It is also relevant to know very well who you're trading with

Understand market research and survey so you don't get brainwashed

Seek for knowledge and make personal research online

Avoid spamming, and investigate websites very well.

Check their record history and testimonies

Research their office location and physical building

If it is too real to believe then its too risky to invest

Don't go for invest now and gain double of your investment the next day

Lastly research their license and registration details to be legit

This is why people need to be smart in terms dealing money online since even their relative can able to scam them if there's huge money involve how much more the online strangers where we don't even see there face nor know little information about them so its really good not to go with those person who lure and promise that they can earn huge money the same with them.

People need to understand that before we earn we really need to put a huge effort on everywhere we go.

Mine is a bit stretch and they want me to contact me in either their Telegram or WhatsApp.
They are claiming that they can 8x my money within a week, and they have these stock photos in Facebook claiming in their bio that they are Forex trader, crypto trader and full-time crypto investors and all that kinds of stuffs that you know that makes money from investment.
They want me to give them $100, and they just did not know that I baited them a little bit.

Unfortunately, many newbies are too greedy to be aware of it, money is likely sweeter and more interesting than using logic and mind to avoid this.
Many are still trapped with their too good to be true projects or investment  :D
Sometimes, I feel sad towards them, which easily deposited a lot of money should someone they had not known with the lure doubling their money quickly.

I ever read on a telegram group, they will get 30% profits in 24 hours only and can withdraw the profits directly after 24 hours, with many fake chat members and fake proofs, sadly, some people believe this shit fake investment. Sadly but I think it's a little bit stupid to believe.  :o :D

The number one suggestion is one way I've learnt how to live my life and its been super profitable for me so far. Its the best way to stay safe o tell you, having the mindset that nothing is free and as such, there is a price to pay, a work to be done or a service to render for the next cash or reward your to get. It somehow adds value to what is gotten actually and that's how you won't get to do away with it easily or without a good reason to it.

In the second suggestion,  I just take it that, supposing it was real, the project planners could just keep ripping without any problem of funds or capitals. So, what would your little token do for such persons...!

That's the risk that newbies should be aware of especially when we are talking about money. You can't trust anyone unless you know them very well or someone you trusted recommended it to you. When managing risk you should have a knowledge of what you are dealing with so be curious all the time 'cause that helps a lot especially if it intrigued your idea. Then do a quick or thorough research then you will be able to tell whether you gonna go or not.

Do this always and you are ready to deal with someone online. Although, I can't completely say that the risk will be down to zero but at least you have the proper knowledge and that's what important.

We have so many things that are free in the world, the air you are breathing is free as you are not paying for it. Take a visit to the hospital to see how much per hour people relying on life support are paying for their oxygen that you are breath freely. In the cryptocurency space, we also have things that are free and they called airdrop. Now I am not taking about the airdrops that requires you to waste your time promoting them with different tasks they give you but those that are actually doing genuine airdrop.

While we keep saying airdrop are not worth it, people have made thousand of dollars from UNIswap airdrop, dydx airdrop and so many other airdrop. Do not just chase after the worthless airdrop that should be the advice but participants in genuine ones should be encouraged like if you see an exchange doing well but do not have a governance token, best you can do is make some trades on that exchange so as to be eligible or an airdrop if they come up with one in the future.

You can simply block the unknown users on Telegram to send message to you or add in any groups as most of the time they send similar messages on Telegram to scam you of your money.I have blocked them personally also.
 
Open telegram> settings> privacy and security> groups> my contacts

Then you are done from all the pop up notifications from all these fake groups chats that are trying to find one victim for fund loss.

Not your coins not your funds and similarly your funds your responsibility.

I was blocking the scam people before, but I later also noticed some groups are only existing to be harboring scammers, I later had to delete many groups on my telegram account.

Alternatively, you can click on the name of the user, click on the name again at the top, press on the three dots at the right side in the upper part, "block user" will also be seen.

Also this can be done for group, but "deleted or leave group" will be what to press which is effective.

I have seen many scammers using the even legit telegram group for scam, like posting their bitcoin address, telling people to pay and be rewarded double or more, the message will later be deleted by any of the group moderators, but we do not know who would have send bitcoin and be scammed.

Your first and second points sounds the same to me, I will like to add my own rules of staying safer in crypto space

1. Learn to control your greed
2. Expect gains only from your investment portfolio or something you spent energy and time on cos nothing comes for free
3. Strangers don't just walk up to you and promise to change your life, they always have their own plans, better to shut all strangers off most especially on telegram and other social media

What you wrote is true, but let's go deeper into the problem and ask ourselves why do people still become victims of scams? I will say because they are insufficiently educated, naive and first do something and then ask others for their opinion, which is a completely wrong way in which nothing good awaits them.

Unfortunately, due to language barriers, advice like yours does not reach millions of people, and in addition, some promote cryptocurrencies as the magic money of the Internet, which is just an ideal base for scammers. I would add that anyone who is not aware of the dangers that exist should not use social networks, especially Telegram which is the number 1 tool for scammers.

People will always fall victim when ever they hear any scheme that that doubles money when investing in trading and the funniest thing is that time without number they have been hearing about how people loss money(scam) in a place where money is been invested to earn double and still they still fall for into their hands.

If it seems to good to be true, then beware. I fall for it one time and I lost everything I have, I fully trust the person because she is my close cousin but then money is the root of all evil. Yes, this thread is helpful everyone should be reminded.

Number two seems real because of the experience I've been through these past few months where I tried to invest in the NFT games which is I think would give me pass income than other investment methods. Guess what? I ended up losing half of my capital because they ended up closing or canceling everything. Most of the NFT games that I invested my money ended up close keep promising their investors that they will come back which I think they won't ever come back again. They are only good at promising their investors, if you take their bait, then you might end up losing more money. Thankfully I was able to recover half of my capital and even though it's not that big, it was a nice experience for me to know how dangerous to trust such kinds of projects when they don't even have anything to prove that they can do what they have promised.

I can say while people is been scammed is because of over inquisitive to achieve above their capacity and what they planted or a process to grab what they are not supposed to achieve in period of two years under short period time, so anyone that's over monetary inquisitive can be easily be scam by scammers, especially those investment platforms that is likely looks like a pozzi scheme, were you will be asked to invest twenty dollars ($20) and get twice of your deposit. So anyone who like to roll with such investment patterns is likely to be scammed.

Thank you for sharing your experience, many newbie are still falling victims to this scam of a trend called NFT, from it very beginning I away fate it was shady. The thousands and millions I see people wasting on this worthless arts are just too good to be true. Why would someone buy some random artwork that can be easily recreated for that high value.

The elite in the industry are just hyping this NFT trend, using this medium to milk us of our funds, they're the ones buying their NFT themselves and act like they're valuable in the market and later dump it on the gullible gamblers wanting a fantasy in which they buy an art and resell almost instantly then name millions overnight.

The only way you can be rest assured of having a reasonable return of investment is by investing in Bitcoin and it doesn't make how much you have to invest because, you still get same percentage of return as someone that could afford a whole Bitcoin.

I know that there are many scammers out there trying to bait newbies as they have the advantage compared to the newbies that had no experience in marketing and trading.

That is why i wanted to thank you for sharing your knowledge to the newbies like me in preventing scams. I have zero experience in trading and i still have a lot to learn. I'll keep this in mind and remembered this as an advice given by my seniors like you because i know that it'll help me in the future. I hope seniors like you continues to guide newbies as we look upon you as our motivation.

Sad thing is that even before Bitcoin was born, this kind of scam already exists (e.g., turning your $10 into $100 in 10 days) and newbies and beginners are still prone to this scheme. Although we can’t stop these scammers from continuing to deceive people, experienced ones like us can prevent newbies and beginners from getting victimized by educating them on what’s real about Bitcoin.

There are lots of scams here of all kinds so you have to be more careful. it's true that nothing is free here and to get results is also not easy, it takes hard work in it so it takes a process from ourselves. I often hear that many people are deceived and suffer huge losses, it can be used as a lesson for us not to easily believe and be provoked by the lure of big profits. Be a wise person in doing and deciding things so as not to harm yourself.

New generations are growing up, they have easy access to the internet through mainstream mobile phones. Scamming people has become easier to do with crypto because it's not regulated. Most of the time, you have no one to turn to for the recovery of your funds. Even if you do, if the scammers are smart enough, they won't be found. 

It's the ignorant and gullible ones who become victims. Those who only see the promised profits without asking themselves where that money is supposed to come from. If you don't immediately recognize a bitcoin doubler as a scam attempt, I am sorry, but there aren't many ways to help you. You will experience it the hard way sooner or later. Not you personally, just to be clear.   

Aha! Lots of newbies are surely going to fall on this kind of mindset that 'free' or 'giveaway' stuff will always exist. In addition, they also do invalidate the efforts of others by downgrading the amount of effort someone exerts just to earn on this forum.

While I do understand that every newbie's dream is to participate in campaign signatures, they must first earn their way to participate. With newbies being created daily, the amount of posts and replies that I see coming from them are just staggering. Most of them reply with little to no sense at all which defeats the purpose on why they created their accounts.

If you newbies truly want to earn, then start improving your post quality by reading books, and/or surfing the internet to gain knowledge on cryptocurrencies

I know newbies may not be so knowledgeable about the network, but I'm afraid, many of the scams that happen is not as a result of that, but basically stems from people's avarice and their thoughts of getting rich quick through crypto. I mean, I'm pretty sure many people would not fall for the crypto scams they do if it was their traditional Fiat currencies that was used by the scammers, that basically just exposes what quite a lot of people view the network as, a place were they can make quick money and leave, return after a while and do the same, and keep repeating that, but (un)fortunately, it does not work that way. Since many have taken that part and decided not to garner any understanding of the network, it's security protocols, risks concerns, modus operandi of scammers, etc, then more often than not, they'll continually lose their funds to scammers.

And in the end, they will put blame on crypto and say negative which is eventually that's their fault. I'm not going to wonder why as these people won't even be able to a little time searching as they just wanted to invest immediately thinking that in a few hours they'll get their money back which is only just false hope.

Understanding the market is not so hard to do but too unfortunate that this is just somehow been a decline. They just realize how important it was once they fail and after losing their money.

These policies are truth and nothing but the truth. Ever since I learnt my lessons the hard way, I have been very careful.
Nothing is free even in Freetown. No one is willing to offer a stranger something freely. You will have to work and earn gradually.
Secondly; if someone has the ability to double your investment. He should have kept doubling his instead of looking for your fund.
But the bitter truth is that they will not hear until everyone gets a taste of the pill.

The root of scamming is misinformation, if you are not informed, you will like do things that are either out place or do it the wrong way.
One of my principles about scammers is ignoring, I have been a victim twice:

The first one was selling my BTC in a escrow group I know nothing about, that happens because I couldn't verify my kyc on a local exchange and that's how I was duped but was later verified after the scenario.

Lesson learned: Be patient in crypto.

The second was loosing my btc to cloud mining I know nothing about.

Lesson learned: Invest in your knowledge while investing.

From then, I block and report scammers anywhere I see them.