Bitcoin Forum

It's sad but true that scammers have made more money than investors themselves in this bull market, this is why you need to be extremely serious with your money, we investors are the ones funding scammers' pocket, this is why you should avoid most metaverse projects and play2earn games, remember they are hungry and angry people that will go any lent to achieve their ill-gotten dreams, lets stop helping them.

This sounds more like a diary entry than a public forum post, but it's possible that I'm missing the point.

I disagree with the premise that scammers have made more money than investors, are you able to back that up?

Are there particular projects or companies that you feel have wronged you or investors?

Most people are not intentionally helping scammers achieve their goals, so it might be more helpful to lay out some ways to avoid helping them or falling victim to scamming.

Yea.. large scale hackers sure made a lot of money, but I think your claim is a bit too far-fetched.

Guess what — scammers will always exist, inside and outside of the cryptocurrency space. Nothing is going to save people from scams than to stop being so naive and delusional.

I don't think that scammers make more money than investors because there are so many investors compared to scammers, every good crypto projects always see big adoption and the numbers of holders increase as time goes on, scammers are limited in number compared to investors.

I think his claim has more to do with getting paid for writing in a bounty campaign and trying to fish some merits than with describing actual facts. Most people know that if you create a thread you are more likely to receive merits than if you just comment, but not if you just write garbage that has little if not nothing to do with reality.

The only positive thing I give this is to try to warn about scams, which abound in the crypto world.

Just remember that these guys will never be gone in this space considering that crypto isnt perfect and always got some loopholes. Those made huge money are literally the killer of investments and name of blockchain. But to avoid such  crime, we should always be attentive and cautious to their style and we must recognize those method in order for us to be safe.

I haven't heard any Metaverse projects and play2earn project scam till now. Are you referring to exit scams, project theft or actual scams happening on those? If yes, then you should share some examples and if possible some proofs.

I agree with you that scammers have made more than investors in 2021 but most of those scam happened in DeFI. There was an article published on one of the major media outlet about Defi scams early this year. Here is the link to that articles (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/01/06/crypto-scammers-took-a-record-14-billion-in-2021-chainalysis.html).

The only way to prevent your self from getting scammed is to not become greedy and stupid.

Crypto knows no mercy, scammers take advantage of every opportunity to trick you into falling into a trap that has been created.
Some investors who fall into the scammer trap of course they are novice investors and still don't understand how cryptocurrencies work.

Scammers are able to make a lot of money from crypto by phishing, trapping and even using malware and other fraudulent methods. they make good use of the negligence of crypto users. There will be no mercy, there will be no refunds.

Always be alert and don't be tempted by ridiculous promos or some emails and messages saying you got free bitcoins or something. more realistic and have to be careful..

Investing in cryptocurrencies has always been something serious (at least for me personally), but from everything I can read on the forum and various media I can conclude that many approaches it in a very frivolous way. I don't understand if it's just FOMO, or does everyone think that they were born smart and that money grows on some digital tree that gives everyone as much money as they want?

In today's world, you need to know that there are bad people in all walks of life and that if you want to save yourself and your property you need to be at least one step ahead of them. You can't expect mercy from such people, they are evil and they don't care if you die of hunger or you can't buy medicine because they stole from you.

Just because someone is an investor, that doesn't mean they are a successful investor that makes profit. For every successful one, there are others who lose money in bad trades every day. Additionally, one scammer doesn't defraud just one person. The greatest scams deceive thousands, and hundreds of thousands of people at once. And they can be carried out by just one person or a small group of fraudsters. 

Why do you agree? That article states that crypto scams generated more than $14 billions as profit for scammers, but there is no comparison to how much money was made by trading and investing in crypto in the same period.

Getting scammed in this crypto market is not a new thing and normally there are many cases which we encountered associated with these scams in different manners but the results are always the same loss of funds from victims walllets.This is whole technical market and you need to be extra cautious in keeping your funds safe but most of the time people become greedy or unintentionally click on malicious links which results in these scams.

But if you say scammers are earning lot through these scams then you are absolutely right as you could see million dollars worth of scam happening most of them through these shitcoins rug pull or zero utility but still investors hope of getting something from it but only hackers get their money.According to the reports by chainanalysis data these were the numbers of scams that took place in 2021:

https://i.ibb.co/vhMZcpt/images-16.png

You could easily see the period of 2017-2018 witnessed high rate of scams as there was ICO burst and other scams occuring at that time but after that there was people awareness but the numbers seems to rise now also as there are lot of NFT and meta projects out there who have rug pulled investors of money worth million of dollars.

Some top scam coins in the previous years were as per some reports :

https://i.ibb.co/qsV8XJB/images-15.png

So they are definitely earning much but if you take into consideration the amount of investment made then the market cap is more than $2 trillion and people have also earned huge profits in their investments with this bull run which cannot be ignored and the fact is crypto industry has witnessed huge surge in volumes as new one's have joined the market.So there are no perfect reports but investors have earned a lot.

At last your security is your responsibility as you would find these scammers everywhere but keep yourself safe from them by not being greedy.

You're one of victim who got scammed, because you're invest on crypto aka shitcoins where the developer created the coins out of thin air and looking for investors to buy their coins. Perhaps, you're holding your coins on centralized exchange too and not wanted to hold in non custodial wallet due to fees.

No one will turn to be scammer if they still have morale, that's why they're no mercy to anyone. Anything that money is involved, there's always a scammer behind that.

Scammers have no mercy and that's their job, they will try to do anything to cheat until you don't realize that you are part of a scam victim, generally the targets of scams will not be much different:

- ICO/IDO scam
- Phishing
- Wallet/Exchange scam
- False signal group (Arbitrage)
- Malware
- High APY project (potential scam), etc

To avoid scam then "Control greed, multiply knowledge".

There are different ways scammers target traders/investors. But their ways are not only limited to taking help from technology. They are also good with psychology and trade with people’s emotions. I think we all should be aware of that and be sceptical if anyone approaches us just because he/she is just “concerned.”.

Most of these scams work on those who can't control their greed, scam projects always have something enticing to offer but they are always too good to be true.

The scammers on Instagram, telegram groups are small time. You can tell, they can even hold a discussion about cryptocurrency without pulling you to invest in some site or bot. I just watched Netflix Trust No one: The Hunt for the Crypto King. Crypto scammers, the ones who pull the big heist are not always anonymous, they use their reputation to give investors a false sense of security and trust. Scammers do not only exist behind the keyboards, they are also on the front page magazines

Yes like the bitconnect project years ago but what about hackers? They made the biggest profits to me and they remain anonymous, they are completely different from those small time scammers.

Scammers are everywhere, where they can see targets to fall as their victims. So if most of the investors tend to be less knowledgeable and are easily to fall on traps, most likely because of greed, then they will always gain huge amount of money from the victims' pockets. I guess that's the reason they need to be smarter than us, otherwise they'll end up falling on their own traps too.

Scammers will never stop to exist until we are all knowledgeable enough to understand that there is no such thing as invest X and get a 30 to 100% weekly or monthly. Because that's exactly the strategy scammers now use this days.

Its become a trend in the crypto space. Scammers always follow trends and use that hype to make scam projects. Last year when the meme coin trend become so successful we have seen a lot of copycat meme projects and later on, metaverse hype kicked in. The problem with investors is they do not put enough time to do some research about the project team and partner. As long as investors do not be conscious of their investment this type of scam will continue.

It's never going to be possible for all of us to have the knowledge you are talking about, we all start from somewhere as a newbie and we made many mistakes along the journey, new kids are been born everyday and they grow up after many mistakes too, see? Scammers will always have someone to prey on, its inevitable.

So we must be more knowledgeable and become smarter than them so that we won't be taken advantage by them.  Scamming is already a big part in the crypto market and if we always tend to be weak, we will easily fall on them. As long as money is involved, the main reason why they are here, scammers will show no mercy and eventually steal all what they can. That is how they lived in the world and so they should be skilled in it.

Scammers have made more money than us, only if we allow to. So we should always be careful and cautious on everything we do especially on the security of our own wallet because a single mistake will open a good opportunity for scammers to deceive us. And when it comes to this new metaverse projects and play to earn games, we should always have an in-depth research first before we decide to invest in them.

That's the main Idea here no Scammers if all people will be educate about their strategies but I think about these will not happen cause some people not interesting in discussion about scammers or about true investment. If we are all knowledgeable for sure scammers will more knowledgeable than us. I think we must accept the truth that scammers has a big rules in our community.

Traders should first be able to identify the scam to avoid it. They should know there is no such thing as free lunch. There are different types of scams that are propagating in the market and traders should be aware of them.

I've come to think of it, we the investors has the money at hand and are ready to invest on any reputable coin or project while the scammers lack the fund but has enough knowledge to manipulate you into investing on their shitcoins or fake projects, that is why one has to build himself up to a certain extent beyond necessary doubt.

The Crypto world would have been less risky if every investors have to go through some screening before entering the crypto space and start investing but crypto is 101% free for everyone, mistakes will be made, projects will be hacked and so on but only those who learn from their mistakes will have a place in this crypto world.

I agree with you- scammers exists regardless of any platform. As long as greed exists, then scammers would continue to operate as long as they have the opportunity for it. Then again, the only way that these scammers win is when beginners or naive people fell to their prey; that is why it is nothing but imperative to do any research about a certain project/giveaway before fully committing.

Lastly, be careful with some projects that may seem genuine on paper. There are also lots of projects that cloak themselves with tons of genuine materials but are rotten to their core- though this kind of scam is relatively harder to detect, one must always exercise caution nonetheless.

And we always remind them of that, specially newbie investors or traders. I was once a victim as well with those so called bitcoin doubler before, I thought that it was real. Nevertheless it is a hard lesson for me as scammers here will be in any shape or form. In short, never trust anyone here as we really don't know who is the individual behind. Maybe you an do your own investigation (DYOR) but it's not a fool proof as well.

Scammers do exists off the crypto world as well, we are humans and we have greed in us, some know how to tame theirs and many don't know how, crypto or no crypto people will always fall victim to scams offline, greed is just like anger, it can destroy and also reshape, my advice is know when and where to be greedy, it's a dangerous weapon that can go against its wielder.

Yes we all have greed deep inside but being scammer is not a result of being greedy alone because they are neglecting there conscience and following wickedness so being a greedy is not a reason to scam someone. It took more than that to be able to scam somebody especially newbie that don’t have knowledge on crypto. So as an Investor, we should do our part to become cautiouand trust no one in crypto especially startup project that obviously don’t have plan at the start for a long term development.

How could you say that metaverses and P2E projects are scams? No, they're some but not all of them.
They are so many scam tricks that these scammers do, not only in metaverses and P2E platforms. they had used several platforms.

Yes, we should be careful and choose the projects to invest it wisely. They'll somehow exist and be really smart but if we don't let them scam us and educate ourselves from their tricks, they'll soon stop.

Not greediness, but it was their will to scam people and nothing they made good in their life, they will continue to scam people for as long as many aren't yet educated. Conscience? These people don't have such a thing in their mind nor to have mercy, what's in them is to see people lose their money and get happy.

That is why we encourage everyone to know more about the investment we planned. We should have to be smart more than these scammers do, and lastly, stop being too greedy.

Scammers are scary but we can avoid them by being more careful and thorough. if you say that scammers get a bigger profit than investors then I'm not sure about that because it depends on each investor and the amount of loss. scammers take advantage of the careless by the lure of attractive offers that lure people to follow suit. actually deception depends on ourselves, if we are more vigilant and careful then the fraudsters will also be difficult to deceive us. so we are the ones who must be responsible for our own assets to avoid all forms of scams or other losses. scammers are everywhere and we can't get rid of it, stay away as much as we can.

So being scammed is definitely a choice of ours. We will not be scammed if we will not allow them to. This is why we need to be more knowledgeable on the investments we want to take so as not to make wrong decisions that will only lead us to be the target of scams. And as much as money is involved, we should always learn to start with minimal capital first especially on the part of newbies. And increase it gradually once we start to make profits from it.

As long as we can be careful in choosing projects for investment, we can avoid scammers who want to steal our money.
Most people, especially those new to crypto, think that if they see an attractive offer to make a lot of money in a short period, it is real.
That is why there are still people who are caught in the traps of these scammers.
If we can study every new project that attracts us to join and find out why that project has the potential to develop in the future, I think we can choose which projects we can use as our investment.

Indeed we will not be scam if we just listen to the feedbacks of other experience person as well we do our research upon accepting the proposals of scammers so if someone get scam by them then its their choice and they let their greed money eat them that's why they experience a severe consequences of the action they do. Scammers don't have any mercy as they are also experience doing this so for sure they only think about their gains and not their victims welfare.

Lol, even when crypto was in infancy, it was true. If something is having value, even a little bit, scammers are bound to come.

That's why they are called scammers. Out to snatch money from someone, they would assume you are rich because you can afford to invest. I have also invested in some projects that I thought is real, the team has youtube channel where they discuss their project there but in the end, thier token wasn't even listed in any exchange and then they just stop. Can't believe the boldness but yes they become a scam taking my ETHs.

You should be aware that influencers are paid to create popularity of projects on various social media, so you should not follow what they promote because all those projects are worthless except for the false hype. Some influencers don't care about the reputation of the project but the estimated approval paid to them, so stop investing in influencer solicitation and you should analyze the project based on your own opinion.

a wise newbies is not suppose to adventure into cryptocurrency mistakes subsequently, because the necessary information needed to escape from getting lost or landing negative side of cryptocurrency has be taught about and discuss and expose some certain secret and review the pathways that can lead not venture into mistake, yes i know vividly that mistake can occur but not occasionally.

to me, i feel we should be looking for better ways to educate ourselves on safety measures against scammers. they are on the rise, so also are alot of investors. make research about a coin before investing, making use of hardware wallet. also posting useful posts to educate one another, sharing experiences that will help 0thers not to fall prey.

I simply don't agree with the above statement mentioned, because thou scammers may have robbed a majority of people of their hard earn money, investors have made more money than scammers in a long run. Know this and have a peace of mind. Thou it's very sad that these guys use smart tactics to lure away people's money with an offer far too good to be true, which is very heartbreaking when the victim finally figure out they have been scammed. There are so many ways scammers operate this days, which if you are not that discipline and careful, you may end up falling into it.

One thing everybody just needs to know is that scamming will always exist whether you like it or not, so the earlier you know this and continue living your life and avoiding any website that promises to double your investment within a few hours, days, or weeks, the more happier you will be

That's right. Scammers will always find new ways to scam others.

In fact, the first step to stay in control of your finances, your future and your freedom is to know and understand the power of scams and know how to spot them. You can do that by educating yourself and learning from the mistakes of others. The more you know, the less you are going to be scammed.

Scammers are killers. These people kill everyday by different means. The scammers include but not limited to;
1. Fake Ico
2. Pump and dump scheme
3.Hackers
4. People that lures newbies to invest in what doesn't exist
And lots more.

The above statement might seem exergerated and lacks data to back it up. But if you handle scams case by case, individual by individual, company by company, you will understand that OP might not be wrong.

For my own case, the money I lost in this crypto space to scammers, I am not close to regaining it any soon.