Bitcoin Forum

There are so many crypto/bitcoin scams that have been discussed on this forum. As a matter of fact there is a whole thread dedicated to it but then again we still see people falling for new, sophisticated scams which at first may not look like the regular scams we all have become used to.
My question is - What's a crypto scam that most people and newbies simply don't notice?

The floor is opened for discussion.

I do not think someone that have known about scam very well before would be able not to know about any scam. Even if the person do not know about some scam, it would still be avoidable unless he just want to remain greedy like the newbies. If you have experience, scammers will find it difficult to scam you, they only prefer newbies or those that do not know about how to avoid scam.

As for newbies, some among them may find it difficult to avoid scam.

Any scam attempt that triggers greed or panic can cause a user to fall for it, newbie or experienced.

Scam attempts that use phishing links or hacks through malwares are the easiest to fall for cause they require little conscious effort from the victims of the scam.

For me, the most crypto scams I have noticed so far that newbies and even regular crypto enthusiasts keep falling for are scams such as;..
1. Scam Crypto Gambling casino: Because this is one way through which most crypto newbies fall into scam, whereby a user launches a scam gambling casino, promote it on social media and then promise to offer free huge bonuses, and when a gambler deposit fund, they ban his account for violating one rule or the other. e.g 1xbit

2. Scam investment platform: And this is another avenue where most greedy crypto users who want to get rich over night always fall victim after been promised huge return of investment, then a user deposit and never sees his fund again.

A typical investment scam is obvious, the stories always too good to be true, low risk high reward. I don’t believe the reason people become scam victims is because of lack of information. Sure ignorance has a role to play but greed is the main reason people ignore all the red flags and choose not to do their research before sending their money to sketchy websites. That’s why we see repeat scam victims who never learn from their mistakes. IMO the scams haven’t gotten more sophisticated, rather the world has become more greedy and the culture today is all about money.

There are many crypto scam that happen each day and we need to take heed to various means they come through, scam exist in different forms, but malicious physhing scam is very common and they target it on newbies, to hose that were inexperienced enough to know or descern wether it could be a means to launch attack or not, they sometimes come in various forms including rewarding you with  cryptocurrency or other links for download.

I think the biggest number first end up getting sucked in by Ponzi schemes. I am glad I did not ever become a victim of any Ponzi schemes, but all of my friend did. The funny part is that most of the Ponzi scheme would use Bitcoin's name to promote their scam agenda by claiming that they would be the "next bitcoin"

The other common form of scam is phishing links of different website.

They notice it but they just ignore the risk because they think they can earn money from the platform who offer some good possible return to them.

People want quick result and always got convince when money show up to their faces claiming that this is what they earned on that investment schemes. They only realize about the mistake they do once they scam, so they need to change this to avoid scamming and best to became a wise investor researching all possibilities to avoid financial losses due to this incidents.

People don't realize that big coins can be scams too. They think if a coin is in top 10 or top 20, it's guaranteed to not be a scam. But in reality crypto devs do not plan to actually finish their project, they just create hype, get millions of dollars from dumping their coins and move on to the next "project". Crypto is a game of a bigger fool rather than an investment in something that creates value.

If we talk about crypto which many people used for payment, I think this kind of scam is not far away from fiat (which they used it for a long time ago). we don't have to think too far because the pattern is also almost the same, so in this case, if we found that investment schemes like the highest percentage profit in 1 night, or another type. that's for sure certainly towards to deception, the newbie must avoid it, if necessary, the must report it immediately

crypto scammers in several ways are used. scammer platform, it can be a dex or cex exchange platform. Likewise with wallet platforms or casinos. we see quite a lot of that. it's a form of a new project that is intended to deceive investors or their users.
then scammers create phishing sites or duplicates of the official site. some that have been found such as the Coinmarketcap site and also the Bitcoin mixer site. they usually advertise and when unknowingly choose a different site address. then our assets can be lost.
next of the blockchain transactions. We can see that users of altcoin wallets will see phishing tokens that are suddenly in the wallet. If we make a transaction with that wallet, it can suck up all of our assets in the wallet.

The truth is that most times scammers don't even need to come up with a new scamming strategy, as long as they are greed in the heart of the man he's prone to be scammed. If you read news constantly about crypto scam news you'll start wondering if this people could not even relate what's possible to what's not, like you here of people falling for a scam that has been in existence right from or before the creation of crypto.
Although, scammers are now moving into different niche in the crypto ecosystem from creating new scam coims to creating a whole new scam crypto exchange, it's not like they're creating new types of scams or anything all they are doing is to improve the scam that we already know about so they try as much as possible to mask it as if it's genuine.
For example if you caught a scam project due to them using a fake or plagarised whitepaper when next they're coming they'll try to eliminate what gave them out in their first scam attempt.

Ponzi scheme and invest in shitcoins, usually people will aware after they got scammed in ponzi scheme, but it's really hard to stop people to invest in shitcoins because many newbies are trying to make quick money without think the risk. They think they can flip the shitcoins easily, but they're suffer huge lost and they can't sell it since the coins has been delisted from all exchanges.

What I wanted to add on the common scams. Are the one related on airdrop thru retroactive transactions which is requiring the use of smart contract interaction on dapps which isnt all the time safe since some of these airdrop pages might have some malicious and prospect scams. Imagine if you could connect on those and your wallet got compromise? Instead of airdrop, might have some problems on your own wallet and got sweep by these people.

Nowadays, social networks are full of stories of "lucky people" who won and became rich in the blink of an eye. Someone invested a few dollars, and allegedly, after a certain period, his contributions turned into great wealth.
All this advertising is very beautifully prepared and colorfully designed. Today's AI ways of swapping faces with celebrities who pretend to be investors themselves, again, encourage naive people to believe in a miracle.
I see regularly in the news that some person gives away all his money and then takes loans and mortgages his house in another fraudulent project, and of course, he ends up with nothing.
People are uneducated and stupid; some are easily manipulated; and others are affected by the time factor (now, or you'll be late). Such people were, are, and will be; it seems that this is becoming a part of life. There will always be scammers; they will keep up with the times, but informing people about them, no matter how hard we try, will not always be heard by greedy, stupid, and gullible people.

before the victim falls into the trap of fraud, usually the choice to enter or not is on the victim. for example;
- you want to visit a site but you are not careful, finally, you fall on a phishing site.
- you are interested in an airdrop, but you are required to fill in a fee for the wallet from the airdrop withdrawal platform.
- you are too friendly with new people, and finally, they manage to steal data your personal information, even your wallet information.

often fraudsters enter into their weak minds - a little stressed - resigned - greedy.

to avoid the traps of scammers you must >> be careful - be skeptical - be thorough - don't trust anyone easily - verify.

Connecting wallet on the platform to claim something from them and participating on testnets is really risky to do so to make sure that airdrop hunters could avoid on the risk beneath on those activities they should never use their main wallet so that if they spot a wrong one which is planted by scammers they can avoid to drain up their balances earned. There are to many victims on this schemes and we need to be cautious to avoid money lose from such methods use by techy scammers.

Yes connecting their main wallet is a bad idea unless how sure they are of the platform. Using a dummy one for airdrops is always a good thing to do especially if you are a guy who always fond of testnet. Cause whatever legit or legal things they say, we can always be sure that they will follow it in the right way. Some codes can be bugged or modified in their favor as always.

Personally I feel this is the biggest scam that has remained unraveled because when people wants to invest or rather trade they easily go into this top Alticoins with the belief that it is already at the top and nothing is going to happen to it. That’s why you see this projects brag about there ranking on their social media handles to sway people to the coin.

Another scam is believing nothing will happen to Alticoins because it is listed on many top exchanges. There area many projects that have also used this has bragging rights when they do adverts and this trick has also worked out for so many projects and the funny enough it is still working out for them because these are the things people use as case study when they do there research about a project.

I think the most popular scams in crypto are Ponzi schemes

I came across alot of them, especially on Facebook.

They will use similar scam methods repeatedly and if you know about their most common scam methods and you can control your greed, you will not fall into scam traps.

Even if you don't know about their scam methods, if you are not greed and simply ignore "too good to be true" offers, invitation, you will not get scammed.
If you are carefully and have good habit on Internet, you will not be scammed by phishing links and similar.

Collection of comprehensive guides on identify and avoid scam projects (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5125435.0)

It is important to be alert at all times to avoid problems. Especially in this activity.

High yielding investments are as yet the most widely recognized and are routinely taking sums of money from beginners. Numerous crypto currency scams are available to many individuals that are just getting started. Because of their low information and without guidance from somebody, they are handily enticed to these ponzi plans. Trading and mining are the most common terms these fraudsters use in order to grow your investment to them.

There are numerous types of scams happened in the cryptocurrency market from bitcoin doublers by hacked Twitter accounts of most influential people, random project comes and proves the investors they are investing lot of money so they are going to stay but at unexpected time they pull and scam, etc.

But most common scam is falling for the clone/fake sites because we know Google will show anything that pays to them so Binance fake website or famous crypto gambling site's clone seems the most in my opinion.

If you're ever been scammed, then you will know how to cherish and guide against your assets when you're still having them, you wouldn't want to risk loosing them out of your own negligence, scam comes in various forms and we need to take good care of our asset in other nit to create any vulnerability that may lead us to loosing it, scam will in most cases comes in through our personal weaknesses in which we fall for easily in cryptocurrency, for example, greediness, over excitement, pride, investment with shitcoins and so many others.

True. Most particularly for newbies, they will always think that scams are only possible for coins that are just starting to prove their worth in the market. Not realizing that even those projects that have been hyping in the market and are gaining much attention from the investors because of its high potentials to succeed , would eventually vanish in the market instantly bringing all those funds from the people who have trusted it so much. That’s why everyone should invest with caution, once the project is not reputable enough, be sure to invest only a minimal amount so that if it’s suddenly gone, it will never leave you panicking.

Just expect the worse so that we will be more careful on things we want to do by those random airdrops coming and its always good to have second thoughts about putting risky things on any platform. We always need to use dummy wallets since this can test out the platform is legitimate and we can be safe if the concerned platform is a scam one.

To many illegal things happen and for getting overwhelming fame by those airdrops for sure those scammers will use the opportunity to hack users who's not paying attention on legitimacy of the project or the apps they are downloading.

In my opinion, one of the biggest scams is keeping your coins on an exchange.

Not only is third-party custody bad because it puts someone else in control of your bitcoin but it is also the driving force behind bitcoin price suppression. If everyone were to withdraw their coins and more them to a self-custody wallet, then I think we would see a substantial upward price correction and far fewer would be exposed to getting rekt by fraud like FTX, BlockFi, Celsius, and others.

Wallet phishing is one of the most methods used in scamming people and newbies mostly fall victims. The scammers make a scam contract address in the name of airdrop requesting the airdrop participants to approve the contract on the wallet address Dapp and thereby compromise their wallets security and steal their funds.  Some come as disguise for a project team to help correct some things on their wallets or to claim a free fund. Most of such people coming into your DMs to offer help involving your wallets are mostly scammers. Newbies should beware.

If you know you're paying your bills on time and you're not really behind on any liabilities, any sort of urgency required from whoever reached out to you will most likely be a scam. It's not limited to crypto only though, as there are like plenty of those that do it through online banking.

Careful of some airdrops especially if it requires your email address. I had one before that attempted to get my wallet hacked. It's only a disposable MEW though, lol.

Anyone who fell scam is at a results of being too greedy wanting to make money by all means are always too vulnerable for scammers to made away with their money, and i believe no reputable user here would fall so easily because they purely sensitized through this forum based on how some scam do invade on personal data.
You should know that scammers are too cony they can diverse a way to easily make you believe they are real, at this point you ought not to go further with them  otherwise they will hypnotized you with their sweet words.

I think people who are new to the forum don't know anything about it. Due to which their mind wanders with various unnecessary questions and talks about bitcoin and crypto scams. If newbies knew there were so many threads about this they wouldn't be asking questions like this. So if you help the newbies better, they will understand better. but newbies discuss many kinds of unnecessary topics so I think it is better not to discuss such unnecessary things.

The BNB Chain blockchain team has created a RedAlarm registry, which includes projects that are dangerous for interaction. Each project entered into the registry has a description of the reason for its entry into RedAlarm. This registry is updated on Fridays.
Red Alarm: "The following projects and dApps have been assessed to be untrustworthy and carry extremely high levels of risks" - https://dappbay.bnbchain.org/red-alarm.

never click on unfamiliar or unexpected links.
Never link your wallet to an untrusted website/contract. Never sign a deal that you don’t confirm is safe!

There are many crypto scam that could occur and newbies might not be that familiar with some of them, even if they do, it has to be noted that crypto scam comes in many dimensions and it only take those into it for long to be able to identify one whenever they come across such, once a beginner is not too greedy or very desperate about making money and don't leave his private keys in care of others, he's more likely not to fall hands of scam.

One crypto scam that most people, including newbies, may not notice is the "pump and dump" scheme. In this scam, a group of individuals or a single entity artificially inflates the price of a low-cap cryptocurrency by creating false hype around it on social media, forums, and other platforms. This sudden rise in price can attract new buyers who are hoping to make a quick profit.

Once the price reaches a certain level, the scammers will sell their holdings, causing the price to drop rapidly. This leaves the new buyers with a worthless cryptocurrency and a significant financial loss. The scammers will have already made their profit and moved on to their next target.

Pump and dump scams are not always easy to spot, as the hype created around the cryptocurrency can seem legitimate. However, investors can protect themselves by conducting thorough research on any cryptocurrency they plan to invest in, looking at its fundamentals, community involvement, and overall legitimacy. They should also be wary of any sudden spikes in price that seem too good to be true and avoid investing in low-cap cryptocurrencies without proper due diligence

And because of greed, investors fall on their too good to be true promises without realizing that it’s a red flag that should always be avoided. That’s the reason why people should never invest following their greed and emotions, otherwise it will only cause danger to their funds and savings account. While others have learned from this type of scam, but still since a lot of newbies have been tempted to invest, there are still new victims that easily fall on the scammers trap.

Mostly with those projects that are being shilled and they don't notice that those projects were made just to scam people.

Those random and unfamiliar projects that are unknowingly being suggested to the newbies and because they're new, they're the ones who are prone to this type of scam.

Someone will play being an expert and telling details of it and yet, the entire project isn't really good at all and just waiting for someone to fall for their scam.

This mostly could happen in Telegram groups and sometimes can be seen in some post made by newbie accounts in the forum.

Greed is the driving force behind most scams.

Regardless of the threads in this forum that share guides on how to identify and avoid scams, many people, not just newbies, fall for these scams due to greed. Some people analyze things differently than others, and we all know that scammers are constantly looking for new innovations to help them with their work because they know people will still fall victim.
The only advice now is to continue sharing such knowledge on how to identify and avoid being scammed because it actually helps some people who take them seriously.