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Scammers can exploit people's emotions to their advantage if they can manipulate their emotions.

I remember watching the Squid games series on Netflix and not a single soul that I recommend the series for hated it, I mean we all like the Squid games, people were so into the twisted plots and we never got tired of talking about it.

Later these scammers come up with Squid Game token, this is an unauthorized altcoin that's based on the Netflix series.

https://i.imgur.com/aRNyGwp.jpeg   https://i.imgur.com/FopEIZd.jpg

People got too emotional about this release, in a matter of weeks, this Squid Game token went through the roof, the token was almost 3000$ per token.

The funny part is, CNBC, Business Insider, and even Forbes covered this scam token, I believe it got that much attention through these big news outlets.

Later people who invested in this fake Squid Game token started complaining that they aren't able to sell on the open market, I believe this was the creator's plan all along, some people who smell danger right from the beginning where able to sell, but the majority couldn't sell any token.

People wished for this project to work out, because they like the series, someone living nearby introduced this project to me but with the past experience I've gotten through crypto rumbles, I knew it is not a safe investment, I couldn't confused him because he believed, he learnt his lessons few weeks later when he could not sell.

👇*LEARN FROM THIS*👇

•Even if a big Business news channel are talking about a project, it doesn't make it a scam-free project.

•Scammers always like to use whatever is currently making waves in the crypto space to take advantage of the people.

•Right now, there is nothing else that's captured the public imagination like cryptocurrencies, the number of scammers in this crypto space is very big.

•Scams attracts people faster than something legit because something legit takes time, only fraud and scams rushed in attracts people fast.

The problem doesn't end with Phishing, exchange hacks, or social engineering frauds only, learn to control your emotions when people are rushing after something, most of the time, it's probably a scam, it is not going to end well.

The squad game scam is one of the highest I have ever witnessed, and a few of my friends were victims of it. Just imagine a project that went up 13000% just a few days after it was launched, thanks to the hype it got from its movie series supporters. It was really a smart move done by those scammers, who ever they are; as of the last time I checked the scam record, it was recorded that they made away with about 3 million dollars or more; that's people's hard-earned money that just vanished into scammers' pockets. 

It really taught a lot of people a lesson, and it also made a lot of people lose faith in altcoins. 
But I believe the highest victims of this scam were the greedy people who, even after seeing the price pump, which on a normal day looks too good to be true, most of them kept on pumping in money with the hope of getting back 10 times their investment. 
Funny enough, I could have also been part of this said token victim because of the trend in almost every social media platform, including the top searches on both CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap. 
 
Back then, when I was newly into crypto and coinmarketcap cap was not owned by Binance, we barely heard of scam tokens like this gaining too much ground and trends without any solid news or something to trigger the price pump.
 
My question is: Is it that there is no form of research done by this coin tracker before they list any project under their umbrella? 
 

Ignorance, greed, want to do what people do, no proper research of our own. That's what makes most people fall victim of this scam. Even people who don't watch the movie because they saw someone who they know invested in the token they always want to invest. They saw it increase by 200% in the last few hours they want to buy now so that they will be part of the people who are to enjoy the next few hours pump. This are just how I believe this scammers where able to use people's ignorance and greed at their own advantage.
I wish Newbies and the greedy traders will ever learn from this past experience, because the more people fall victim of this scams the more the scammers will have hope of pulling another one in the next coming days, months or even year with the believe that their efforts is never gonna be a waste.

A very hard lesson to learn in cryptocurrency market.

If you want to gain profit for your portfolio or get rich, invest in Bitcoin. Only invest in Bitcoin or mainly invest in Bitcoin.

If you can not do this and instead of Bitcoin, you only invest in altcoins or mainly invest in altcoins, I am sure with you that you are taking risk to get poorer. You can get one or a few win with altcoins but at the end, you will get poorer because when altcoins get rekted, you will be burned.

As long as you're taking the bold step on investing on token or other coins aside bitcoin means you're strong enough in taking risk as well, those that scam people have definitely advance their methods by using influential names and brands to call their NFTs or coins, they will go to any extent in deceiving you to fall to their trap, which is more reasons why you needed to conduct a rigorous search on any projects before joining except you've got that thicker skin to get off losses when it occurs.

Indeed, in the world that we are moving, there are a lot of scams, or shall we say people who wants to trick us for easy money. This has been the story since I joined crypto market years ago. I fell to bitcoin doubler early, and it's good though, I mean with that, I gain so much experience that I started to be very careful and somewhat it has become a crusade for me to reports these scams and how to prevent this kind of cyber attacks on us. So again, we just need to be very careful and as the saying goes "trust no one", and this is true to everything crypto related.

with so many incidents there are still people who are caught in the mine of deception.
should be more careful in investing in such things.
driven by the news and carried away, that kind of thing happened.

in this increasingly advanced era, all things are simpler and easier, as well as for fraudsters. Using a gold-plated guise, even though it's just an attraction.
You have to be more careful and don't be careless.

Bitcoin is the best bet for every new investors, if you want to play with altcoins you need to train yourself, most altcoins that did so amazing in last bull market are those that people are not talking about, you need to train yourself to identity projects that are worth your money, but still bitcoin is the best place to start.

Many people never learn their lesson even if they become victims of scams, they think they can recognize when it is about to crash and pull out their investment just in time to make a huge profit, it rarely turns out that way.

There would always be a market audience for such scams, motivated by ignorance and greed no matter how many times it is talked about, it seems like natural order of things at this point. We should however try to warn people when we can and hope they heed to the advice.

- Jay -

Even if celebrities promote a cryptocurrency, and even go ahead to disclose the disclose the nature, source, and amount of money they receive for the promotion that is in obedience to the laws of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and then in your head you think that they were sincere and since they were sincere it is a sign of a good project, you lie! you may just be falling straight into the pit of very rich scammers, rich enough to get a celebrity to promote their nonsense to attract many people.

Know that some scammers are rich enough to get the services of your favorite celebrities should they deem them necessary and important to their scheme. The celebrity on their own and with or without their knowledge will be promoting a dubious projects for money.

That’s very true. I think these companies have found this celebrity Trojan horse strategy to be very effective, it’s common knowledge a familiar face builds trust and credibility to any business and makes it easier for people to accept the idea of buying. For too long, these celebrities have been used as pawns to deceive the public into investing in scam projects, it’s high time they start taking responsibility for what they promote.

Most of us fall into scam because of the publicity of a token. There are many reasons that squid game token creates so much hype in the market. One of them is their name. The name squid game is a brand among those who watched or heard about it.

The lesson from here is don't fall for the hype, which we have been doing it since 2017 when the ico and token game spend their best time in the market. I remember investing so much money on these scam projects.

1. Avoid altcoins that are simply riding on a hype or whatever is trendy. They're mostly scams. And just like hypes and trends, they won't last long.

2. News channels and publications don't mean a thing. Besides the fact that personalities there don't understand what they're talking about, they lack research most of the time. Speaking on TV or writing on a newspaper doesn't mean knowledge.

3. When it comes to investment, avoid being emotional. Be objective!

No problem if you know how to ride along and not getting caught in the trap, there are few scam projects that invested money on and still able to make some money and get off the project before they collapsed, there was one doge coin in 2021 that rose from 200k market cap to 20million market cap, I made a lot before it dumped and later died. This is not advisable.

Many altcoin projects are scam and if they are not actually scam, they apply exaggeration to over state about their project's promising technological evolutions.

Bitcoin videos on Youtube....and a suggestion for our possible BCT channel. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5352653.0)

From scam projects to scam Youtube channels and scammers on Youtube as well as their scam give aways, be careful. If you see scam Youtube channels, contribute with your reports and shut down those scam channels.

Scammers on Youtube. Don't fall into this scam trap and lose money, guys (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5198456.0)
Youtube scam channels. Please spend your time to report them and take them down (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5254315.0)

I know this project and some of my friends bought this token, he said, for investment. But it didn't take long for the price of this token to fall and many people lost, and that included my friends. Luckily they listened to my advice not to invest too much in this token. But due to their failed investment in this squid game project, my friends now don't really believe in cryptocurrencies.

Absolutely correct! Feeling is the central concept here. Emotionally charged situations can cloud rational thought. Many different things—movies, music, dogs, partnerships, and so on—have the potential to stir up strong feelings in a person and thus influence their thoughts and actions. Con artists are aware of this, and they use it to their advantage. And we know it's not wise to make financial decisions based on how we feel, right? Because doing so risks making a poor choice. Scammers aren't the only ones looking to cash in on Squid Game's popularity; legitimate businesses selling merchandising and fans looking to boost the profiles of their favorite stars by editing Squid Game footage are also cashing in. Everyone wanted in on the action. Because of the Squid Game's popularity and the sheer volume of people who are negatively impacted, I think the conventional media also gets exploited by this endeavor. As a result, more people fell for the scheme after it was widely reported in the media, creating a self-perpetuating circle of evil. In general, I concur with what you’ve said.

In order to gain a deeper understanding of crypto, new crypto investors should start with Bitcoin, and learn why it differs from other altcoins. If they come across projects like Squid Game token, they will know that it's not a safe place to invest their money, The problem with some newbies is once they see others investing in scam projects and making money, they always want to get ahead, but they don't realize that the others are simply lucky.

Whenever I teach someone about crypto, I will only discuss Bitcoin, as this will give us both peace of mind, and prevent the possibility of losing money to scammers.   

Knowing something about something and succeeding in something are two different things, and many beginners actually do not have good information about what Bitcoin is, let alone what makes it unique from other cryptocurrencies. The fact that there are tens of thousands of different projects that compete with Bitcoin means that there is a lot of room for profit, and how could it not be when millions of potential investors just want a quick profit and are not interested in any feature offered by Bitcoin or any other other coin/token.


You can lose money even if you invest only in Bitcoin, because it is not a guarantee that you will not be scammed. There are so many types of scams related to Bitcoin, and to avoid them all you have to be really experienced and careful.

All these are very good for a newbie to learn from when a new thing is up the scammers will see it as the new wave for a line to scam people because the people are going to rush in numbers into it and it will be a good business for them. watch before you commit yourself to someone you don't know online and asking you for some details it can be a sign that you are getting scam

But if a coin is rising slowly, doesn't invest millions in marketing, it still can be a scam. And if it's not a scam, it's probably just a shitcoin that won't create anything valuable.

Crypto space doesn't have good investment opportunities. It doesn't create something that is actually used by people, and as the result creates value for investors. It only has speculation opportunities - you buy low and the price increases because other people bought after you. Eventually the price crashes and those who bought the latest suffer a loss.

I am still making money off axie infinity game, what do you mean by crypto doesn't create something that is actually used by people? Yet we are been rewarded for playing games, staking coins, etc.

The speculation opportunity is right but it's not entirely true, It sounds as if crypto projects won't survive if there is no speculation, I wonder what keeps these projects alive in a bear market then, because nothing great is going on right now, all of their coins and tokens should have just died.

No one is shilling Bitcoin anyway, yet it is the top one on the list, there are tons of tweets on Twitter about millions of tokens but none about Bitcoin, or just very few about Bitcoin, the word speculation and Hype belongs in the altcoin, as for bitcoin it is very useful, even in real life.

All of that is not sustainable. It's like a Ponzi scheme that pays its participants until it doesn't. Crypto games will disappear when speculation will be over, because no one plays them for fun. Staking is not profitable if the coin is losing value faster than the rate of staking, and they will lose value because no one uses them for payments or as store of value.


They are dying, thousands of coins are now worth zero. But it takes more than one bear market to kill a coin. And for each useless coin that falls, a new one emerges, because crypto "investors" don't care about economic value, they just speculate.

The crypto bear market is no more a stranger to anybody, despite the huge collapse and lost of trillion from the market blockchain games still managed to thrive, if you are reading the news you should know by now that Blockchain games have grown by 48% in January of 2023 compared to other utilities in the space, if you are not seeing it yet does not mean it's not happening.

I know that blockchain gaming is yet to witness a massive adoption but it has a big advantage over other crypto projects, blockchain gaming is projected to be worth 365 billion dollars in 2023 and I strongly believe it will happen.

Blockchain games allow players to monetize their winning, and yes many of them have a broken mechanism but it's not the end, to me gaming has more empathy and patronage than others, let's relax and wait for the coming years to see for ourselves if blockchain gaming will really became successful.

Why do you say that the crypto space doesn't have investment opportunities or it doesn't create something that is actually used by people? There are a lot of projects that provide real and good usages for people, and there are also coins that provide great investment opportunities, Bitcoin is on the top of that list along with some other altcoins.

The fact that there are pump-and-dump coins and tokens doesn't necessarily apply to every single cryptocurrency within the space. I know that there are projects with no real usage opportunities that only exist because they are traded and you can say that about such projects but not for all.

People should change their attitude towards crypto, that's for sure. Most new tokens are scam, especially ones created on ETH chain and you have to live with it.
I never fall victim of these scams because I tend to stay as far away as I can. People who get lured in are usually greedy, want to get something for nothing. They think they'll put in $100 into a new project and sell it for $1000 in a month because some celebrity youtuber did it. Get real people and you won't lose money on "shit game" tokens like this one.

In the future, I hope cryptocurrency will bring more use cases as well as more practical applications. For now, I agree with what he said.
Aside from bitcoin being created as a P2P payment method, the rest of the cryptocurrency is a speculative market that has not yet created any real value. I mean, shitcoin projects are created just for pumping and dumping, we are looking to take each other's money in the market, and if you act fast, you will be the winner.

Most of the projects introduce this technology, that technology, but not a single technology has been recognized and applied in practice. Projects that introduce technology are just secondary, the primary purpose is to sell tokens for profit.

Just like recent AI projects, if I remember correctly, ChatGPT was built and developed 3 years ago, so far, they have released the official version and put it into use. Meanwhile, the market scammers have quickly copied this technology and created a series of projects labeled AI, and the purpose is not to use it but to sell tokens. Tell me, is there any project that grows without a token? And serious technology development, or are all promises just empty theories, sell tokens and then disappear?

I think many people have taken precaution towards involvement of investment in new token, actually people who falls victim of scam are people who doesn't make a prosper research before venturing into investment, most of people who are inquisitive to invest into new token are the one who end up in scam token, so let me summarize by saying that people don't scrutinized some tokens before engaged into investment.

I also observed the start and end of this shit coin. I came to know about this token via my friend but he was not asking me to invest in it, actually, when the price hits more than 2k$ he showed it to me and said, useless coins end useless. That's what happened with it.

Well, I never fall prey to these shit coin scams because one can differentiate what is real and fake profit. I totally agree with the points you mentioned because one who truly understands them can never fall prey to these scam coins. And talking about Forbes and CNBC being just news media, it is their work to cover everything that is in the hype.

It is not realistic that this will happen, because cryptocurrencies are mostly advertised as something that can possibly bring big profits with very modest investments. Considering that millions of people live in very poor living conditions and that they see their chance for success in such things, there should be no doubt that the flow of money into such projects will continue and maybe even increase.

If we add to that no or insufficient IT literacy, then the problem becomes even bigger because for many it is no longer just a "bad investment" but also a problem with various scams that have only one outcome, which is financial loss.

This is the single reason I don't rush into anything that is hyped. Nope, I don't. I stay aside and watch it for sometime. During my wait, that's when I go into research to decide if the project is worth investing my hard earned cash on or not. Hype and the mad rush that follows it because of FOMO becloud our sense of good judgment. From experience, anything that stresses me thinking straight, I skip it. I've realized that whenever I take decisions in a hurry they often leave me with bad choices.

Almost all new projects listed on coinmarketcap at that time was all Doge and Inu shitcoins, still many made a lot of money from these shitcoins and many people also lose their life savings, because some are so dumb to believe that they can make life-changing money and they risk their life savings, shit-coins will never be attracting to me and if I have to take a bit it will be 10 to 20$, safety first, always.

This post reminds me of the popular saying that not all that glitters is gold as many may be deceived to have thought so. Most times what makes people fall victim to such rush is the thought of losing out if not involved as at that moment it's making waves. Instead of unwinding, sit back and watch how genuine it could be some prefer to dip in so they could be referred to as fast fingers only to get their fingers chopped off literally by these crypto scammers.

The project going up to 13000% doesn't mean its longevity in the market is sure cause it's simple for every scam project to go that big once the dev pumps millions into it and adds the influencer advertisement to it.
What's important is the project concept and until investors understand the crypto business and not a venue for greed, quick profit, and joke there will always be investors that will be victims of this joke project that's built on a movie title.

Not everyone who comes into crypto is even qualified to be called an investor... Most people invest in crypto because they saw someone else do it or because they noticed it favored someone.

I think this scam was among those, if not the largest, that taught most newbies that it's not everything that's on the internet and the trending pages that are to be trusted, just like the saying "All that glitters is not gold." 

When there's a project that seems to be released during a hype of a TV series or anything that has become popular lately. The first thing to do is to look for official announcements from the management that thing, production, company or anything as long as they're related to the officials of it. It's obvious that there have been scammers around and they'll do everything to fool people and that's why even in real life, there are scammers that are obtaining the same name trying to imitate the popular people in the verse.

I have seen scammers in all the areas of human careers. They are just there to convince people to scam them. One thing I also notice is that they normally use celebrities for their scamming activities. When you enter the social media, you will see them there plenty. Scammers are every corner in the world so we gave to be careful of whoever we are chatting with both online and offline.

It's incredible how time passes by. I recall being the initial person to bring attention to the squid game token scam on the forum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5368642.msg58320185#msg58320185). The team behind it had manipulated people into purchasing the token with a locked smart contract, preventing them from selling the same token they had bought with their money. Sadly, most people were unaware of this smart contract tweak and bought the tokens, which increased liquidity and then, the team then swiftly removed everything and never looked back.

These scammed attempts are all a result of a lack of education, this is the first time crypto had this limelight and recognition and there were a lot of new investors who were all excited about the market bullish, some can't differentiate between a token and a coin and will never listen because they always feel like they have been here for a long time and experienced to do anything by there self.