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According to the report from Better Business Bureau scams involving cryptocurrency are the most prominent and riskier one after the online purchase scams which accounts 37% of world's total scams. Earlier cryptocurrency was placed at the seventh position on this list, and during the year 2020 it has moved to the second position. Only 2% of the scams around the world account to cryptocurrency scams, but the amount involved seems to be high. On an average it is found to be around $1200. With cryptocurrency Scams/frauds Rug Pulls are very common.

I've read the link you shared, it turns out that quite a lot of people have experienced fraud under the pretext of rug pulls, I think I'm the only one who has experienced frozen/withered assets before they developed and there isn't even any forwarding from what the developer has reported. Indeed, it's an investment risk. In cryptocurrencies, I admit, it's high enough that it's said to be deadly, yes indeed, that much money belongs to users who believe they are just taken away, scammers have a lot of tricks and I think it's too much for people to measure themselves, although it's not small for those who don't give up

This is the reason why you need to avoid shitcoins and pick only Bitcoin if you want to start to invest on crypto space. After 13 years created, Bitcoin never ever scam anyone until now. If there's an article discuss about Bitcoin scams, pretty sure it's either exchange, investment company, recoverable funds etc are the scammer, not Bitcoin.

Crypto scams are increasing and people are losing money as a result, too many new projects popping up pretending to provide certain service in blockchain only to end up rug pull on the investors.


Very true, except for exchange hacks, social media accounts hacks demanding btc from people, wallet hacks and other similar cases, it is not possible to get scam just by investing on btc through the right source. This is the reason it is the most trusted and reliable cryptocurrency in the world.

What do we really expect from having an open decentralized industry though? Of course there will be a crap ton of scams. But we really can't sort of "police" this, people in general just need to be a lot smarter or just a lot less stupid when it comes to investing their money.

People are thieves.  This is not to say that you and I are thieves. People are terrorists.  This is not to say that you and I are terrorists. Yes there are more scams in cryptocurrency but this is not the whole crypto industry scam. If you are not careful, the scammer will make you his victim. You be careful.  And refrain from buying shitcoins. Then the scammer can't hurt you

Well, I don't really find it that hard to believe. It's actually something natural considering the fact that there's a lot of new stuff that's being introduced, as well as compared to the past, dissemination of information is way easier now so a lot more people are informed and are attracted to investing, which also includes a lot of young people that have a bit of money and want to try their hand on investing stuff. Most of it is, just like what mk4 said, is about the ignorance and stupidity (mostly ignorance) of people when investing. Just like how it is easy to find info on something to invest, it also escapes their mind to actually do proper research at times.

I have been expecting that soon crypto-based scams and frauds can top them all...and it is because cryptocurrency is a growing industry and there will always be people who can be enticed to be victims of any schemes whose main intention is to steal their money from their digital wallets...with the most effective strategy of appealing to human greed. Sadly, there is not much we can do on this problem individually though we can fortify ourselves and maybe others by educating what can be possible scams and frauds. Right now, anybody, anywhere can be able to start a project that can be accepting token sale or ICO as in the past with the promise that the coins or tokens will be pumping at the right time...only for the victims to realize that the people behind the project have already been gone into vacation somewhere with their money gone for good.

I agree with you, indeed we know any company that makes it look cute, with a high ROI or Apy that doesn't make sense for an interest from the rewards given, but when talking about greed, it's difficult bro because it's not their own nominal value. see and deposit, only see the results obtained without seeing a reasonable analysis and this darkens the eyes of investors, even though it doesn't necessarily work as described. especially shitcoin and some of the schemes that friends mentioned above I think need to be re-evaluated by I personally.

I have not heard of a Bitcoin scam all my days in cryptocurrency, yes there may be scams in Bitcoin services such as exchange scams as you mentioned. But to see a Bitcoin internal scam is impossible because Bitcoin is decentralized and over the years Bitcoin has built a good reputation and proven anti-scam security test. But same can not be said of altcoin since centralization has given room for third-party involvement which give scammers the leverage to manipulate the system and carry out scams most especially hacking into project/exchange hot wallets and making away with huge funds. But am sure cryptocurrency scam is going to reduce to their nearest minimum in the future scammers are become aware that there is never a place to hide in blockchain and every transaction will be traced in the future, so the idea of scammers seeing crypto as a safe haven for their illegal activities is a dumb shit and soon there will be close in on, no place to hide for scammers.

Not new and became a common thing, especially to the new projects.

When a new investor gets into the new projects like those NFTs and other new common investments in this decentralized market, they're the ones that are likely to get scammed and experience rug pull.

Unfortunately, even there are too many of those folks that have experienced being rug pulled and scammed. That isn't enough for them to make it because they still invest nonstop on those likely scam projects.

I'm not surprised, in fact I've been saying that ever since ICO creation became a thing where anybody could create a token out of thin air and with virtually no cost and then sell it to idiots on the internet, the scams grew a lot more. The token creation platforms such as ethereum were created exactly for this reason, they eased the way to scam people ergo the number of scams grew a lot faster.

I have to disagree here because it is not only because the market is decentralized (that is one of the smallest reasons). It is mainly because it is hyped up and as I said above, it is super easy to create vaporware and sell it to people who emphatically buy it!
In other words if the hype stops and people started wising up, despite the market still being decentralized, the number of scams shrinks.
We already saw how ICO scams died, but they revived it by renaming it multiple time (ICO, IDO, IBO, IEO, ITO, STO, DeFi, NFT).

You said it all and I definitely agree with you, this is why I personally have been critical of how easy just for anyone to create their own token just out of no were just cos they know how to string some numbers together and because Crypto over the recent years has been seen as an avenue to get rich so, the "idiots" you mentioned above will continue to venture into investing in every new crypto project they see out.

It is not surprising to hear such news. With the huge amount of advertising on social networks and the current financial crisis, people are more and more seeking to invest their savings in assets that will secure them. And then scammers appear who colorfully promise big profits to people who are already in the background of the collapse, ready to find at least some kind of insurance. In addition to the fact that people fall into fraudulent schemes without a full understanding of all the pros and cons of cryptocurrencies, stressful situations also encourage people to believe scammers.
Therefore, they always warn that in order to invest your money in any company, you need knowledge and cold and competent calculation.

Well, that was expected since day by day we have newcomers who always have curious about investments without knowing what it is as long they heard about ^[profit] That is right profit --greedy people will take always a risk even though they know that it is very vulnerable into a scam like shitcoins and other memecoins that becomes scammed. I don't know how many projects now have been raised related to crypto and perhaps 60% of them become scammed. People should stick on bitcoin nothing else, no hype, no fraud and you will be safe.

I'm not surprised that now crypto scams are the second largest in the world, ordinary new projects will become easy targets for everyone who wants to commit fraud, not only scammers but also rich people have a great opportunity to commit fraud, they provide great rewards to attract investors then they disappear, learn from the existing experience, even though the price of bitcoin is now falling, but I still invest in bitcoin,

Yes me either, I mean I am also once a victim of a rug pull project and for that's disgusting but at the same time it teaches me a great lesson that I can use to my future day plan in investing in crypto. Actually, I have heard a lot of people I know that was also a victim of scam projects of crypto and as much as I wanted to help them but a lost money in rug pull project cannot be retrieve. So yeah, let's be very careful on what projects we will going to invest, investing in new projects are totally risky.

They are not just greedy, they are also impatient. And every time there is a new project that offers high returns x100, x1000, without a doubt, they put money in there. They don't realize it until they suffer losses.

Now the crypto investment is getting bigger, more chances that these scammers will get a victim. So many individuals that are here know nothing, they simply just do buying without taking the precautions. They'll absolutely be thinking about easy money in crypto which they think is not necessary. That is why it was not going wonder why crypto is the 2nd largest scam in the world, that can possibly be the top if these newbies won't change their approach to the market.

Reason why government regulation is very important, imagine how the number has grown from 7th position to 2nd position within a short period, the whole cryptocurrency existence is just a decade plus and already the rate of scam is at the 2nd position, what will happen in few years ahead? if not for anything, regulations can reduce the number of scams and rug pull a lot. Scammers are taking advantage of the decentralize space to carry out their terrible act.  Many of these new projects are created to deceive investors, rug pull is a common practice among new project. If nothing is done, the scam rate will keep increasing.

I don't get it how crypto scams are second largest and at the same time account for 2%. From the article, I don't understand how exactly it's calculated. Is it because of the median sum of lost money? Is it by the large number of such scams? I think this requires more data to be analyzed, and I heavily suspect that the metric by which crypto scams are second largest (and, by the way, the article's name calls them 'second deadliest' for some reason, which IMO could only be justified if it accounts for people literally being killed for their money) is actually quite misleading and overall irrelevant, whereas the point about 2% should receive more attention.

This problem has nothing to do with Bitcoin, but with the fact that every kid today wants to have their own token or coin - which is easier to do than many other things in life. This whole altcoins industry is very problematic and no matter what anyone thinks when it comes to cryptocurrencies, much stricter criteria should be set when approving such projects in the sense that the process of listing such tokens on crypto exchanges should be much stricter than is the case now.

Of course, scam always requires the participation of the other side - and the world is full of millions of naive people who obviously have the money to invest in every crazy promise. The question is, should we protect these people from themselves in such a way that we do not allow such scams to be presented to them at all - or should we pretend that nothing is happening?

Before you answer that question, remember that the biggest collateral victim of all this general mess is Bitcoin - because the average investor doesn't make a difference between shitcoinx and Bitcoin, when he loses money, it's all the same to him.

If you already know that there will be an ideal nest for scammers who take advantage to scam people with trash projects. What's more, most of it comes from shitcoins. It is undeniable, therefore to avoid fraudulent acts conducting large-scale research and reviewing all background projects should be carried out with extreme care. But if you are not qualified to do research, then don't worry, Bitcoin is the only safest option not to fall into fraudulent actions in cryptocurrency investment.

I am also one of the victims of rug-pull and it happened when I buy the shitcoins which popping up on pancakeswap...

Now I see that new shitcoins have rarely appeared on the DEX platform like pancakeswap, maybe because many have given up on the tricks of the scammers. everyone also agrees that only bitcoin has so far never been a rug-pull or scam, this proves that only bitcoin is truly the best and most trusted cryptocurrency.

shitcoin is becoming a new method that scammers use to deceive investors. The past few months have indeed been very popular because of the tremendous rise of DOGE and SHIBA, finally many similar shitcoins have appeared, but the shitcoins created by scammers will eventually Rugpull.
Doing large-scale research or research in detail is very necessary so that we know what projects we are following for investment. But some newbies or people who have just entered as investors, don't do detailed research, they just follow other people's words and the hype that was going on at that time.
the safe choice is not just bitcoin, but the top 10 on the CMC list are pretty safe.

We warn the newbies all the time about this but they simply do not listen, they seem to believe that somehow we just want to limit their profits or something, when in fact what we want to do is to protect them from losing their money to the first scammer they encounter.

I really think that if someone wants to invest in altcoins they should be free to do so, but only after they go through a long period in which they familiarize themselves with this market and all its dangers, that way we could avoid a great deal of the most common scams and if eventually those people still decide to invest in the altcoin market at least they would do so in some decent altcoins and not on the shitcoins newbies seem to love.

Scams always existed, especially since the dawn of the internet, they became a common occurrence. Cryptocurrencies are ideal for scamming people, since the transactions are completely anonymous, while the chances of tracing back the scammer or his transactions are almost zero. Telegram and Discord groups are filled with individuals, whose whole purpose is to scam people by tricking them into phising websites, or paying stupid fees to withdraw money they supposedly won. I was also a victim of a scammer through Discord, impersonated a group administrator and tricked me by providing my private key on a phising website, luckily, despite my sleepiness, I realized it at the very last minute and saved my money.

Rugpulls is the most common money making of those developers or creators of those projects around thats why as an investor then it is really just a normal thing that you should really be mindful and be

wise towards your investment decisions because you would definitely be caught likely unto these kind of projects.Dont let or make yourself get dragged of with the hype but i couldn't blame out people

to be deceived or be hooked up just because the possible returns could really be that big or enormous which it is something that it is  really hard to resist on.

This is the reference report:
https://bbbfoundation.images.worldnow.com/library/259c7333-0fb3-4bc0-a059-4b116594c473.pdf

The second position to cryptocurrency is given by their BBB Risk Index rating (see table 1 on page 12 of their report), and it’s calculus is described on page 9 as follows:
Monetory Loss is a core factor in placing crypto as the second on their list, since the median dollar loss reported is of 1200$ (being the global median of 169$).

It’s quite a lengthy report, whose data is originated in their online BBB Scam Tracker site, and seemingly based on 46K reports made during 2021. It may be worth a quick read for those interested in seeing some breakdowns on this data.

That's why you have to be very careful, bitcon scam will continue to grow, as long as Bitcoin is growing rapidly and lot's of new coins are entering the market, the more new coins are entering the market then the more crypto scam will be increasing, so we just have to avoid investing in shit coins because most shitcoins always rug pull and always make sure you do your research first before investing in any new coin.

Crypto-currency seems to be an illness not wanting to go, although since I have joined I haven't experienced such and o think there are people out there too.
It simplest for of protecting yourself in crypto-currency can go a long way, crypto-currency scam and scams generally can't go away, we have no control and manage it.

You can do that by
+ Don't be greedy
+DYOR.
+ Be very discreet with all your informations.
+ To go on unknown site or groups.
+  Follow legit links,  and so much more.

According to what Rug Pulls refers to, it is a type of scam that we have seen frequently.
Although there are ways to avoid falling into scam projects, there are always some that harm the crypto ecosystem and the creators get away with it.

By running off with investors' money that's where distrust in crypto lies at a very high level.

It helps a little when the businesses that promote the projects do an exhaustive review of them and show them to the public for the sale of their tokens. In this way we can take it for a reliable project. Also a project that is listed on a recognized exchange is a sign of being a legitimate project, in addition to the development itself.

This industry is growing so expect the huge amount of scam attempt will come over on it this is why we need to have proper education about those attempts so that we can safely avoid such thing and participate only with good projects around. For newbies they should not believe people tell them to invest because they can earn huge a proper researching and profiling is good since important for them to know if the project has solid tracks to avoid getting scam nor get FOMO.

It's not just Bitcoin has a lot of scams I think these new projects revolving around such as NFTs which is being hyped and considering who's who someone should know what are the fake projects that would resulted in a rug pull.

Ever since the other altcoins ever made such as the hyped projects like ICO before the scams are growing each day. I guess newbies or not everyone could be a victim with these scammers.

I think it's a double edge standard, crypto is slowly sipping into every house hold around the world so obviously criminals are going to target them, whether project rug pulls or other scams that involves crypto. And maybe this data is what governments really wanting to regulate crypto, and for sure their main reason is to protect the consumers from this scammers plowing around the crypto ecosystem.

To be honest almost 99.9% of projects are Rug Pull. They come to the markets to pull money. None of them intend to keep a role in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. And we can't prevent them sadly in a decentralized world. This is something that becomes like gambling because investors sometimes could gain some profits as well. That's the reason how scammers attract investors. If you investigate deeply, you will find a single owner running multiple Rug Pull projects. Because they know very well how to pull money from investors' pockets. That's the reason I always prefer to avoid investing in a brand new project.

That's true, a large amount of projects have a sole purpose of scamming people. Unfortunately, some of such shitcoins are being shown even on CoinmarketCap, as the biggest gainers (often over 200% increase in their value), 99.9% of which are pure scams, coins with zero liquidity that can't even be sold.

This news comes as no surprise.
Crypto is emerging as a phenomenon in the financial world, where every listener can x2, x4 even x1000 properties. People rush into the market in a frenzy with the desire to get rich quick without having to learn or practice any skills. Scammers didn't pass up this opportunity to hit people's greed, they create shitcoins with the promise of investor quick wealth.

Its the shitcoins that are ruining the reputation of the market and bitcoin.

The people,who buy shitcoins and NFTs get what they deserve....nothing.
When you buy a bunch of crap with the expectation of this bunch of crap to become 10000% more valuable after a while,you get what you deserve.I can't feel sorry for the people,who are buying shitcoins.
Most of them know what they are buying,but they get into the ponzi scheme with the expectation,that another fool will appear and buy the same crap at a higher price.
The nastier scams are those,in which the people are being deceived for real.Like the call center scams located in India and Bangladesh,where the scammers pretend to be customer support for big corporations,so they get access to the bank accounts of old people in the USA.

Regulation will put a check on such projects true, but frauds will always exist outside the market and these underground dealings will become more common. It does what is says though, as long as people are careful to avoid the shady one. But it will take time and while it happens, we can work in educating newbies and reminding them the values of being humble and content while keeping ambitions of getting rich over time. Teach them how scams work and how they fool newbies.

Scams exist because people exist. You can not have a world devoid of scammers and not everything is in your hands to control. How and where people put their money, is not your concern, unless it is a family member. So you have to discuss with them and explain the nuances of crypto.

I somewhat disagree with this. Several conditions must be met in order to be called a "project" and must involve the interests of many people. What rugpull scammers do is not actually build a project, just wrap their personal mission in a "project" as closely as possible and coupled with a lot of greedy newcomers trusting fast return investments.

But it can be said that scammers and greedy people will always be a role-couple in every "mainstream" in this field,  the scam case will still exsist.

I remember before I watched a NetFlix documentary how scams or fraud before in the early days like how people scam other people before it's like somehow how scams are originated.
In short, scams will stay. It's like at different times, some scams are improving or using differents ways, just like now when cryptocurrency started, there are already a lot of ways how to scam people and one of the best examples is this creating a project then rug it.

Most of the victims here are newbies, and those newbies starting to get some lessons. But it's worst lesson for me, you lost a money for a lesson, not a win.

Maybe not scamming per se, but just having projects with no purpose at all and be used by some individuals to enrich themselves. Like you have said, there are projects who will suddenly increased even in the 1000% in a single day and obviously this is a trap for non-experience investors and this is where the trap is. And before they realized what had happened, the price goes down hard and they are trap inside.

Don't say what you don't know, you can figured out point of what you experienced, while we are seeing altcoins as the means of scamming people is because of the Minor projects of altcoins that's not really assured, ethereum have you seen it scam people, is not an altcoins, somebody can be scammed in different means, because i have been one of the victim bitcoin scammed before, through Bitcoin investment platforms, so after sometimes the platform made away with my Bitcoin, so it depends, those alternative coin's you are emphasising on majority don't have base, so you can't use it to justify all the altcoins, scam is a scam, but we should try to avoid been victim simple.

Is there a way to recover bitcoin scam from a scammer? If yes. HOW? Is Bitcoin.org, the official website  has a special collective fund to reimbursed those who has been scammed with BTC?

Well due to the anonymous and decentralised nature of cryptocurrency, it is quite understandable why crypto scams would be so popular with the degenerates of our society. But it really is quite easy to avoid crypto scams. I think if you fall for a new coin without having researched its team, the whereabouts of the company, its reputation etc. then thats mainly your fault. Anyone that gullible would get scammed, obviously.

Any newcomer to crypto should really do their research. All the data and information can be found on this very forum. All it requires is time and patience.

Practically, there's no possible way to recover your lost Bitcoin funds, it's anonymous and decentralised. Why should you be reimbursed your lost funds? If you got scammed, it's purely your fault. Since the dawn of cryptocurrencies, people have warned against phising websites, scams, fake projects and so on, providing solid advice in order to avoid them. It's not a banking service, don't expect it to act like one.

I think it is more of the shitcoins and memecoins who are involved in the scamming process- like developers would create such coins and the "pump-and-dump" scheme where they would pull out their investments and sell majority of the coins.

Unfortunately, anything that exists online would be a candidate for scams. Since cryptocurrencies wholly exist in the internet and creating a coin is something that can be done by everyone, it is a target for newbies who are JUST starting their experience and journey in the crypto world.

But like what OP mentioned, BTC in itself is NOT a scam- but most scams derive their existence primarily on BTC itself which is very unfortunate.

He just said it that the amount involved is high but indeed that 2 percent is too small. Lots of countries are now legalizing crypto so the number of scams are also higher now. The title second largest scam is more appropriate to hear than the second deadliest and why is it deadliest? I mean why will someone got killed if they only transact online?

But, being online is also the reason why the number of crypto crimes are rising because they can easily get away with it and add in that cryptos are not totally regulated because of their anonymity/decentralized nature. 1200 usd is the amount that they mentioned but a crypto rug pull can be more than that. The average was supposed to be millions if not billions.

It depends on the way that the government(s) will decide to proceed: if the regulation is too strict that's not gonna be good for this world, so be careful wishing more regulations. At the same time people need to wake up, the majority of the new "investors" think they can become rich in a few weeks/months investing few hundreds bucks and expecting a 100x, that's the reason they usually choose the worst coins in the market. That's just a natural selection.

The average scammed amount is $1200? That's so much. Imagine every person involved in crypto be scammed with something like this, it's really saddening on the part that all they need is education and research on the specific project that they are going to invest in. I'm not that surprised that it came to be the second because the way it's being done is easy compared to other types of scams.

What is the number #1 though?

The sad part of this is the people that are not involved in crypto would start associating Crypto as a scam tool since it's now the second.

Very Insightful, i think the urge to make millions within a short period is making some people to fall blindly into scam even if they can see it clearly. As long as people exist scams and fraudulent activities will always be around, it is left for people to decide if they will rather go the fast and risky way or the slow and steady way. Government involvement will put a lot of shady activities in check and minimize the number of unnecessary useless projects coming everyday without any real purpose in this space.

It would be awesome if someone knows a scam that it gets reported to https://glasschain.org/
Now we cannot 100% guarantee we will be able to pick it up but we do most of the cases and start an investigation. what helps are

- names of businesses
- websites
- bitcoin addresses (if available)

Contact via chat there or report directly

This is what can happen if the crypto market is unregulated. Scams are very common and there is nothing that investors can do about it whenever they are scammed but to just move on, find another project and invest again.

This is also why I'm only investing and holding the top coins especially Bitcoin. I don't want to invest into new projects because there is a high chance that it will be either a scam or a rug pull project like what is happening right now in NFT game industry. What's kinda disappointing at least for me is that, there are still investors (mostly newbies) that are falling into some common ways of scamming like phishing or Bitcoin doubling etc. and what's even worse is there are some investors who got scammed twice already. I mean getting scammed once is enough but to get scammed once again, it seems like you didn't learn from your first mistake if that happens.

Either way, I just hope that we are intelligent enough to distinguish which projects are scams and which are not. Which are legit and which are fake :). For safer route, just invest into the top coins in terms of market cap.

The last time I lost such a big sum in a related manner was about 2 years ago but it wasn't a scam, it was an account compromised at a big site on this forum. It was abou $2000 then but BTC was nowhere near today's price so it's about 4 times more the value of when I lost it. Makes me sick to still think about it.

But to lose that amount in a scam? I would feel every day just so guilty. I mean we've all lost money in ICOs and shit, tokens didn't do well, I've even been directly scammed in this forum but for that amount of money, I would never put it in someone's hand online.

And yes, what's #1?

This simply tells that lots of people are still uneducated about crypto.

They seem to think that crypto is like a Ponzi scheme that's why they easily gets a victim of scam, that's just one part of the big scams in crypto, there are also those phishing, and those that directly scam people and they can do that because they are anonymous which is what crypto is for.

You can utilize shitcoins to your advantage if you only know how to manage risks that come along with it. It could be beneficial to some, but to those who don't really have the patience and knowledge might just end up losing. It would be much better if you'll invest in coins that are considered to have a great potential despite the volatility. Surely, this isn't only revolving around bitcoin. There are many other coins that are showing a lot of potential if you'll just dig deep about their backgrounds and projects.

There are many crypto scams now because of ignorance and lack of knowledge of people. Most people easily fall victim into the scams and schemes because they don't have that skills and knowledge to detect whether what is scam and what isn't, which is their responsibility. I guess this matter still boils down to being responsible enough of every action we take and being wary to every possible tactics other people may do.

fraud is difficult to control in this crypto, every day there will be new projects, and new coins, and we as investors must be really careful and have a target for selling the coins we enter, even though the chances of being cheated are 80% but at least we have tried to avoid rugpulls

Government involvement can make a good or bad impact depending on how they approach the ecosystem, so we should keep that side for now. But it will reduce the number of scams getting in without any screen.

The same urge exists in every human being. But some people use this to fuel an ambition to work hard and make money while some want to be lazy, not work and attempt to make money without doing anything. This second mentality is being popular these days more than the first one due to some people writing books about the same, which is a different type of manipulation, topic for another discussion.

But the point remains same, because the first group will earn their money while the second group will easily lose money while trying to make money.

Fraud is difficult to control irrespective of what is being the mode of payment. To be able to fool a person is an art and there are large number of gullible people in this world. What we have to do is to keep our close ones safe from it and teach them about scams.

To be sincere, I wouldn't be surprised if by next year 2023, it now reads that crypto scams are then the largest in the world.
Since the space isn't regulated and anyone, anywhere can wake up and launch a project, even with their identity hidden, and people still go ahead to invest in such projects, it is likely that the scams in crypto will continue to increase, it is up to us as investors to be really careful and vigilant, if one doesnt have the ability to differenciate a scam from original project, then it's better to avoid newly launched projects and only invest in projects that are already established.
Well, I pray God will continue to lead us, that even as the scam activities in this space continues to increase, we or any one we know will never fall a victim.

When you are dealing with this market specially on active manner then you would really be facing up lots of scenarios and situations which would really be involving lots of scams around.
You wouldn't notice it initially until they do become a scam but once you do able to gain up some experience then you would really able to spot if a project is a potential scam or legit
ones even though it wont really be a guarantee because scammers are really good on disguising themselves and making themselves legit as they could.

Kind of sad that crypto scams are now the second largest in the world, but also not so surprising. Crypto currencies had a huge boom last year and many different coins made triple digit returns. These returns made cryptos even more popular with news coverage growing and new investors joining every day, trying to get a piece of the action. The rise in investors unfortunately also means a rise in scammers who must have watched the trend very closely. For many years the amazon gift card scam must have been the most profitable for scammers. But eventually awareness is spread and its not so successful anymore. Together with the rise in scammers it means they need to look for new more profitable ways to make money. Creating new cryptos with the sole purpose to scam investors is terrible, I wish there was a better protection for new investors. That's why for me the largest part of a crypto portfolio should be made up of mainstream coins like BTC and ETH, only a small fraction should be used to go for new alt coins.

The ideal conditions of freedoms for the user will always extent its freedom to a bad actor. When you are free from the control of a centralized authority, you are not only free from its interruption but also from its mercy.

Yes majority of the scam can’t be recovered at all and it depends on some factors. But, there is still the possibility of recovering money stolen through a cryptocurrency scam. There have been several times that we have seen scammers who used cryptocurrency to scam their victims get caught and brought to justice. So it is possible, but it also depends on some factors like I have pointed out before.

If Bitcoin is not legal in your country, the chances is zero if you’re scammed, because there wouldn’t be anyone to report to. But in a place where it is legal, there would be an authority for you to report to who would keep records and track the transactions on Blockchain which would possibly lead to the scammer getting caught.

Getting scammed is not really that hard if you are always on the look out and you are only investing into things that the whole world knows. I mean I have been scammed literally just once, and that was something I knew that could happen but I wanted to outsmart them and I failed and I knew that could happen. Aside from that in the past 9 years I have been here, I never got scammed and I probably will never get scammed neither.

In the long run, if you invest into new things then you will have a higher chance to get scammed, all you need to do is focus on investing into very old projects that have been around for AT LEAST 3 or more years, hopefully 4-5 and longer and then you should be fine.

This is the reason on why we do have lots of coins in the market and even you could create token for free and on a very simple manner specially on erc20 which isnt surprising that it has been flooding out on the market.
As an investor then you should really be that careful and aware on what are the things happening around.Scams and frauds is really that rampant into this market and if you arent that active or aware that much
then most likely you would really be ending up on losing money.This cycle would continue as long there would be people who do really fall with these scams.

I remember hearing the news on tv before, bitcoin is indirectly involved in a scam with a huge amount. Later on, it was found out that its not bitcoin, but certainly another coin that is not very familiar to me. This is a proof that investing in bitcoin is more secured because the chances of scamming is very rare. You may be scammed with bitcoin but most of them is due to owner's negligence that they tend to protect their own account in bitcoin. However, shitcoins have always have high chances to make you fall as a scam victim.

Scams are mostly inevitable for people who chose to invest without prior knowledge on what they are putting money into. They become the target of scammers because they are more stupid than being smart. But for some who don't easily trust people and will not care to invest if they are not sure about it, scamming will very rare to happen for them. But as they always say, you may spend money to make money, and not to lose it.

It’s unfortunate that people are losing their money to crypto scams. But somewhere, they are also a reason for these scams. In spite of knowing that there is no easy way to make money, many people take shortcuts and end up getting scammed.

The problem is there are many stupid people believing in these trash projects thinking its the best way to invest their money because of the promised high return in a short period.

Their greed is pushing them to take the more risky path and not considering to invest in the coins that are existing already for years like Bitcoin.

So as long as there are newbies who are not careful when investing and people who likes easy money, then we cant expect any improvement. Shit projects will continue to exist and it depends on the investors if they will still bite the too good to be true offer.

Yes, if they are not greedy about money, these people could avoid it. But unfortunately, they are fallen to a promising speech that most of these scammers do.

https://money.usnews.com/investing/cryptocurrency/articles/top-crypto-scams-to-watch

Nevertheless, people aren't quitting because of these scams. I believe now that they are learning already. And these dirty tactics that scammers have been using are becoming less effective if we (investors) must have to undergo searches first before investing.

I can still feel sorry for those that are naive enough to think they are going to make a fortune with their NFTs of cats that they bought for thousands of dollars, as if we could have gotten to them before the scammers at least we could have helped them to avoid those results.

But just as you say I do not fell sorry for the one that knows very well that they are investing in a scam or very weak projects and they still do it, in that case even if we talk to them we will achieve nothing, so the only way for them to learn is to lose their money over and over again until they understand that this is not the way to make money in the markets.

I think this is due to the fact that the cryptocurrency is to some extent anonymous, and attackers use it, plus the cryptocurrency market is huge, and where there is a lot of money there are also a lot of scammers, unfortunately statistics are only growing, but should fall

The new hype and fomo in every country is different in the cryptocurrency world so that it attracts newcomers who are not careful and tempted by big profits. This is one of the contributors to the number of crypto scams besides the Rug Pulls scam project and I think this will always grow following crypto developments. in the community and this is where we can see the positive impact of joining a trusted forum like bitcointalk in order to minimize falling into a scam

The public figure like them should indeed take a full responsibility , they are indeed charged with $300k for backing a scam ICO / crypto project but that is still looks unfair penalty .. you know that the project was raised around $25 million right? im pretty sure he gets more than just $300k , so the penalty itself mean nothing as he has more money left from the project, human law .. weak.

as time goes by , the trickery will continuously transforming and the best defensive against those bastards are knowledge & education so yeah get your self educated.

Wait, is it 2% or 37% because that is a huge difference there and can be misleading. Who is on the top? Is it fiat currency? Then yes, crypto currencies are heading the right way. Of course it is going to be on the top as it gets more popular. Just because it's on the top doesn't mean it is a bad currency. Scams are everywhere. People find different ways to scam people. It is the responsibility of the person to be cautious from those scams. Most of the scams that happened using crypto currencies is because of people getting greedy. They know that they will get scammed but they still try their luck.

I don't think it's very clear what was said. at least now, of course, many people have opened their eyes to the function of cryptocurrencies, especially during the current war conditions where cryptocurrencies have an important role. being a fraud for spending or investing that is packaged in such a way, I think the victims are those who don't want to dig up knowledge about cryptocurrencies, but are greedy to get a lot of money from hearing stories

You are right, but humans tend to focus on the demerits more often. Hence the growing statement of being resistant to the regulation of bitcoin transactions, although that might curb down much of the scams going on.

Taking shortcuts in trying to make money is one factor, some people are just no well informed and they think crypto is like some magic thing, where you can make money from thin air, added to this old-age and low tech knowledge and you have a perfect victim for scam. We need to make people aware and cunning enough to avoid these scams.

If you see a family member getting interested in crypto, make sure you talk to them in a reassuring manner and teach them the basics about how scams might work.

Crypto currency Scammers are increasing every day and night. They are using different method and tactics to lure their victims to fall. It is only those who have understand their methods and ways to lure people can not fall again. These Scammers can even spend money to scam their victims.

Just like one of my friends shows me a WhatsApp group and when I saw the group prescription, I told him that it is a scam. The prescription is " Crypto currency Trading Investment". That is to say, if you are interested in investment on crypto currency, you can give them the money then they will use the money and invest it on behalf of you. And I said, if I want to invest or trade with crypto currency (Bitcoin), I will trade by myself.

Actually, the method is always the same. These projects that will rug pull does have the same style in common, they'll hype the project to get more investors and to make them excited. And then eventually when they're at their peak, they'll surprise their investors that some problems have occurred and their funds got compromised but they'll make sure that things are going to be normal and back again until they drop close to zero and they eventually die as their volume can't go up anymore which is the confirmation that they've finally rug pulled, exited and left the project.

They cycle does always continue or to be having this very common way which is something that people do realize or open their eyes because scams wont exist if theres no one would be feeding or falling from it.

As for us experienced users who do really keep on advising and taking out some precautions about these scammy projects and other things but still there are people who do fall for easy cheap tricks
due to their greed.
We know  that money involved or circling around this market is really huge which do talks about billions which means it is a honeypot for these scammers to take advantage.

cryptocurrency market scam cases are reducing every year, i don't know about this research but what i see is a very significant reduction every year, in 2016 to 2019 people easily fall for scam ICO projects, then also easily people invested in scam altcoins and used scam exchanges, but today people are more selective in projects and exchanges because there is already a lot of information that they cannot use exchange scam and that they should be careful with scam projects

This is not surprising as the altcoin's market is usually the ground for all scammers, but not with bitcoin. And mostly, if you are still a newbie in the market, you always find those shitcoins more affordable to invest compared to bitcoin so you end up investing in the wrong coins and then lose your capital. Crypto scams usually happen to those who lack knowledge in crypto and only here to invest for quick profits. But if you stick with bitcoin, though its expensive, its rewards always pays off the price.

as these scammers can deploy their project anonymously, they do have the chance to introduce a new project again and again with the aim of screwing these naive buyers. but for noncrypto users, they need to educate themselves that it is not bitcoin per se is the scam here. because a lot still have the notion that btc is a scam owed to these crappy alt projects. crypto market is the breeding ground of these scammers because they can move around without anybody chasing after them because they are anonymous!

Let us hope that your friend listened to your advice, however I am always surprised by the lack of common sense of most people, one of the most famous slogans of this market is that bitcoin allows you to be your own bank, and while that comes with a set of benefits and freedoms it also brings new responsibilities.

This means that we are directly responsible for anything that happens to our coins, so if we happen to make a good investment and we earn money then it was due to our own merits, but if we happen to lose that money then it is our fault regardless of how it happened, this means that even if scammers are directly responsible for the loss of coins that a great deal of people experiment in this market, at the end they are at fault too as they are the ones that decided to give their money to the scammers in the first place.

Too bad that there will always be unknown to the process and method of these scammers and they're the target of these scams. That's why these scammers always have the opportunity to fool people specially the newer ones because they don't know how to know that they've been scammed already.
Greed is really a big part of it so it plays the role for both, the scammers and the victims.

Yes, scammers will never win if we don't let them win also. They just survive and continue their doings because we also give them the chance to do it. Definitely, we don't have to blame others even these scammers because we make decisions individually, unfortunately, some people did stupid decision due to their greediness. It is our responsibility to take care of our funds and to be aware and knowledgeable about these scams strick as this helps us not to fall in them. We have to be more vigilant and take actions responsibly.

Scammers are increasing by the day. Most of us got scammed either by our greediness or carelessness. We can control the rate of scams if we take it seriously. Scamming happens daily. People are also complaining daily. I doubt if there would be any possible solution to stop scams permanently. The only thing to do is to prevent scams, Letting people know about the latest scams strategy in town. Investors, traders, gamblers has lost their funds to scammers countless number of times. Scammers would trick you into paying some funds as gas fees or selling coins Offline which they do not have. We have to be careful not to fall into the hands of these scammers.

When crypto becomes popular and it becomes easier to create projects making scammers make crypto projects the easiest target to raise money, there have been many big projects that have finally proven to be scams and they have run away hundreds of millions of dollars, and this makes us have to be vigilant to choose a good project and it is safer to invest in coins that have a strong reputation in the market.

People are becoming more intelligent already that is why scam cases are reducing every year.
Still I don't know how but I believe that investors are becoming more intelligent than they are a few years ago where scams are everywhere from ICO to DeFi to IEO's etc.

Investors know already which are scam and which are not though there are still some who are still falling into some common ways to scam them, they are learning from it thus we see scamming cases going down every year which is a good thing :). Still we need to inform those newbie investors and let them know which projects are scams and which are not.

In the crypto realm, there is a lot of fraud. It is critical to conduct some research, particularly for people who are new to investing or trading in cryptocurrencies. You should never put your money into a fishy website, and you should always conduct your research on any coin before investing. By clicking on this link, you will have an understanding of how cryptocurrency trading works without being a victim of a fraud. It will also display a list of red flags that will assist you in keeping your money safe. :)
https://medium.com/cryptocurrency-secrets-for-beginners/list-of-cryptocurrencies-scams-to-avoid-before-investing-a0cd91e7bb02

Scammers are also using the crypto industry as a platform to earn for their own benefit through creating shitcoins that turn into rug pull later on. To be honest, even crypto professionals couldn't escape this before and most of us have invested in this type of project but for wise investors, this serves as a lesson so we'll know what type of project should we avoid in the future.

The crypto industry does have a significant problem with scams. According to authorities, in particular the various EU regulators, (https://www.forexbrokerz.com/news/eu-regulators-warn-of-crypto-related-risks-and-celebrity-crypto-adds) the biggest problems stem from meme coins as well as various celebrity influencers that hawk those coins on social media and manipulate naive people to invest in them. They are right about that, there have been multiple incidents where relatively famous people - even very famous people - were implicated in that sort of activity. I think even Kim Kardashian is being sued over hawking some some crypto pump and dump scheme.

There are large number of money(fiats) and gold that has been stolen as a result of bank robberies, the money today are not where to be found and to say that the robbery made it to Guinness book of records but they don't talk about them. There are gold that has been stolen in the past in many countries but they don't allow media talk about them because you can't trace gold, it can be melt and reform into another shape but you can't do that to bitcoin, so rest when they talk a little bad about bitcoin.
Bitcoin has it's downside but let be fair, it's there everywhere, bitcoin scams has reduced over the years if you compare it to those days.

The increasing number of cryptocurrency scams is becoming terrifying and if nothing is done about it , could scare away future investors and also be a worrisome thing for already existing investors. Going further these could cause government to place a ban on the entire industry to protect it citizenry from getting scammed and loose their hard earned money. A system should be in place to tighten or checkmate the activities of these scam project and for investors to be able to detect any scam projects.

True, this happens a lot in bounties. I'm a campaign participant, I've seen this kind of thing happen to me often. The loss is not comparable to the investors who have spent a lot of money to invest in it, but we as humans also have to lose time to do something that is run by fraud. Everyone hopes crypto should be more secure for things like this. The risk of market failure is acceptable, but if it is a scam, everyone will find it hard to trust again.

Yet you see many scams in the space, including impersonators and generally the new investors will fall for these scams.


There are many who wants to take a chance thinking that it would make them a fortune and that is what the scammers are trying to take advantage. If you look at some of the projects that rallied which includes a dozen meme coins where the developers are unknown and if you take this general step of identifying the team then you will not invest in those projects and yet they are some of the most rallied projects.

Even projects with a well written vision, they will not succeed and these things are a normal scenario in the cryptocurrency space and when you invest in an unregulated market where scams are not monitored, you will see scammers having their merry time and that includes projects with a great paper but fail to convert them into reality.

Scammers are increasing by the day. Most people got scammed through links for airdrops or by their carelessness. I know of a  guy that got scammed because he forgot to disconnect his trust wallet from poocoin when buying a coin. High intellectual scammers invade his wallet and empty it. There are so many tricks internet fraudsters are using now to scammed people, and they always target those that their portfolio has numerous zeros. They might ask you your 12 private phrases, which you might mistakenly give it to them. This mistakes is mostly done by the newbies who are eager to learn and boost their portfolio

Not only scams but also to those hacking incidents which makes even more risky for us to deal with and being too careless with our security.Just like for this example.
https://fortune.com/2022/04/01/axie-infinity-hack-crypto-heist-ronin-blockchain/#:~:text=Then%20in%20late%20March%2C%20Axie,treat%20gameplay%20like%20a%20job.

How the NFT-based game Axie Infinity suffered one of the largest crypto heists in history

Its the biggest in crypto history so its not surprising if there would be other in the future.

The rapid development of crypto makes anyone interested in investing in crypto, this is what makes scammers target crypto as a target for scams, they think that with crypto they can multiply money quickly, and nowadays more and more projects are being used for scam purposes and we should always be vigilant and not be too easy to put money in projects that are not clear.

Statistics (https://www.sidneydailynews.com/news/business/217610/cryptocurrency-scams) says just the opposite, number of scams is multiplying year by year. And it has sense as crypto market is still growing significantly: you can think that comparatively there are less frauds but in absolute terms there are much more different scam projects including different local projects which are not so known outside of local communities. Moreover scammers still think that they will not be punished for crypto frauds and suppose it would be safe for them (it is far from truth but their confidence makes them scam harder).

Very few crypto projects are that clear that you can invest without risk. Most of them have some sort of word-jugglery in order to fool investors into putting in more money than they can afford.

In reality, the IPO/fiat market is way more regulated and safer compared to crypto ICOs. But then scams will be everywhere you try to look.

Truely, projects that say they can multiply money in short period of time are scam but newbies like to believe in them.

Lets look at this as a Momentum because this proves one thing that when there are Scammers then there are possible victims and if there is possible victims meaning the market is healthy and profitable right?

I may at some part hate this thing but part of me also says that we must be thankful because this is the proof of how our crypto market is becoming popular around the world with the amount of scams taken each time.

I am currently being scammed and would like any insight into what to do.

The scammers around the market keeps increasing with time as a result of increased demand for cryptocurrency investment. When people think of making easy money, they easily get trapped. This isn't with cryptocurrency, the same happens with other markets too. Mostly in the name of MLM most of the scams were organised. Traditional IPO is way more regulated which keeps them at lower risk against crypto projects.

Newbies were introduced to cryptocurrency as a way to make money in a very short time period. This shouldn't be done. One need to be introduced to cryptocurrency with the description of its risks. This is why most of the newbies gets landed on multiplier project scams and never find cryptocurrency market trusted.

What is attractive about crypto is the multiplication of money in a fast time. but it contains a risk that many novice investors are aware of in the end. and many of the stories in crypto have sad and happy endings, a lot of us hear the news of people getting rich suddenly and they are still young. it's like moving assets in the near future. It's not a prohibition to invest that has a high risk, but we must have sufficient knowledge before starting

How sad to see this kind of News imagine there are so much happening in the world but crypto becomes the most scamming area in regards to profiting ?
maybe it is indeed but also I can see this to be a positive one because look at how many market we have in the world yet crypto become the ranked number  1 in scam so there are many people here that interested in the market because there are lots of money inside and this is very healthy .

Possible victims? Nah, you call them "willing victims". The increasing number of altcoins including those stupid meme coins is enough of a reason that some people in crypto space likes to gamble with high risk high return kind of investments.
But then again, they are not called possible victim, instead they are the willing victim.
It's not supposed to be that Bitcoin and crypto is going to be popular because of the high rate of scams, and there's nothing to be thankful about that lol.
Bitcoin is supposed to become popular because of its border less transactions, decentralisation, and anonymity.

Unfortunately, the fact that if you get scammed, there is a big chance that you will never see that money back again, and people do not even work for it is the main reason. Don't get me wrong, there are scams in the regular world everyday as well, but there is at least courts for that and even though you can't get your money back most of the time there, you will also end up putting that person in jail or make them a fugitive which is something you could feel a bit better about, not enough but at least something, in crypto there isn't even that most of the time.

This is why scammers prefer crypto these days, since they know they may get away with it without even getting sued.

Even, the scams which are outside of crypto, you will not be able to get your money back either.


Actually crypto is still in its early stages and scammers are easily able to fool the newbies in this field. People jump into crypto without much knowledge and scammers used this to their advantage. Also crypto is decentralized and not regulated, both of these things are exploited by the scammers.

I don't think you track or retrieve any amount of funds you being scammed from scammers, because right scammers always being advance every time, and mostly what makes people to being scammed is because unverified investment platforms they join for them to make profit, I don't think their is way ou can redeem your funds as you i said before, no insight that will be better than avoiding scam project or investment

Since most scammers are using trust frauds, yes, they are trying to confuse those who are them aimed to cheat. And they usually use hypic topics in which few people understand at the moment. Cryptocurrencies are both polular and not understood enough by majority. That's why we are working on spreading the word about crypto so more people can know enough not to be deceived.

A few days ago another Ponzi Scheme has been busted by the authorities in our country where they again promise their investors a high percentage ROI and runs with the money but thankfully they were got caught they will face multiple charges. The famous rug pull I've ever known was the face Squid game coins which many have fallen victim to and they still losing hope to recover back their funds because the coin was fake and has no promises to return.

Working in finance one thing that I’ve been taught / take financial licensing exams for is how to watch out for scams, and it’s honestly never been a surprise to me that bitcoin /cryptocurrency have become such huge scam havens. So few people take the time to study how it works but think they can get rich quick so they hop in blindly.

As long as money is involved, you really watch out for scams. I agree that bitcoin will be used for this, but what I have noticed is that way back in 2016, I really saw a lot of scams using this, but people always fell for it. It is unlike now that people are aware of it and knew that it would be a scam, but here in our place, I don't know what is happening. Scammers are really approaching you in real life or real accounts on social media to present any ponzi schemes, and a lot of people got scammed by it. When they hear about bitcoin, they are eager to invest their money in it.

Bitcoin or cryptocurrency becomes a tool that can be used for anything, such as for fraud. Scammers use cryptocurrencies as a field to spread their fraudulent territory in all kinds of ways, presenting Ponzi schemes, investing with unreasonable profits and persuading to enter their circle.
Ordinary people may be interested in Bitcoin but they are not aware that they are being targeted by scams.

Therefore, there is a need for education so that they know and can distinguish which investments are truly profitable and which are scammers that are really detrimental.

If we do tend to severity of scams back in the past and comparing to now then we could definitely say that people do really become even more wiser when it comes to investment.It might not totally

get ridding of it but the numbers had really lessen out all over the years which does indicate that we are really that becoming more aware on how scams and frauds do really happen on this market.

Watch out for scams because they are everywhere.Dont make yourself greedy to be fooled enough on something like this.

Many are still victimized by these ponzis because they all think the same that they can get money easily and earn from it.
But these victims are greedy and that's the reason why they keep on becoming victims of these. As for the scammers, they see this weakness of the people and they're bringing the same scams with different names since these people are not learning from their experience.

As a cryptocurrancy commodity that is most in demand and growing rapidly, I think it's only natural that it occupies number 2 for now because there are many factors that give fraudsters the opportunity to trap fish into the net.
the large number of newcomers, influenced by the existing fomo and the nature of greed is one of the causes.
And including many new projects left by the team due to lack of planning by an inexperienced and incompetent team so many lose their money, this is not a scam but mentally investors will feel cheated

People who know well crypto investment must follow what you stated. Unfortunately, many beginners who don't have enough knowledge of crypto, are interested in the promotion of those shitcoins on varied social media. Sweet promises from shitcoins armies, lead many amateurs to buy at a nonsense rate. They always said that investing in those shitcoins will make you rich quickly, investing in Bitcoin needs a lot of time to gain profits.  :D

Because a lot of these people are hoping that their initial investments will increase many folds. This is why they want to invest in like pump and dump coins. But the risk is very high in this type of coin. If you want an assurance that your money won't disappear, better opt for bitcoin. These fraudsters are the reasons why noncrypto users have negative connotation when it comes to bitcoin or crypto. But for example, bitcoin itself is not a scam. It is the people who are using it to their own gain are scammers.

You can actually make tons of profits on dealing with low cap coins which could possibly make your investment would profit for how many folds but of course the risk is way too high which is something that
someone should be minding on and if you do like to somewhat play safe then better to be mindful with your actions which would really result into less risk of losing money.
Scams are everywhere and lots of projects are frauds and money grab thats why making your own research is always be the key.

Rug Pull is so common nowdays and people never tired of getting involved in. They trust their luck, wanna try it out, kind of like gamble, they become increasingly addicted.
I think the important lesson is to know when to stop

I mean yeah this ain't really too surprising to me. Since I took interest in bitcoin and signed up on some websites and stuff - or maybe its just due to my search data being used/sold in a particular way, I found myself getting more and more spam emails that were related to crypto in some way or the other. Invest in this, buy that, click here to get x BTC! I mean its obvious that this is going to happen - specially with a decentralized currency like BTC - which people still know pretty less about and aren't completely aware of how it works. Hell, you see these kind of scams with fiat/netbanking transactions - ofc its going to happen for crypto aswell.

But I'm afraid that NFTs have actually made this worse than it ever needed to be, and ofcourse the ICO for shitcoins - which people blindly invest in without looking into their history and then the project just up and vanishes. Its pretty much our duty to educate others/who are new to crypto about these to make them less gullible to these scams.

When you come across ads that portray winning a huge amount for zero or no price, then it’s probably a good idea to skip it, it's definitely a scam. Since the cryptocurrency industry is booming, there’s a lot of money involved, so yes, it gets pretty convenient for the internet scammers to take over. Keep your plan focused, tighten your security belt and stay away from these fraudsters.

It's not about the crypto that is on its early stage but it was about the newbie that is on their early stage. That makes them a vulnerable target by the fraudsters. A hype topic is popular than a topic that are not being talked about often so people might know them already or if not then they will do their own research because it can make them curious about that thing but in the end, if they still didn't get it, they should refrain from investing on it.

There are people that spread the word crypto but they only spread minor info like saying crypto can make you money, only to attract them to invest here but that was wrong. Their safety is our responsibility so we should tell them the hazards of cryptos as well.

While crypto scams and general criminal activity are a big issue for the industry itself, they are but a drop in the ocean compared to the same things done with fiat money. To put things in context - in 2021 fraudulent money laundering of cryptocurrencies was worth more than $8.6 billion, (https://deposit-withdraw.com/money-laundering-of-crypto-assets-reaches-8-6-billion-in-2021/) which is 30% higher than the number gathered in 2020- $6.6 billion. It sounds like a lot, right? However, in comparison, the UN Office of Drugs and Crime has released a report in which it has estimated that between $800 billion and $2 trillion of fiats are laundered each year. This is equal to 5% of the global GDP.
I think that really puts things in context. People like to criticize cryptos for such things, and the criticism is warranted, but at the same time, fiat currencies are used for the same things, unfortunately, and no one says anything.

Regardless of what currency anyway, it happens as you mentioned. I can imagine if back in stone age, these stuffs happen like cavemen not paying through whatever means they use for currency and ended up in a bloodshed.
Crypto is just being like thought as a scam due to how pseudonymous people are in it.

Many of greedy people want money and they want shortcuts to be rich then they try to make scams. They scam in crypto currency because many people are new in crypto they not know what to do or what not to do. Scammers find innocent and newbies in crypto and then they scam their wallets and funds.

Crypto scams happened because of people's improper understanding and lack of security knowledge. The reason why you're getting the crypto related spam emails is that you used the email to register on an unworth site and this is what will always happen if you don't research about a particular site before using it.

NFT or ICO didn't make anything worse, investor lack of knowledge is the major problem we have in crypto and if people don't educate themselves about crypto investment and security they will always be prey to the crypto scammer.

It makes sense really, because cryptocurrency offers the ability to reach into someones wallet without ever having to step outside the comfort of your own home. We've also seen the last 14 years of it's existence how easy it is to scam, cheat or just outright hack your way into that situation. Many people seem to take for granted how few major banks or financial institutions in the mainstream have been hit, and for those that were, the government was willing the underwrite the losses up to a certain amount - there is no such protection in the wild west of crypto. It's also incredibly easy to move it around, but cashing out has become increasingly fraught with danger due to increased identity checks at the points of conversion to fiat. Hopefully the amount of criminals being caught will continue to increase to shake this image.

Would already be that common sense and its a bit impossible for someone not to make use of their common sense whenever they do see that is offering which is something that really good for a short period.

If you do really just make use of that and being that realistic then you would really be finding that there are lots of frauds which you could really see on this market.
Crypto market does really generate millions of dollars of investment and scammers would really be taking advantage on noobs since they are easy to fool.

One of their main targets is beginners who are just getting into the world of cryptocurrency. That would be their greatest strength as it would be easy for them to manipulate beginners. It's quite difficult to tell which ones were really meant to create the project and which ones were meant to be deceptive from the start. In fact, it is not uncommon for experienced people to still be victims of fraud.

I agree on that most of the experienced people will never fall on scam, because they have a lot of experienced and they can easily know if the project is scam and cannot be trusted, but sometimes they will also fall and become a victim of scam, because there are some projects that is really good from the start and abandoned by the developer and become scam in few years after being publish no one can expect or avoid this kind of scam so i still believe that even experienced person may also sometimes fall on scam.

Only awareness can protect us from being scammed. People themselves should be able to identify scams and avoid it.

You'll be surprised, if to analyse which were scams tens years ago, hundreds years ago and thousands years ago we'll see that nothing mainly changed: people are being scammed with the same patterns. The little difference is just in some technological decisions: to steal golden coins, paper money or digital money. Because new generations learn the same each time. So we need to teach basics every time to protect others.

I've been involved in a lot of projects that turns out to be scams, or the dev rugs. But still consider myself lucky because I don't invest too much money on projects that are quite suspicious.

And I've witnessed also hundreds of people lost large amounts of money in the crypto space. And now seeing crypto being the second largest source of scams is as I expected. And it cannot be stop and will never be stop. Few projects already tried to provide platforms to detect scams, provide safe projects for investors yet not all of them are hundred percent effective. Scammer developers keeps on finding ways to crack the system. Our only option is just to get used to it and be wise with our investments.

That is the number one thing every investor should take into account, don't get carried away with the project to put all your savings, it is important to invest only what we can afford to lose, especially on new project.


Unfortunately some people invest in this new project blindly without doing the necessary research or watch to see how the project will progress before putting a huge sum of money.
Some people comfortably invest in project even if the team are anonymous (never compare btc with alts) just because satoshi is unknown and btc was successful some project will capitalize on that and some naive investors will fall for it.
In my opinion, every alts projects team should be properly doxxed to give certain level of credibility, a project whose team are anonymous should not have more than %10 of your investment. It is very likely they will disappear with investors money since they are not known.
Scam can not be stopped but can be minimize if only people can be very observant and stop being so desperate to make quick money.

I think, many people has learned from your mistakes not to invest a huge amount of money on a new project they are not sure it will be successful in future. Those that found themselves in scam projects, are those people looking for short-cut in crypto investment to earn massive income within one day that later cause them regret at the end of the investment. I believe scammers has reduced from crypto investment, because many people are now follow the rules and regulations that guided crypto investment not to allow any scammer to have their way into their money.

I also feel what you feel, especially if the funds you save are small or not how much I appreciate you have sacrificed, in the past when Hyip was booming there was a site that I often used to measure the traffic that there was traffic flow. its a scam advisor..but it doesn't rule out the possibility of a scam.
some projects now are more tidy and change containers, I agree with you anything can happen.
in the direction of other friends, indeed the past can teach valuable lessons with a little calm and delay when emotions peak. And an addiction to follow projects and DYOR that is too forced, indeed we come to know what signs are enough to mark the signs in our planting our crypto capital

Yeah When I read this I was thinking the exact same..!


Best regards
Espen, Sales at Forbrukslån (https://xn--besteforbruksln-ulb.no/)

Where money is involved, the evil minded people will always be there to scam the innocent people.
Bitcoin and crypto is not a scam in themselves. People come out with attractive investment schemes and those scheme with unrealistic ROI tends to scam.  If you are cautious, you can be saved from many crypto scams.

That is true. Unscrupulous individuals take advantage of Bitcoin and other cryptos to conduct their schemes, just like they do with fiat currency. That is human nature, unfortunately, to take something good and made to help people and twist its nature for their own nefarious purposes. It has happened time and again with any new technologies. :(

The funny thing is, most people who get scammed, are people who tried to scam others. In my nation there is a story of a scammer who says that they tricked people with gold, and sold it very undervalued, but turns out it was fake gold, and he defended himself saying "those people tried to scam me by buying it cheaper than it worths, I just merely scammed them back" and that is a great story.

In crypto there are stories about people getting insanely rich with some lucky moves, and naive people who hear this thinks they could find something like that as well, in return they end up losing money all over again. That is what I believe is the main reason why it is so rampant here.

It is a known strategy of scammers to offer something extraordinary profitable: first to provoke the victim to take part in that act of scam, next to say that a victim wanted to scam them and that's why they suppose that they didn't do anything bad. But they did. Most people would never do anything bad but can be provoked some way especially if they don't have enough time to reflect. Don't blame victim, blame the provoker and scammer.

It's so easy in here and there are tons of people ready to giveaway their funds even to anonymous individuals all in the name of wanting to make quick profits. If people don't put on their thinking and refrain from such, then the scam will continue to go on.

Scammers make use of the most used medium  of exchange  to execute  their malicious activities.  The make sure  the entice their victims with crazy offers that will trigger  their greedy nature.  I won't  be  surprised  if crypto scam becomes the number one largest in the world because  it is the most convenient  at the Moment.

Actually the people scam with the usage of crypto.The crypto was the technology,it never scam by the means.Since it was the online platform,people ask the clients to send money in the form of crypto currency.When the people finished the transaction,the scammer on the other side will delete his telegram I’d and blocked the person and fly away.In this,how crypto was took a part in it.

Every investment project is suspicious. Not aware of a single one that lasts forever.

This is a major obstacle to cryptocurrency.  The number of scammers in the cryptocurrency is increasing day by day.  And with the proliferation of scams, many investors are trying to distance themselves from investing in cryptocurrency.  Sadly, this is one of the weak points of cryptocurrency.

Of course it would be very unfortunate if there really was a fraud against bitcoin, usually these things often happen to beginners where they easily trust people they don't know so they give up some of their important data so that they are easily broken into by irresponsible people. answer, because we have never heard of fraud in the crypto world because this is very rare in the bitcoin world where people easily believe in things that don't make sense, and we hope this doesn't happen again in the crypto world

though all are suspicious yet there are still legit right? we just need to find where we can put our Money with trustworthy one.

Staking is also an investment but it is legit and until now running smooth in binance so i guess that is one thing i can mention?

Staking is the form that will never scam you as long as you are in legit site and platform .

That is a too high amount of amount for an average result. Is this study including big wallets from exchanges which were hacked in million of dollars as well? Most scams I see around don't involve extraordinary amounts of money, not even a thousand. Majority of the cases are about poor investors who lose few dollars for ponzi schemes or hyped altcoins, expecting to double their money in few days.

Countries are getting into regulating cryptocurrency usage to keep the public on the safer side. Some countries find it difficult and create their own CBDC. Only through proper learning it is possible to overcome the scams happening around the world. The Australian government that was friendly to cryptocurrency usage have given more restrictions over the influencers, because just for money the influencers promote scams and the public is the victims. So, it has created regulation of millions in fine and prison for such influencers. This is said in common, but the same suits crypto too.

Tough Legal Restrictions On Aussie Cryptocurrency Influencers (https://bitcoinist.com/new-tough-legal-restrictions-on-aussie-cryptocurrency-influencers)

Let us not conclusively assumed that all ICO are fake projects, No, consider that we have thousands of projects out there from different people with different motives, but what i see in people is that they easily get enticed with things that looks to good to be real, this now depends on your level of research before investing on such projects, firstly who are the developers and how realistic is there project, run a background check on their past events and so on, we can't concluded that there are no other cryptocurrencies out there with a good future aside bitcoin.


There is much we can do about this menace and part it is not to constitute ourselves into such, secondly we can ensure to giving our best to every newbie in cryptocurrency to have a start with bitcoin and avoid any other crypto or projects before they can be able to understand the difference.

Yea.you are correct. Bitcoin seems to be the most trusted cryptocurrency today. However, not everyone can afford to trade Bitcoin and make profit considering the fact that Bitcoin is very expensive and only those with deep pockets can benefit from holding it. I guess that's why a lot of us go for the shitcoins. And then end up falling for a scam. Well, I guess that's the risk involved in Crypto.

There are very good conditions for this. As an example - all the data on the network, which is already a very large field for deception or any fraud.

for those who have large capital then logically they are smart people because they have great wealth, so that in investing, it seems as if they are looking for profit to the extent that they can exceed the existing inflation price, if the profit is too large, then it is a bonus. this thinking is inversely proportional to those who invest in small amounts, they think of doubling their money, so they follow risky projects, and finally the hype program is carried out

However, in some developing countries it is difficult to regulate cryptocurrency users, because several countries have their own regulations so that regulations regarding cryptocurrencies are still not fully implemented.
they only focus on fraud cases that have become big and get a lot of victims.
Influencers are indeed an important influence. Many influencers only do promotions without doing research first and some of them also understand. It's just a matter of how we can distinguish which projects are good or not. We as crypto users must be smart and thorough enough so as not to get caught up in cryptocurrency scams.

Yes, the state can only regulate to that extent. It reduces anxiety a little but will not eliminate scamers. Even though they made a legal institution I think the fraud case will still be done. The crypto industry is constantly evolving and bad guys are taking advantage of this weakness. They take advantage of the popularity of crypto. I wouldn't be surprised because I knew crypto around 2013, at that time there were already scams though not as many as now. The crypto market with a very large circulation of money is certainly a target for criminals looking for money.

Metamask wallet is cryptoscam !!!

How you do say so? No its not..It is just that hackers/scammers are making use of those very common
method on luring you to input your seedphrase so basically its just human error and negligence.

Fake MetaMask Security Emails [Crypto Wallet Scam Alert] (https://news.trendmicro.com/2022/01/05/scam-alert-fake-metamask-crypto-wallet-security-alert-emails/)
MetaMask Warns Users of New Apple iCloud Phishing Scam (https://decrypt.co/98078/metamask-warns-users-apple-icloud-phishing-scam)

Just use your common sense and you would able to find out for yourself to be saved on possible scam attempts.

I am disappointed with the project in crypto, many bounty projects cheat their members, they make sweet promises to members after their project is successful they are free from responsibility for making new regulations and there are projects that don't want to distribute their tokens because they are afraid to distribute tokens to bounty hunters the price of their tokens down.

I am new here but I am fully agree with this comments. There are bad and good people everywhere and they do their work accordingly. So for 2 or 3% we can not blame everybody. After covid situation and rescission we saw crypto are going ahead more effectively. So there would be some one who will try to take advantage shortly and they will make scams. But we have to careful from them so that we can move forwarded strongly.

Day by day crypto scams is increasing because it's getting popular day by day. And we know that in crypto scammers can easily steal funds from new users by stealing their private keys.So be aware from any kind of crypto scams like fake Metamask wallet link.

Lol!
It's not easy to steal private keys when you're not stupid enough to position yourself into a scam and shady businesses.
If you're in crypto space atleast for a couple of years, you will know what kind of websites, emails, fake apps you're going to avoid to. And it's actually pretty simple to detect a fake app or a phishing website.

The most easiest way to scam people is to create project and make it look like it's legit.

you have to be careful. sometimes phishing domains are a little bit similar. especially if you connect your wallet, I'm talking about non-custodial wallets, it's also quite vulnerable if you forget to revoke permissions from sites / websites that you have browsed, one of which is Defi and a platform that supports wallet is connected.maybe you have experienced this bitterness? Or maybe you've heard some of your neighborhood experience the same thing?
experience is indeed more valuable and we learn to minimize mistakes in the past. For a more vigilant future in the cryptocurrencies world

note: save the phrase on paper or what you think is quite safe

Easy if you're not careful on where to store your keys and not checking/verifying the sites that you're visiting, it could be a phishing sites, same goes for the wallet that you install. Since scams are everywhere its a must to be careful, otherwise it can really happen to easily steal your crypto.

Thats quite common and still effective to scam people especially to newbies who are not taking time to do their own research. This is the reason why digging deeper is necessary if you dont want to end up in scam project.

In 2021 when everything related to NFT games was in full swing, there was a reckless YouTuber who was looking only for 100% scam projects, he said that those projects pay very well at the beginning, but in the short or medium term they become scam, and he took advantage of the early days to make and extract money, the worst thing is that he told how to do it, he taught how to do it and he really extracted the money, of course those who followed the video and his advice did it, those who did not have much knowledge and they did not know that it was like that because they lost, but such was the nerve of this that they took advantage of the same bugs of the scam projects, this was something that seemed crazy to me, however the NFTs changed many things, for many they lost almost everything and others Finally, they confirmed that the safe investment that does not fail is that of BTC, any other crypto can fall into default and never recover.

Are scam:
explicitcoininvestment.com
oandobinary.com

I was invest 50$ in explicitcoininvestment, on Plan 1. A very small amount.
The withdraw didn't work !
Users like mollyMaria and and the rest, that appearing on the site with consistent withdraw are fiction.
Be Careful !

Stealing a key from someone is not easy unless you are careless and fill out a form such as an airdrop form in which the key is asked for a lot of people are fooled by filling out the form and they fill out the key and easily the assets are ignored by others so in my opinion don't be careless in fill out any form because the key is only you who knows if the key is not in someone else's hands then your assets are still safe.

I've been using Metamask for almost 4 years and haven't encountered any problems, and now Metamask continues to develop for the DEX platform so it's the most widely used, maybe when you use Metamask you're not careful when you click on a link so you get hacked and I often hear cases of Metamask being hacked.

That's why people always advise to invest in Bitcoin, Ethereum instead of greedy looking for big profit from shitcoins.

You should avoid participating in new projects without doing any research, cryptocurrency is an open and evolving environment so there is no way to prevent scams here.

The only way is to be fully equipped with knowledge and best of all to stay away from the temptations of new projects, focusing on Bitcoin and top altcoins.

It can't be denied anymore that the very large marketcap of cryptocurrencies is the easiest way for fraudsters, the easiest thing that is usually done is to make a project especially now with $ 2000 so we can make BSC tokens with an unlimited amount, then make fake teams and whitepaper and open bounties then the opportunity to collect 10x is easier.

explicitcoinfx.com another explicitcoininvestment.com :))
Another scam.

Well, I think it's common knowledge that there are lots of scammers out there. not only crypto, even in real-world businesses too, in fact there are still very many businesses whose CEOs are running away with investors' money with a rugpull-like system, or even scams. That's why we're being pressured to pick really good projects, not shitcoins that many people expect to be cheap and then go to the moon, hoping that it will make them rich in no time. however, there is no guarantee that we will avoid project rugpull or scams. however, at least we choose a project or a good investment place to invest, which is trusted. it has less risk than others.

Those are the days when cryptocurrency got more exposure to the world. When something new exists, automatically it'll gain the attention. When the same is connected with money, this will interest more people towards it. In such a way large number of people got into cryptomarket. Some developed projects, scammed the people and ran away whereas projects that existed during the same time period are growing successfully.

During those time it is very hard to segregate legit projects, because majority of the users are new to the market and doesn't have much knowledge. Another thing the network isn't that regulated with series of audits to know the trustworthiness of projects. Now things have changed a lot, and still people are being scammed.

Easy access to create new projects is a weakness of this cryptocurrency so that it is exploited by irresponsible parties and causes the positive value of cryptocurrency to be tarnished. Not only that, those who didn't like cryptocurrencies from the start also used it to spread bad news. This is very detrimental I think for cryptocurrency users.

We've been experiencing the increase in usage of cryptocurrencies all around. Equivalent to that is the rise in the cryptocurrency scams around. Hong Kong falls for a 105% rise in the Crypto scams in the first quarter of the year 2022 compared to the year 2021. Among the 10613 attacks within January and June end 798 were cryptocurrency related.

Crypto Scams in 2022 - Hongkong (https://cryptonews.net/news/security/10046657/)