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We are now in a era where scam devs don't care about anonymity anymore,  now they aren't willing to hide their faces, they will come out in the open, throw you some videos on YouTube and still run away with your money, if you are a newbie you need to have the following in mind when researching projects.

1. Visible team members don't mean they are scam free.
2. A audited smart contract project can still scam you.
3. Scammers can spend a lot on their website to make it look attractive just to make you invest your money.
4. High volume on the listed exchange doesn't make a project clean from going scam.

If they have shown you interest that they want your digital coins by all means then prove to them you're wise enough by protecting your asset at all cost, don't trust a third party person or exchanges in handling your financial assets, avoid links referrals and cryptocurrency influencers advertisement or promotion of a project, don't be greedy or hasty for making profit, learn cryptocurrency by yourself and acquire the knowledge so that no one will come up with framed up gist to enties you have investment with them, DYOR, and finally protect your asset by using a decentralized exchange, cold storage wallets or bitcoincore for safety.

Beginners mostly have a limited ability to research, even on legitimate projects that sometimes don't yield good results. So the simplified advice for them is:
Want stable P/L (manageable) = take advantage of volatility (old established coins > trading)
Want significant P/L (unmanageable)= take advantage of hype (New coins> fundraising)

The choice is yours, it's that simple.

I once started a topic where I urged and encouraged forum users not to be fooled by titles. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5405933.0) and what they see. Scammers are going the extra mile these days to ensure people believe that they are real since the old ways are becoming outdated and people are more aware and more wiser. You have to be on extra look out and on guard always as you can easily be deceived. As newbies and others not too skilled at detecting scammers and their projects, always learn to ask questions and DYOR, they can save you from making mistakes.

As a Newbie give yourself time to progress. I would not want to direct you on how to swing your investment but if you don't like losing money stick to Bitcoin. This won't fail you, I know in your mind you might have weighed your pocket and Capital and thought you can't achieve anything judging by how little your capital is.

But did you know with if you start now to accumulate Bitcoin as little as your can you would be doing yourself good favour for the future. Not only would it help you not to regret in fake projects or coins that failed but also you would be better off than when you started accumulating it. It's probably the surest fact in crypto-currency right now.

Preventing scams becomes harder nowadays. Even public teams scam investors. Investing in a brand-new project becomes like gambling with your funds. Do even you know the team who will take action against them? Just investors will gossip for a few days and forget. Then invest again in a new project. Either we have to leave new projects or have to gamble. There is no other choose. But serious projects have some symptoms that would help prevent bigger losses.

It is a pretty sad state of affairs for the cryptocurrency community at large when the vast majority of ICOs are nothing more than scams. Many crypto-enthusiasts have been living under the false belief that because the team  has proven to be legit and because the token is listed on exchanges, then they will never get scammed. But sadly, this is not the case. It is now more important than ever that investors take precautions and do their due diligence before investing in any coin offerings. Doing so will help ensure that you do not become a victim of fraud, but ironically, many investors still do not do this.

Before investing in any ICO, you should research the listed team members to make sure their past record is clean and that they look reliable. You must also ensure a scam-free smart contract by auditing it with a proper company, and yes, do your own due diligence on the project and its whitepaper inside out before investing even one satoshi towards it. While researching for ICOs, it is always a good practice to do your homework.

You are the one that completely understand the situation we have found ourselves in this industry. Even public teams scam aswell. The best way to be safe is to assume that all new projects are scam and threat them as scammers until it is proven otherwise.

Those projects you see springing up are organised by a very small niche of scammers, who after scamming successful in one project, they will reinvest a little percentage of their scam gains into another new project to continue the scam under a new umbrella, a new brand and with a modified strategy to make you believe they are new team.
I have learnt my lessons the hard way and I don't wish to repeat such horrible mistakes. I no longer want to be super rich in crypto, but I just wan to be comfortable.

I think that most people who invest on these new projects are those people who actually knew these projects are going to run. But think differently and risks only to hype the project , go with the flow and run together with the team, or even earlier soon as they make profit and never comes back.

Why i think this way? Because it's too obvious, there are lots of info you can read on how to prevent scams on google even on TVs. But you will still wonder why people are hype, still posting about the projects on twitter or everywhere and even self promoting it.
Plus, new projects are really prone to getting pump and dump scheme where these smart investors make profit out of scam/suspicious projects.

So many scams everywhere and we just needed to be very careful of nit falling to scam easily because many of the crypto projects we have in the market are scam why some do not have a long time existence which could bring loses if we are not that prepared to take the worse part of investing.

Now that the market is down, we need to pay careful attention to the market and how we invest in cryptocurrency projects especially altcoins that are launching these days without strong peruse of the team and how far the project could go. Very hard these time around to know real projects but we need to do extra research to keep ourselves safe.

In my country, a fellow countrymen named Xian Gaza, is a proven scammer before. He became too known as he has out-smarted those people that were chasing him. Now he's a multi-millionaire from various projects that he launched including his own coin and his own game. Even though he was known to be a con-artist, a lot of people are still investing into his projects. Just like what you have described, this person is now became a big public influencer, and regardless of his past records, people still trusting to invest their money into him which to me is really risky.

If I may add, if you're a newbie in the space, it probably isn't your business to venture into the risky altcoin market and other crypto investment opportunities. I think the first thing a newbie does is to learn about Bitcoin. It eventually leads to you finally buying your first amount.

Leave the rest of the altcoin market to those who have already been sufficiently exposed to it. But with what's happening in there, I guess it's a lot better to just stick with Bitcoin.

The sphere of cкнзeщcurrencies is still not controlled by any government bodies (we will not go into details whether this is necessary or not) and therefore provides great opportunities for fraudulent schemes. They feel their impunity and therefore are not afraid of anything. Therefore, investing in new projects is associated with high risks and has more in common with playing in a casino than with traditional investing. The same goes for crypto exchanges. Why use those services that have no reputation? It is direct expensive to the fact that your deposit will simply not be returned. The solution to the scam problem is to only invest in safe crypto currencies like bitcoin and use the top crypto exchanges like binance.

Don't forget about their advertisers, they hire known people to give their scam projects exposure. They'll pay a lot to those advertisers and later on, the SEC will chase them for advertising a scam project.
Don't be too trustworthy with celebrities or anyone famous that advertises an unknown project, always be too curious and careful when you're hyped with marketing of projects.

Another thing is top 10 crypto listed on CMC is also scam too, take a look to LUNA. It was on the top 10 since there's huge hype, now the price suddenly crash and the coin worth -99% from the previous price.

Picking an altcoin to invest among 20K coins listed on CMC is just gambling, there's no way to differentiate the legit and scam project. What do you need to do is verify the developer is a scammer or not, but as we know there's no way to verify human. They could be trusted, they could be a scammer, they could be trusted from the beginning and become a scammer.

That is why bitcoin is the only coin we can trust and for the fact any project which creates tokens on their own and distribute to the investors can make you to lose all your money if they want that is why we should know the supply and demand so even the creator cannot mess up if the project is really decentralized and works based on the Proof of Work so the only way to create the coin is by mining them not with the simple click.

If a project is on the hype then you can consider it for short term investment and just cash it all out when you made decent profits, don't trap into the FOMO nd FUDs.

Lol, ;D this really did make me laugh, mind you that i am in no way laughing at your loss, i definitely wouldn't do that because many of us actually had to learn the hard way too, it's good you no longer want to get-super rich-through-crypto, there are quite a lot of people that not only want to be super rich through crypto investment, but they want that riches to come super quick, these are the investors that are called get-rich-quick investors, more often than not they never get their wish.

Having said that, i really wish many people would learn their lessons and come to the realization that there is no shortcut to success in crypto but patience, Bitcoin is a long term project, one that is sustainable and has an actual utility, people would be saving themselves the hassle if they can only buy it and hodl patiently.

I agree with the thread title that scammers use different ways to scam there victims. I think you know about twitch announcing the ban of gambling stream because of scammers using the platform to scam money. It's not just in gambling but also in investing coins or tokens. Just as what the post previous about what you have to do like investing in new coins/hype coins and old coins is very true. Not all hype are legit because some are hiding behind the hype to scam people with their so called project.

Scammers are going extral miles just to defraud people, scammers don't care about the amount they will pay just to get the necessary facilities to scam people, because they know the amount they will make, the way cryptocurrency is spreading the Same way scammers are increasing and they are ready to do everything possible just to scam people, that's why we have to be very careful, don't trust anybody you meet online, infact don't trust anything you see on the internet, somethings might look very real but at the end they are fake.

In short, here nothing is absolutely safe for us, everything is always risky. Protect yourself by always learning, update daily news, do your own research when investing, don't listen to anyone's advice, stay away from projects that promise high returns and especially never put all your eggs in one basket, investing with money can lose.
As the market grows, it's getting harder and harder to make money and the scams are getting more and more sophisticated, so always be suspicious in all cases, never put your trust in anyone.

A transparent team is the most decisive move by scammers nowadays and they keep you believe about their false roadmaps by feeding you with lies and propaganda you really have a hard time knowing them because they show their faces when they're talking to their investors but in reality, they already have an escape plan where they exactly know what to do in case they get busted or their coins will crash because of lack of development and exposures.

that's why it's important to do research on new crypto projects, they are really openly deceptive and it might be difficult to take them to legal action when they take your investment money away, so during this bear market no one will be able to judge from the important point that already written by the OP in this thread, so my advice during this bear market is to invest in old or well-known crypto projects that are still developing their projects until now, that way can keep you from being scammed and losing money

I agree with the points that you have made but i don't know if there was a recent event where a publicly known team has scammed it's investors and ran away with the money. In the end the truth is that you can never be 100% sure if the project that you want to invest in is legit or not. The only thing that you can do is to research the project and the people behind it as thoroughly as possible and even then you can become the victim of a scam with all your funds lost. All you can do is minimize the risk of getting victim of a scam but a rest risk will always remain.
Those scammers that really gave away their real name and showed their face will have a very hard time to hide from the authorities though i would guess.

This will be a big blow if we can not trust auditors anymore. I rely on them to assure myself that a token is good when I see the firm that audited them. The only thing that can make an audited token still scam will be if the process of audit is compromised through corruption. I want to see this type of compromise stopped so that the trust to invest in cryptocurrency will increase. Without trust no business can survive. There are alot of scams in cryptocurrency already and if auditing can not be honest it means we are gone in this.

Scammer one close step smart then then investor how they can steal our money, always have new strategies how to manipulated when building new project cryptocurrency. Seems at the early project launching not any bad thing because running well with their project depend with road map schedule. Here have another intervention from exchange market to make detail research before listing the scammer coin on their exchange market. Although have term or service warning about high risk when investing in cryptocurrency but this way could make close chance for scammer catch much money from investors.

Keep do your own research before investing actually with new project actually have bigger expected planning on their road map schedule list.

In principle, now, as before, the principle is used that there will be those who will invest their money, believing in the promoted advertising. Believing that by investing 100 dollars they can get a thousand dollars, people do not even analyze the project. And there can be many such people. What actually achieve those who originally planned to deceive.

As a newbie, that's why it is advised to invest in what you can afford to lose in case you fall victim to a scam project. Many times, projects that have a strong team, good utility, nice whitepaper and a lovely plan don't guarantee a project scam free. Nowadays, it is hard to differentiate between a good and bad project that wants to scam investors. No project is to be trusted again whether an old project or a new project. An old project can go soar in the future.

It depends on which exchanges. If this large volume is on large exchanges, such as Binance, OKX, FTX, then the probability of a scam is minimal. Because listing on such platforms costs a lot of money. Most scammers can not afford such expenses, so they list on some exchanges with small trading volume. But fake volumes are very easy to calculate, just look at the demand for the blockchain space of a given coin.

The regulations are already at work on most of the project, they are already required to disclose their information before putting a good project and you can count on those projects but of course it won’t guarantee any success. If you want to avoid scam projects, don’t deal with the new projects just trade with top coins already listed on most of the exchanges and you can be good, I’ve down with the new projects, i can’t still find a new project that is worth investing for.

At least we have a person to go after if their project scam us.

The current smart contract auditing team are just to check the code and does not regulate the project.  They just cite the weaknesses and possible exploit and glitch but are not responsible in stopping a scam.


True this kind of practice already existed way back 2017 where lots of scam project show a great website and luring unsuspecting investors into investing on the platform.


Scamming all depends on the decision of the project team so volume has nothing to do with the scam plan.

The regulatory framework is not fully implemented properly for cryptocurrencies, so actions against scammers do not get more attention from the authorities unless the fraud has disturbed many people and resulted in huge losses.

Scammers move from one review project to another, so they are free to create any project to trap their prey. their targets are beginners and people who have a lot of money but neglect their own security.

A new analysis finds consumers have reportedly lost more than $1 billion in cryptocurrencies to fraud since 2021.
The FTC found that: Instagram (32%), Facebook (26%), WhatsApp (9%) and Telegram (7%) were the top social media platforms used for crypto fraudsters.

https://i.postimg.cc/SNSmRkxS/penipu-crypto-2018-2022.jpg
Fraud rate graph from 2018 to 2022
source: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/06/new-analysis-finds-consumers-reported-losing-more-1-billion-cryptocurrency-scams-2021?utm_campaign=https://www.ftc.gov/news-&utm_content=1654267785&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

I don't know what you mean by at least we have person to go after, do you think you can find them? or do you think they will tell you their actual location? They might reveal their identity but those not mean you will find them, we just have to be very careful so that we won't fall victim.

You are right, always invest what you can afford to lose, but to be honest no matter how small the amount you are scammed, you will feel bad. if am being scammed, no matter how small the amount am always feeling bad, not because of the money I lose but for the reason that someone is smarter than me.
It's really hard to identify a good project from bad one, some projects looks so real, but at the end it ends up to be scam, in this current bear market I believe most projects that are launched are scam project, that's why we should be careful with new projects.
I know even old project can't be trusted, but I still believe it's better to invest in old project than you investing in new projects.

Therefore we must not be too greedy and excessively obsessed with money, because if we get enslaved by money, there we will use any means
to make money. Even though the way to make money can hurt other people, it is not a problem for people who are enslaved by money.
I once heard advice from someone that we shouldn't trust humans 100%, because sometimes humans are scary creatures. That's why so many
in the crypto world we find scams, because if people are obsessed with money, they are willing to do anything to make money. So we really have
to be careful if we get investment offers from other people, don't immediately trust anything that other people offer, especially if there is an offer
that is to be good to be true, that is one of the characteristics of fraud. Like you said we have to do our own research and analysis to make sure
we don't make the wrong decisions. Most people are deceived in the crypto world they are too lazy to learn to do research and analysis, so they
invest relying on other people's opinions.

Presently, scam has become a lot more critical than ever before. It is as if some people are head bent to scam people - coming all out to steal. IMO, it appears the era of Decentralized Finance witnessed a lot of scam activities especially aspect of fake tokens being received in wallet - what has never happened before. It has become really bad. We all should be more cautious especially newbies in every move we make with crypto assets.

Investors known their identity so well but the problem is they were living in the different countries, that makes investors feel so difficult to deal with those scammers who stolen their money. Scammers didn't care anymore about their identity. These days it's very hard to know whethera new project was a scam or not. it's caused by even when team revealed their face and it can't give guarantee if the project was not a scam project.

Scammers have always been and will always be, as long as people have such a vicious quality as greed. Therefore, as a rule, people do not conduct a full-fledged evaluation of the project before investing, when they are offered the opportunity to make quick money in a limited period of time.

Many scam projects are now using hype projects with their popularity. I mean that we have found so many new projects created by popular people, but the token or coin is directly falling down to be shit and dead coin even after listing. This is also called a scam project with their name, although they always ensure that their project is legit, in fact, they can't do anything to make their project back to be on track and good again. They will directly leave the project because they have got the money.

But it is related other scam projects with anonymity, this has been since a long time ago. Scam project is actually quite easy to avoid, but many newbies are always trapped because they are really attracted with the high profit promised by the devs.

Scammer one step close smart than investor and always success building new project and get intersted respond from many investor, lately scammer will retired if they can get new investor want to invest at their coins. Many time found when failure or get scam woth previous project, the scammer build and make another new project but easy for him get reapind from many investor want to participant at his project. Need to be smart investor never give second chance for scammer by joining with their another peoject after failure before.

I agree, they are targeting people who are new to the world of cryptocurrency since they know these kinds of people are eager to double or triple their money and not think that it can be a scam.

This kind of scam project should not be listed on the exchange since it obviously scams and to be good to be true all of their features and benefits for investors.

But, it is still risky and they are entertaining this kind of scam project which will turn to their loss.

This topic would have been more better at the Beginner and help section, maybe to clearly enlighten those that are curious to invest in a newly birth projects. These guideline have to take proper record of for anyone wanting to invest, something I observed about most projects is they are too real to scam people at this level you might felt so released with the project team at last they turned to be scammed projects.

It is very difficult to avoid being scammed in a project especially for beginners because most beginners have limited ability to research. However, if they understand that basically investing in kripro has risks, then they are ready for the risks they will face. But at least in order to minimize the risk of investing in new projects, it is necessary to conduct detailed research and analysis.

If you are concerned about scams then only invest in projects that DCG or Alameda for example invested in, big name projects like XRP and ICP. Also, any project that was invited to Davos or is promoted by the WEF will also do well. Illuminati coins you could say, because they never lose.

Especially in this bearish market, i have seen a lots of project team making their promotional videos on youtube with showing their faces just they trying to believe investors especially newbies investors is their main target. But i see mostly got SCAM at end of the day, so i agree with you if team will reveal their face that will consider which project is real.

I think the problem lies not in negligence, but in our greed. The desire to get a few hundred percent in a short time, closes our mind from reality. At the same time, the opportunity to earn 5-10% is no longer considered a good profit, although these percentages exceed what traditional banks offer us.

Lol..you know that scammers have varieties of information to decode some of the information that will trigger an investor to venture into investment, from my observation, i think that some scammers derive a new process of getting people on trap, so it will be very difficult to eradicate scam, because right now nobody knows the project that is scam and the project that is legit for investment.

And what better example of this than Do Kwon, Kwon is now world famous for scamming and ruining the lives of a lot of people and he is still denying any wrongdoing on his part, he is completely shameless, which is why I cannot wait for him to be found guilty and see him being thrown into a jail for years or even decades to come, as such potential investors need to be very careful because the only reason the police is behind Kwon is because of how high profile the scam was, but if his project was way smaller it is possible that nothing would have happened to him and he would have been able to steal a lot of money and never face the justice system.

You know they can just use other peoples identity from the internet with fake Linkedln and stuff just to make their profile looks legit but with shitty intentions behind it. It's easy to fake identities in current days especially when you are dealing in cryptocurrency community. It's on end user to filter those stuff out.

This particular point could benefit for some people where they can make some quick profit when they buy it low before the scam begins, in early days you can do that easily but it's rather difficult to do it now.

And the scammers will take advantage of it when there's a huge volume of the project. They will make it look like they're more legitimate because traders will be having that sense of belief that it's a good project because many traders are on it.
Well, do not forget that volumes are temporary and if it's currently up then it doesn't mean a project like theirs will remain as high as it can because if these developers starts to rug pull, everyone has got no idea when it will happen.

Exactly true, scammers are growing and developing. They create a project as legit as people see and analyze it. However, for new projects, the risk of being scammed is very high. We can see also although they have a thousand community members on their social media especially telegram groups doesn't mean that they are not scamming. In fact, many of them are exactly scams.
Although the project has been listed and being a top coin, this also doesn't guarantee that the coin is a scam. So, what to do?
One of the ways is by learning, keeping updated, and also analysis every time what we want to invest. And the most recommended investment is only investing in Bitcoin by buying in a reputable top exchange and saving them in a personal wallet.

that's the problem of most people as they are after for the quick profits that this market can offer. they thought they can easily get high returns as a short period of time without much trouble to worry about.
indeed, most of these developers or so-called developers are after for the money that they can pocket, so it is on the user how he will protect himself from these people. they don't care how much money they can exhaust from or what problems you will encounter, as long as they can get what they want.

The world of cryptocurrency is definitely brutal. We can still fall victim to scams even after making an effort to be cautious by conducting some research and being aware of red flags. It's still preferable to plowing money into arbitrary endeavors, though. However, you are correct that scammers are becoming more daring and are now defrauding individuals in broad daylight. Is it preferable for us to stay away from funding new ventures, then? However, it won't help (honest) new projects advance, and we risk losing wonderful projects in general.

I have come across these types of projects that market themselves as having a doxxed team or KYC'd team and they still scam. They just make up some lame excuse to try and cover up their rugpull and then they resurface a few months later with a new token being shilled by influencers.

This I see many people confused, many people think that the audited project is not capable of scam. This is extremely wrong thinking: auditing companies only check the security holes of the project, check the completeness of the project to avoid errors when releasing to avoid hacking…but no audit firm will come forward to assure us that the project is never scam if the audit is passed. An audited project presents itself as a well prepared one, with investing in it reducing risk, but nothing says they won't scam.

Thanks for the info.
The obvious question running through my mind now is, how do we now know which is a scam and which is not? Because, before now, i use to believe that when a dev are public, then the likelihood of scam will be slim
 But these days, just like you rightly pointed out they can show their faces, give you their address and still scam you

Pretty scary what is going on out there.

That is truth, the rate of scam are increasing day by day in difference form to make them archived what them want, which every one have to be careful, must connecting of wallet as a means of claiming airdrop or recievd of token that is not in your wallet, the moment connect the wallet to enable to trade it, automatically warp off the valuable coins that is in that wallet, therefore, newbie has to be careful in this period. 

Maybe because of bad economic conditions, which ultimately makes many fraudsters more daring to commit fraud. This means that they risk their
identity to commit fraud, most importantly they can convince their victims. That's why it must be admitted that nowadays it's more difficult to
distinguish which projects are scams and which projects are really legit. Even experienced and reputable bounty managers can still be fooled
by promoting scam projects. It's true that life is really scary now, most humans have lost their conscience. Which is quite a lot of people who are
more concerned with money above all else, including harming others they will do for personal gain. So we really have to be really vigilant and more
careful in choosing the projects we will buy.

I think that wouldn't be that easy, I mean not saying it’s not possible, but it would be quite difficult to do something like that and get away with it.

If you know who the creator is truly, then if that person scams you, even if they give some lame excuse, you could still sue them if you want to, and they are taking that risk, I personally wouldn't want to scam someone for ethical reasons, but even if I ever decided to do that, doing it with KYC'd and Doxxed standpoint would mean that people would know where I am and who I am and that’s too much of a risk. Once again, there could be some people who do it, but mostly it should be very scary for scammers to do that.

Yes of course freshers have some experience to research the project.But there are many scam projects who will never pay and cheat people Again there are many good projects and there are real projects which again sometimes do not pay.Many times I have seen many legitimate schemes have scammed people.So I support all the suggestions the OP has made here.

Most newbies are coming from hype, there is a lot of hype now, especially on different social media platforms. There are some content creators that are spreading some different content just to lure some newbies and buy random shitcoins. It's the power of the internet. And these newbies don't research at all or not maximizing the use of internet and they end up getting rekt.

Indeed. The hype and the advertisement from popular content creators are some of the reasons on why many people are engaging themselves to invest even without knowledge and just following what they see on different social media platforms believing they can really gain. These scammers will do everything they can for their projects to look more legit.

That's why it's hard to trust the new projects even they have transparent team because it's not only a basis to know if the project is not scam. An extensive reasearch is really important in order to avoid ending up losing your hard-earned money because you made a wrong choice.

in this case not only for beginners but for all cryptocurency users should know this because scammers will not target beginners or legends but all crypto users. so in my opinion before making an investment it is certain that we do research on the altcoin we want to invest or DYOR. because without doing research will be high risk for yourself.

Ok, good observations. Now you had to have one good example of a scam project that you have on your description that scammed many people.
Ever wonder why scammers aren't afraid of flaunting their faces just to make their project less suspected? That's because, once they gather a huge amount of money, they can defend themselves by the complainant using the dirty money they stole from the people. Authorities can be bribed anytime anyhow.
However, majority of the scams only happens with the new projects that keeps poppin in crypto market today.

It very difficult choosing what project to invest in due to the fact that most of them just wants to scam investors.
Only few of them are actually legit.
But Bitcoin is still topping all so that's a great choice for me.

It is because of this that for the majority of the people interested in this market the best move is to not play, people are always thinking about all the ways in which they will make a fortune in this market but the chances they do so are so small and the chances they get scammed along the way are so high that sometimes I wonder why those people simply do not buy bitcoin, hold it and call it a day, as even if this is a very simple strategy we know it can be very effective given enough time.

They aren't many legit projects for sure. Honestly, I see BTC as the only legit project where the author's motives were "pure".

I have to say it's not going to be that impossible to save ourselves from them, unless we look for risky stuff. I mean isn't it obvious that we are looking for a thing where people are capable of scamming us, if we do not do anything that yields that risk that we can't be scammed and that's what we should be aiming at. I personally never got scammed before, and I believe I can keep on doing that, why and how?

Well, simply because I never put myself in a position where I could be scammed. This is not that hard, you go ahead and buy some bitcoins and ethereum and store that in your wallet and that's all you do, is there a way people could scam you in between this? No.

Yes, it's really hard to get away from a scam project. And everything you wrote is true.  In the past, we were deceived when investing in new projects that were never listed on the exchange. But now we are actually deceived by projects that have been registered, but suddenly the developers run away and various other reasons

One thing about Scammers is they are not afraid of anyone anymore since they knew you can't flee from your country to their country and they mostly scam those that are not from same country with them so you must be very careful with some kind of devs out there that wants to partner with you or even wanting you to invest in their projects as a new beginner who is venturing into crypto, all possible best researched is mostly needed.

That's very common and yet it won't be called scams to them since they hide behind their rules and regulations saying that you broken one of their rules so they have the authority to claim your funds that you deposited in their platform. This schemes are known from casino owners or gambling site owners. That's why there aren't lots of gambling sites that are reputable and trusted known in this forum compared to all gambling sites that promoted their project here.

Scammers are taking advantage of this, because even if they scammed people for millions of dollars, that amount comes from thousands of clients in many different countries, so the chances there are enough people in a single country which lose enough money to force an investigation are very low, and then when we consider they had the idea of scamming their customers from the beginning then they become very difficult to find due to all the precautions they took, so they know they can get away with it as only when the scam is huge the police will involve itself in this.

They put that acceptable excuses and innocent people lose their money too easily. Even in exchanges, many unclaimed or withdrawn funds are due to some mistakes that freeze their account and take over it. This is the reason why we should spend some time reading their rules just also to be aware and not remain ignorant of their platform. Because in case that we never understand their rules, then we also have a reason to raise complain or even leave, this is the only way we got safe from them and scam sites.

Newbies are always targeted everywhere, they take advantage of their ignorance with various things that they are likely to like. Especially if not money and instant success. They take advantage of all this by enticing them to follow the various steps that have been prepared by the scammers as if the newbies are helped by the presence of the scammers until they finally realize that their money has been lost. This happens often.

And it's absolutely true what you say, everything must require knowledge. Knowledge is obtained from the learning process. Therefore, newbies really need to take the time to read and learn. Everything needs a process and not an instant process.

As was the case with these exchanges, it is true that there have been incidents where they have lost their money in certain exchanges because they did not read the T&Cs first, and did not want to understand them. And even when the exchange provides a way to solve problems, sometimes they don't want to do it because it is considered too complicated.

This is something that people rarely do, in a way I can understand that people do not want to read the TOS of every single website they visit as it will take you forever to do anything that way, but when it comes to a website in which we deposit our money I think an effort should be made to read their TOS, as it is very common on the forum that we see people complaining about a casino being a scam and then we find out they were the ones violating a condition on the TOS and the casino was justified on denying their winnings or closing their account.

I just hope authorities reach these scammers and punish them confiscating all their patrimony to pay the debt they have with investors, so the scammers we know right now will have their punishments as example for future potential scammers who might be thinking doing the same schemes anytime soon.

The problem is when there isn't punishment, because it encourages another criminals to act, since they remain free from any responsabilities after pulling the rug, like we are seeing these days.

This is more true when it comes to crypto projects. The crypto project owners are earning and collecting a lot of money in the name of crowd funding whether it be ICO or IEO or whatever form.

Even the most trusted projects can scam and the general public will never know about it and they will still think that the project managers are innocent and have no inner hand to engage in a scam. A recent example is the LUNA crisis which was a scam but very few people will realize it.

Because the scammer team is difficult to track and find the actual location, besides that it will be difficult to report to the authorities that we have been cheated on scam coin investments, so we must be careful and not careless in investing because 70% of the coin list is a potential scam and worst scam. So avoid investing in new coins and don't ignore the top coins BTC, ETH and BNB even though it is currently experiencing a bear market and will achieve a high price recovery in the next few months.

I've read some information about the biggest scams of 2022 https://sea.mashable.com/tech/20575/5-of-the-biggest-crypto-scams-of-2022-so-far

There are many ways for scammers to do that, rugpull and many other things on the grounds that the platform they are developing has been hacked, this can make many losses for investors who invest a lot of money into the project.

I believe there are cases and cases. When the team is anonymous it can be harder to track them, but not impossible. And when the team's IDs are public and registered there are no excuses for authorities to not go after them. Look how many criminals have been running from the justice in our history, some for decades, and they still got caught by the police in the end. It shouldn't be different with crypto scammers. But to begin, authorities must be willing to do this, otherwise, nothing will happen...

Two main examples of well known crypto scammers who should already be arrested and had their patrimony seized: Do Kwon from Luna and Mashinsky from Celsius.

The longer the justice takes to act, more prejudiced investors become.

This is something that is very common and also happens with fiat currencies, for example it is not rare for rich people to get scammed from time to time a few thousands of dollars, but many times those people refuse to go to the police because this will attract bad publicity to them and it will make them look silly if it is known they lost money that way, so as we can see scammers take advantage of every single thing they can to get away with their crimes, which is why even if we know they are everywhere in this market very few of them have to face their crimes in a court of law.

That scam part in crypto won't end up that's why the community should do the adjustment.

There's always an attempt of stealing money from these scam projects because, in the first place, that's their purpose of setting up a project.

The most important advice for newbies might be, don't get driven by the hype. Because of that hype, newbies are disregarding the associated risks of investing their money and trusting only those shill words.

I'm in full agreement with you on this. It feels like people barely worry about their image and the future implications of their actions. So, we need to be more careful about our investments and know that Scammer are changing their tactics and employing every means possible to rip people off.

This is the main problem right now and a lot of people are being scammed without even their noticing it. They just take the bait for promising words or thinking that the project will be gonna huge in the future and even though the developers are hiding their information or just creating fake profiles on LinkedIn.

Even if we spread the about the scam projects we cannot control the investor or new investors that will spend their money on scam projects since they are thinking of quick and high profited money which can be turned into their loss.

I would prefer to only trade the altcoins on a known exchange and take the opportunity of the bear market which that has more potential in the future,

It was a sad reality but some people scam you face to face without worrying about what will happen to them because what is in their mind is to make money by fooling investors. Their hungry for money makes them find a way to trick people by all means and succeed. I have no clue what else we can do because even though we spread awareness but still, a lot of people become a victim.
I guess, we have to accept that these scammers are a part of crypto journey and no way to rid them.

scam is everywhere not only in crypto and there is no way to get rid of it completely it comes from human greed so once we don't get rid of greed it will always be by our side. scammers are becoming public in the market and scammers don't need to hide their faces anymore, simply because they know that there are no regulations or laws to be enforced in this market, Luna is an example.

the only solution we have, i think is regulation, once regulated, these situations will lessen because scammers will face the law if reported but regulation will make us lose our privacy when participating in investment.

How is this a problem? What if they are already well known and they are fully aware of that, that is why they stop doing promotions for a while to spread their names more evenly. I think what you really mean there is if the project stop on developing and improving. That will looks suspicious as an investor.

If you notice that, then it can be a good sign to move away from the other active projects before it's too late. Project that can survive a couple of dumps or bears doesn't mean they are still a great project to invest in. There are lots of them but they aren't really that profitable. This is why many of us are looking forward to a new coin because their hypes are still fresh. We only need to be careful though.

Absolutely I agree. Spend time in the market at a certain time. If you are going to trade, only do it in Bitcoin. You can't achieve huge gains all at once, but you won't have any losses either. People trying to scam people will never end. Many people who do not know the market plan to make a profit without making any effort. This is unlikely.

Avoid scams and chill dave who just want to sick off your money, I used to be active with altcoin some years ago and to this very moment, the altcoin market has been highly centralized and does not have any privacy protection for your activities and your investment is also in high risk due to too much hype and chilling promoters who want to make money to the team by all means from that is where his pay cheque comes from.

Scammers do some efforts as well but it was a different approach to making money as it came from evil works. A lot of people had claimed to be scammed and so many people as well have known it but wondering why many were still scammed again. I couldn't presume the learnings happen to us but as I see, people had changed when they saw huge offers and high ROI which is eventually just a trick. A reason why scammers are growing is that they know that there are still a lot of people who haven't changed their mindset yet.

This is why you should never invest more than you can afford to lose in unknown, unproven alts/tokens.
You can make a lot of money getting in early on these type of projects but you’re just as, if not more likely to lose everything. I prefer to stick with more established coins but make sure to do as much research as you can before you go down this route.

Sometimes a project may use a lull in development for the purpose of manipulation. Holders will see that the project has lost its former activity and may decide to sell their tokens because of this, and after the team collects most of the tokens, work at the project will continue and the price of the token will grow very well. But if the project has gone through several cycles but still has not achieved any significant result, then most likely you should not expect great results from it.

True the face to face scamming often happens in the network marketing industry.  Many Ponzi schemes and Pyramid scheme perpetrator isn't concerned about whether they will be known for scamming their victim.  All their focus is on how they can get money out of their victim.


We cannot do anything when people's heart is dominated by greed.  No matter how we remind them about scams and fraud, they will never listen because they are already controlled by greed.


True, actually scammers aren't just a part of the crypto journey but also the financial system.  Scammers are already a part of the financial system led by financial institution.

This can potentially happen but there are times that projects lost their activity and it happens mostly during bear market. We can see a lot of project that has stopped producing their products and it is one of the signs that a project is a scam because they might ran away since there are no activities on their project. Project investors lose trust of course but yeah it's a matter of trust if you really believe on the team and project you invest to. If there are suspicious things happening on the project like losing activities and dumping token values, I simply do a investigation and research about their whale investors and other VC if they have sold their tokens, They have most likely the best intel about the project. If they sold It means something bad is about to happen. 

As they say, more risks is equals to more reward but for me it's not that worth it because if we invest in those coins, we will be the first ones to know if it will be successful or not as it's still new. We will be lucky if it will be successful but how about if it's the exact same opposite? There are some investors who are courageous enough to risks in new coins or projects but I'm afraid, I can't risk to take those steps. Just like you, it is much better to invest in proven projects and coins because the risks are somehow minimized.

Maybe people will always have a different opinion and there's nothing wrong with that. My general view If a project is already listed on the top 100 exchanges, it doesn't make it a scam.

My own experience having invested in projects listed on the top 100 exchanges is still safe and I think everyone is doing it. In the end, it is up to each one to believe it or not.

Scammers do all they can to scam others, even if they show their identity, but still, we can't chase them once we get scammed, right? This is the most common we think of when we see the team members on their websites. I remember before that we could easily predict the scam coins, but now you need to be more cautious as others are very promising, but the devs will run all the money. Having their identity revealed to the investors can still cost them (in case it is their real identity and not identity thief) because people will still recognize them whether online or in real life, and everyone is mocking them and searching for them, but still, in the end, we can't get our money back, or it has a slight chance that we can get it back.

The points you mention are very helpful both for beginners and for those who are experienced in investing in new projects. Because not everyone has the understanding you describe here, especially beginners who usually tend to get caught up in new fraudulent projects that offer huge profits by buying a low price later when the coin is listed on an exchange with a high price. So be very careful in investing in new projects should always do your own research and don't be easily provoked.

Indeed, right, because this information mostly tricks both new and old time investors, it's true that scammers are willing to invest with their websites to make it looks legit and they are willing to spend money as well to move their project around exchange, something that they money can move and scam developers are willing to take that risk.

They know that if there are interest that show up, they can simply reach their target amount to scam out and runaway.

Make sure to deal with proper research and be wise in investing your hard earned money, as always.

Indeed, we cannot deny scammers in the crypto world, like the criminals in the real life, We are integrated. but, we must know how to avoid this scam to occur in us. We must build more awareness and carefulness about the scammers. Believing too much in someone in the crypto world, in a certain projects, and investment is not a good thing. We must check and crosscheck them again. Or alternatively, if we are really going to invest in the crypto industry, we are much better to invest in the coins that have been in the top one. never risks our money into the enw proejcts if we ar enot a high risk takers. because our money is very valauble for us and we oursleves who know the value of the money itself.

Indeed, we have a lot of way how to avoid these scammers but not all individuals had to see it clearly and it was very unfortunate that even with how much we do to be aware of newcomers, still a lot of them are falling into scams projects. It is a lack of education or greediness because it was their old and common tactic to offer huge returns and the Ponzi scheme but then, many were still not able to notice it.
Yes, whether we like it or not, scammers are here to join and make parties with these innocent people and are happy to scam them. Perhaps, they exist to ruin the market.

Scammers are observing and testing every tactic in their minds, waiting for people who will follow and give them opportunities to penetrate, I understand your point, there are still people who continue to follow this kind of schemes, allowing those scammers to continually gaining money out from both newbies and old timers.

The only thing you can avoid those schemes is to invest your time educating yourself with every information about these scam actions.

With such, you'll giving yourself enough chance to notice which is scam and which is legit.

Scam projects can never be eradicated from the space but rather can be minimize and reduce if only traders tend not to be greedy. Newbies mostly fall victims to scams but with the right information and tips, they can reduce it. Investing and reading also helps improve one's knowledge about how the market operates. As for me, whenever I see a scam projects, I will noticed immediately because their maps are not always clear and hidden. Getting the right information build you on how to avoid scams.

The vast majority of ICOs are scams and they are hyped and marketed on different social media platforms. Pay more attention to market conditions and news, study the white paper before investing in a project, and have an in-depth understanding of the project to prevent being deceived.

Not only traders and investors but also influencers who encourage innocent people from investing in their projects which is eventually just a scam. Yeah. maybe this could help to minimize the scam events but it won't stop them from thinking and doing that way until such time that everyone had the care of themselves and is fully educated. But at this time, hearing someone get scam seems very common and I don't bother myself to ask what is the reason because it is always a repeated scenario.

When you want to share your gains with your friends, you yourself think your relationship has reached the point where you can share the gains with each other, but your friend doesn't think so, he thinks you're showing off. People with extreme personalities may do things that hurt you.
I never tell my friends how much I gained and how much I lost. My friends do the same to me.

In crypto world or anything related to intestment, the final purpose is to get your money. Period. If you see a crypto project and have a rush to invest, please hold on. There is a high possibility that this project is a scam which just intends to get your money. I am not saying that all projects are scams but most of them are. Just wait, observe and learn. The real developers are not in a hurry and they will show you how their project develops. It's never late when you confirm everything is safe. Be patient and cautious.

Me as well, i don't bother myself when I hear such things  cypto is no longer new and investing without doing your research is a careless mistake that newcomers will do, though it's not just newcomers but also those old but lazy investors, they lose their money thinking that taking the big risk will result them a quick and easy pocket.

Influencers though got a huge impacts since they are the one who encourage the people to invest with their supported projects, alongtheway they will just run along with the scam developers.

  - At this time in the cryptocurrency industry, it seems difficult to judge whether the project is a scam because as you said even if it is listed on an exchange the scammers end up getting a lot of victims in reality.

If the former traders and community in the crypto space are still being victimized by these scammers, what about the newbies who don't have enough knowledge of cryptocurrency, especially?

There are many scams in the crypto world and everyone needs to be vigilant and don’t trust anyone in the crypto industry. Many new projects use various incentives to attract more investors, and it is easy for inexperienced people to believe it and fall victim to scam projects.

Do your own research before investing in new projects, don't be greedy and invest in new projects cautiously.

All of us really need money, so scammers are evolving. If we don't get cautious, then we will get scammed. There are tons of projects right now, and they are hiring influencers so that they can advertise their coin but end up scamming. Imagine they are really investing big just to scam you. Now is really the time to learn, research, and be cautious with regards to investing in cryptocurrencies.

Right. It is better to sell quickly while the price is higher than the purchase price to make a profit because usually coins from new projects do not last long and tend to experience significant price drops even in the long term sometimes disappearing from the exchange. Therefore, if we invest in a new project, we must be good at analyzing it and must make the right decision when to sell.

Right decision when to sell or much better to have right executions when you start investing with new coin, we all know that in this kind of market the quicker you gain the better you should sell your hold assets, the chance that it will fall after is really possible and if you miscalculate, then expect to lose your investment,

most of those new coins after reaching the target profits will end up dying in a natural way, meaning to say that they will be just abandoned the coin and create new one to allure another investors to follow them and will keep repeating the same scheme to get more money.

yep, because newbies are always the main target of some scammers in the space and day by day the victims are increasing since most of the scammers can make a very promising projects as well like the legitimate. So its not surprising why even some expert and people who have been here still fell in it because scammers getting smarter also they always find ways. Lol

But, he just said that is difficult to do now. I am not a fan of investing in new projects but it might be true because we are on a different time now and many scammers have invented new ways to scam people. Locking the liquidity and locking the token where you can't send the token that you get from another wallet is now even possible.

Scammers are a pest in the crypto world because they are damaging the reputation of other new legit projects. Now many people are scared to invest on new projects thinking that all of them are the same. They are afraid to get scammed. How I wish that all scammers will get a bad karma and burn in the hell once they die.

These days scams are as brazen as can be. I learned the hard way that even if a project is green-lighted by the best platforms or audited by the best audits, it can well and truly scam you. I have so many examples, the latest is Cylum Finance that was audited by Cerrik, which is an industry audit leader. Even the team was doxxed. Still didn't stop them from rugging the investor, me inclusive

Fraudsters are getting smarter at disturbing investors to be able to get money by all means. We shouldn't get caught up in investing in the newest project. If you don't dare to take the risk of investing in a new project, it's better to invest in coins that have been tested and have strong fundamentals so that it is more profitable to invest.

There are other ways to know whether a project is a fraud or not such as background checking on people or team behind that project. Check if they had good ones before if possible. But that is indeed true; no matter how we secure not being scammed, if it would then things would happen. But if you're that anxious, then avoid investing to projects then. Engage with other crypto activities which would generate profit. For sure other project investors are aware of the risk of being fooled by new projects but they are taking the risk still. If you cannot do the same thing, then try trading or investing to released coins in the market; profit may not be as what you're used to but everything can be learned.

I believe there is no way to determine which project is going to scam us until we realize we have been scammed. Take a look at Luna and FTX, both of them are top names in the market and the people behind them are top-notch talents in the crypto industry, but in the end, they are all scams. The best way to not get scammed is to invest in bitcoin only, never invest in altcoins and stay away from centralized exchanges then you will never fall into these traps.

It is becoming more and more difficult by the day to differentiate a genuine project from a scam.
A project looks very real and promising and before you know it, it has rugged.

My question to the OP is this:
So, how to we tell a genuine project from a potential scam project if all of these previously check are no longer a guarantee?

Yeah, scammers are so advanced that these are no longer what makes a project legit, before now when you see a project with a visible team, audited by a known audit firm, a great website and listed on a high volume exchange - you will immediately make up your mind the project is legit enough and can be trusted. The story has changed so much, the team doesn't need to be anonymous to scam.
The type of scam happening now is well organized and planned for a long time to be more convincing to their prey.
From what we have seen in both ftx and luna, some projects will not scam at their infancy, they will be in operation to gain enough trust from their investors before they strike. These among other reasons why most investors don't want to be in alts projects long term, they rather buy and hold btc for long term.

As we already know investing in a new project is like gambling but things like that are very hard to avoid like there is magic that makes us blind so we are interested in the offers that are offered so we are interested in risking your money besides the desire to get money quickly and easily so  take the wrong path without having to think about the risks. old project that was at the top now highly recommended, do something in your faith if it is profitable

I always check the projects through other projects, whether they have been followed on Twitter, or any other means of social media by verified projects, For example, if some projects are followed by Coinmarketcap, Binance, Kucoin, and some other top accounts, so I think about these projects. So, this is also a way to look over.

But that's not enough, there are communities of projects that have been made with fake followers though I think you know what I mean and they're easy to be figured out.

If there's not that much interaction on that project then that only means that they're not real followers and probably used a following service from any third party to make it look like they have a lot of followers.

And the engagement isn't there because you see little active people to none.

Community or better to say a working community helps the project, with active followers who really supporting the project the chance of being successful is high, there are many projects who do have good numbers of followers but just like the same schemes by those scammers they are just paid followers just to make the project being supported but in reality there are no supporters or just fake supporters that being paid by the team to allure people to invest.

Another part of you when starting to invest with your chosen projects, you need to work harder in finding the development if there's real progress with the project that you are following and investing your money.

It is easy to fall for fake projects if you are willing to fall for it. There are so many people out there who would like to invest into things that do not make sense to me at all. They are doing horrible as we all know because we see those new projects and how terribly made they are and yet they get paid for it for some reason.

Imagine this for a second, look at pinksale and all the new tokens that gets funding, there are ones that get money in millions, do you really think they all deserved it? Of course not, which means that just in one launchpad we see plenty of tokens that got everyone's money and for some reason everyone is fine about it and that's the problem.

I don't think there are worthy coins out there in this era since it seems that they are all a scam to me like how they would make their investors invest then if the price pump they will suddenly be gone or make an exit scam. I know they are pump and dump coins but why is it there are people who still invest on them when it's too risky to invest and worse is they will take your money.

It has been happening since in the past and I don't know why there are people who still want to invest on them. There are worthy cool out there that are good but it's so rare to find them until bull run will show them.

Don't be in a hast to become successful, because many newbies that came with the mind of looking for shortcut to make a big money from new project to become successful ended up in the hand of scammers. Always carry out your personal research to choose a potential project that will lead you to success in future, because there are many fake project in the community that will never bring you profits than to empty your money at the end of the project.

We have the same thoughts, but we know that some scammers are also very good at hiding their bad intentions, so sometimes it will be hard to identify which project is good to invest in.
The "shortcut" to being rich is probably one of the biggest (if not the biggest) issues that new people in the crypto industry have. So just to add, we also have to learn to remove that thinking from ourselves. Scammers are everywhere, experience and some kind of study help; do not invest without any good plan.

Very true. Greed is what drives the senses away from a man who wants to earn money quickly.
The harsh truth that there is no shortcut to success. We all have to go the hard way to earn consistent pofits.
All the ones looking for a quick buck either lose it all or gets scammed by these scammers.
It is our own due diligence to put in the effort to research on investments that we are gonna make.
Without hardwork, there's no road to success.

To put it plainly, here nothing is totally alright for us, everything is consistently unsafe. Safeguard yourself by continuously learning, update everyday news, do your own exploration while financial planning, don't pay attention to anybody's recommendation, avoid projects that guarantee exceptional yields and particularly never set up your resources in one place, putting away with cash can lose.
As the market develops, it's getting increasingly hard to bring in cash and the tricks are getting an ever increasing number of complex, so forever be dubious in all cases, never put your confidence in anybody.