Bitcoin Forum

As cryptocurrency continues to gain popularity, more and more people are investing in various crypto projects. Unfortunately, with this rise in interest comes an increase in scams.

 Here are signs that a crypto project may be a scam:

1. Lack of transparency: A legitimate crypto project should have clear information about its team, its technology, and its roadmap. If a project fails to provide this information, or only offers vague promises, it could be a sign that they are hiding something.

2. Unrealistic promises: If a project promises too-good-to-be-true returns on investment, it is likely a scam. While some crypto projects are innovative and have the potential for significant growth, investors should be wary of promises that seem too exaggerated.

3. Lack of community engagement: A legitimate crypto project will have an active and engaged community. If a project lacks social media activity or community interaction, it could be a red flag.

4. No clear use case: A legitimate crypto project should have a clear use case for its token. If a project cannot articulate a clear purpose for its token, or its use case seems vague or broad, it may be a scam.
Before investing in any crypto project, investors should do their research and look for these red flags. By being vigilant, investors can protect themselves from scams and make informed investment decisions.

 https://www.binance.com/en/feed/post/804194

Oh no, there's no transparency behind Bitcoin's team, we're only know the name of the creator is Satoshi, but it's still not known about it's she, he, them, race, religion, face etc. So yeah, we can call Bitcoin is scam and anyone should sell all their Bitcoin ASAP! /jk.

Bank and fiat is really legit because we know the team behind the central bank, they're not lying for offer 0.1% interest rate because they always pay the 0.1% every year.

One of the signs I expected you to mention is plagiarized white paper. Most fake projects have lazy people that just plagiarized white paper.

I do not know about this, but if a project presell a token at $1 and said to list it at $5, that may look not realistic. They may also said that the coin mat do 5x more which might happen or might not happen. What unrealistic promise are you talking about?

You are getting it wrong. Let me give you an example. Assuming the people behind the project said they will list the coin on an exchange, but should make your findings to know if that is true. If you later make research and the exchange said it is a lie, know that it is a fake project.

Also know that some projects may want to be a good one, but later in one way or the other, it becomes bump and dump or become failed.

If you want to invest, I will advice you to invest in bitcoin.

There are so many of these threads already on the forum. It read through all this links compiled by BD crypto (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5459877.msg62552546#msg62552546). It comprises of threads on this same topic.


This isn’t much of a red flag again, because most of these new projects even if there are scam spend a lot of funds on getting engagement on social media either through engaging the community with airdrops, bounties or even testnets, and when they lure people in they pull the rug. The most clear example to me is probably the Terra Luna, its massive hype and community engagement then, didn’t stop it from collapsing.

During the early days of some of these shit projects there community interaction is usually high mostly on social medias

It's quite regrettable to find a project online and decide to invest because you trust what they have to say. NOTE that You are about to spend the money you have worked hard and saved into something that promises a high return without conducting adequate research and analysis into it. And you're not confident about it. And I think that before investing in a project, as a long-time investor, one should conduct study. If not, they are putting their money at a very significant risk.


Because you see cryptocurrency discussions taking place here, that's why you believe all reliable projects should have the same things, which is not the case and they may not be scams. As a result, you believe all reliable projects should have this community or another online discussion space similar to bitcointalk. Therefore, all that is required, in my opinion, is that if someone comes across a new project online or even a cryptocurrency coin, they conduct the right research about that project before moving further.

If there was no transparency behind bitcoin then the digital technology would have crashed and faded away by now just like every other scam projects over the years, and the SEC on the other side would have being able to get concrete grounds to pin the project down. But guess what mate! Nothing as such has taken place and bitcoin is increasingly getting more acceptance and value by the day.

You rather not be mistaking anonymity of Satoshi to a scam. Every bitcoin enthusiast is comfortable with the anonymity of the developer and the decentralization of the currency. I wonder what kind of transparency those fiat banks do offer you anyway.

Most projects have gone beyond all these noticeable signs and are nearly perfect to the point where they might all appear to be real in most people's eyes. Before, it was very easy to identify some fake team profiles where they used someone else's photo with another user name to make up their desired team with a fake social media profile. But this time around, it took some projects years and time to keep some things nearly perfect, doing some background checks within themselves before they could come out to the public, and it will be hard to detect that their team is fake because they make the profile appear clean and their selected images are people who are not on social media.
 
Another way that was easier for people to identify fake projects was from their white papers, like the one outlined above. Since they are just out with the intention to scam, all they do is look for similar projects that share the same vision as their intended project and copy and paste the information, just changing the name of the project to that of theirs and the date to recent.

Don't use the referral link which is not allowed. So please edit your reference link and delete the referral part if you don't want your account to be banned.


Use this link is good enough https://www.binance.com/en/feed/post/804194

Crypto project team members are fake or copied from other companies should be included in that list. Well, the signs are the basics in my opinion because that's what people do when they want to know if the project is a scam. If you really want to avoid a scam projects then you should not buy their shitcoins or invest in their project. In my opinion, it is better not to buy or invest even though there are some projects that are not scam and just buy Bitcoin.

You're to determine and concluded from your end on what cryptocurrency you're to invest with and the way you desire to take your research on them before making an investment, it's something horrible to loose money at the course of making additional efforts to source for more with crypto projects, everyone investing on this cryptocurrencies we are seing were taking their personal and individuals risk after which they had conducted their research on them, there's risk everywhere especially when it's all about crypto investment.

Certain projects have a clear road map and a good-looking project team, yet they end up duping individuals when they earn their trust and invest with them. Most of these projects with monitoring teams are centralized and can never be trusted; the best thing to do is to gamble some money on them for a while if you are clear with the project road map and have little hope with the project team; use Luna as an example; it is a coin that has grown to such an extent that you could not expect their outcome in such a manner, but the project ends up dead within a short period of time.

Most projects work on their social media and community engagement first because that's where they will catch enough people's attention with good promises that may end up being false. To me, too many engagements with projects on social media are a red flag because they may quickly scam people through social media.

Bitcoin is the best option to avoid all these scams, but investing in a centralised exchange is another risk. Therefore, to avoid being scammed by the wrong project, just buy and hold Bitcoin because it is less risky and has a transparent and clear roadmap that everyone can see.

I disagree, a project can have all of these and still turn out to be a scam. So, I wouldn't base my perimeter on all you have you said here. These scammers are getting wiser by the day and are devising new means to scam you of your money.

for me, the indicator is primarily a team, and if it is not there, then in 99% of the case the project will be a scam. Also, in general, you mentioned temporary theses on what you should pay attention to before investing in a project. The more the project is open and ready for feedback, it inspires confidence.

What was the clear use case for SHIB or PEPE, for example? When these projects were yielding hundreds of thousands of percent returns, he was not present. You can apply this question of utilization to the other projects as well. A lot of projects have no product, they are just clones of well-known projects that were created just for speculation. They can live for years and they are not scams. Only a small number of cryptocurrencies have a real use case for their token in the ecosystem. The rest don't have one, but that doesn't make them scams. Just like the projects that had this utility could also be scams, like FTT or LUNA.

Yes, all of these indicators are good for knowing the scam project, but for me No. 2 is a very strong indicator, so any project that gives you big promises that are difficult to believe except for beginners who dream of wealth is definitely scam.

This approach from the project team looks strange. The announced price for pre-sales and at the time the token goes public is almost unrealistic. This requires super promotion of the project at the initial stage. This is not visible. Definitely smacks of scammers

That's not really a great highlight point for me even some good project might follow some of the part you mentioned, for me one the major signs for me is when the project team are faceless people and you can't have any trace about them, no socials account for the team members and all, they can exist and no one would hold them.

They keep on telling that they're a very profitable project. Runaway from those type of projects because you'll never get gains from them but instead, they're the ones that will gain from their investors.

Right.

Many investors especially those that are new to the market are very gullible with sweet words from these projects. They don't think a second thought about the promises they say.

If they don't listen to the advise of others, they'll learn it the hard way.

Indeed, the target is to attract beginners who still lack experience,
so that with the promise of big profits, beginners join the project without research first,
it is better to avoid projects that promise big things.

Well if we are following your 4th point, then this means that every single meme coin is a scam because none of them has a real use case and they are all just trying to generate hype and FOMO out of nowhere. To be honest i totally agree with that statement.
There are also a few more signs that a project is crap and just imagining things that will never happen like for example a roadmap that only has points like "listing on major exchange" or "10k holders after a month". That is stuff that does not belong in a roadmap.

All of these are very subjective, and can't be applied to all projects.

1. Well, this is only a factor that can be applied to any project. Not transparent = red flag already. Not transparent to their investor meaning they are into something that we as investor don't want to see. I've seen many projects in the past especially when ICO is at it's hype back in 2017 where developers are just sharing some vague information regarding the question of the investor. Anyway, lack of transparency in any project (except for Bitcoin) is already a red flag.

2. How about Bitconnect back in 2017? Or the recent Terra Luna incident where they are offering 20% annual interest on the investor's deposits? They are for me unrealistic promises, and yet there are many investors who fell from it. Yes I agree that unrealistic promises is a red flag for a project especially when it's a new one, but the problem is some of the investors are falling easily to these "unrealistic promises" because they think that it's true. They're too naïve to think that these aren't true.

3. Terra Luna, Centra, FTX. These are just 3 of the project that has a huge community back when it's still on it's top. Terra Luna was I think at the top before the incident happen. My point is having a large community doesn't mean that it will not scam people. There is a huge community behind these 3 projects, and yet they still manage to scam their investors.

4. Meme coins? SHIB? PEPE? Other top 100 coins out there. There are some coins at the top 100 that clearly don't have any use case at all, and yet there are still many investors investing into them. I believe that having a use case would be a good factor, but there are projects out there that don't have any use case. Well, maybe they aren't scamming as of this moment, but maybe in a few months or years.

Every bad project does not have this, they thrive on false marketing like shilling and FOMO, they do not have a use case to market and they promote potential profit.

Projects that do these things usually copy-paste existing projects, they copy what's trending and follow their path.

A use case is everything if they are not bringing something to do the community they are not for the term and they will die a natural death just like all the past shitcoins, we already have thousands of dead coins because they do not have something to back up their presence in the market.

and if you are long enough in this market, you can easily spot the scam or potential scam project at once. browse their site and its contents and you will have a very good idea what they are trying to do. if they are just to exhaust money from gullible investors or not. most are failing because they have no plans of implementing their objectives. once they got some money, either they will disappear or abandon the project without prior warning.

There are even more red flags than that, like fake profiles, lying about their experience on this market, an unlimited amount of coins being created, the developers keeping the majority of the coins for themselves, a plagiarized white paper or website and banning dissenting voices on telegram or any other social media app, and this list does not even scratch the surface of all the tricks scammers use.

Which makes me question why people want to invest in a project like that to begin with.

Basically approach everything like it's a scam, and only start to trust them if they prove to be otherwise, there is nothing wrong with that. I mean if you start thinking "this is a scam project" at the very start, that means they will work hard to prove to you they are not, and they will not do it personally to you like you are the only investor, so you just check what they do and what they provide, and that will be fine.

Look at pinksale, between audit, kyc, safu and many other stuff, they end up getting the projects to be a lot bigger and so forth. This means that if they keep working towards that, you get to see what they are working on, and then you can decide if they are actually good or not, and that will help you out a lot.

When developers create a scam and know that they create a scam they make too attractive project. They must attract a big community of investors to collect a lot of money from them. People always want to earn more and that is why scams always attract people by big profit and promises them to earn more and more money.

This is the first thing you should be looking at in a project before deciding to invest or not because if you invest into a project that has no transparency, you'll be left in the dark always and there's a high possiblity of the project turning into a scam as investors won't know the moves the developers of the project are taking to protect their investment by selling or keep holding.
Scam project always hide things or use fake credentials as they know if the community gets to know about what they hiding, they'll be exposed and their trick to scam more users will fail. If you noticed a project isn't been transparent you should sell your investment immediately and exit the project as this type of project always end in one way and that's exit scams.
When a project keep promising their investors unrealistic promises it means they have no product to show and only depending on their promises to retain their own investors. Also when a project only talks about the possibility of them having a particular price target in few years, you should sell all your investment because that project is full of bullshit and a scam token.

Very surprising you reply my post in serious, when I already wrote /jk (https://www.mmguardian.com/teen-slang/jk) as the sarcasm sign.

A project can hire a high skilled writer to write their white paper, now the scam project is already looks legit.

The team that sad they will list the coin on an exchange are only give promise, when the deadline come and they not yet list their coin, they will give a clarification and say they will try their best bla bla bla.

There's no sign to know the project is scam until the time come.

Exactly it is since anyone could just pay professionals so that it can give clean works from them and make those look good to the eyes of people who's easily to deceive so lets erase that one as a basis since it can easily fake by them. But I don't agree that there's no sign that a project is scam since there are some of them showing a shady behavior especially by disclosing their identities and legitimacy of their project if they can't even show that then its safe to say we are dealing on a scam project.

These SIGNS measure for you most cases of traditional fraudulent projects, but sometimes scam is smart to the extent that you do not know that the project is scamming until after you lose your money, and here it makes you be more cautious and less willing to invest long-term in altcoins.
Make your investment in these projects an opportunity to achieve greater liquidity in the short term and thus buy more bitcoins or at least be able to withdraw your capital and keep the profits in the form of that currency and therefore even if its value becomes zero, you have withdrawn your capital early.Greed, the belief that the future holds quick profit and long-term investment is what makes you more vulnerable to scam cryptocurrencies.

Stop teaching other people until you have your own experience.
Everything you wrote can be easily done by scammers.
But scammers cannot find serious well-known investors from well-known crypto funds, because there are very thorough checks.
Fraudsters are unlikely to force famous people in the crypto world to subscribe to their social networks.

Your mentioned signs to avoid a scam project are indeed valid. However, there are instances that contradict these principles, such as Bitcoin, where we do not know who Satoshi is, yet it has been successful up to now. Therefore, we cannot immediately deem a project as a scam just because the team is anonymous. Perhaps, it really boils down to luck when choosing crypto projects, but thorough research remains essential since there are undoubtedly some projects that are obvious scams. Additionally, I would like to emphasize the importance of "investing only what you can afford to lose."

Yes. you are right, anonymous is not a measure and justifies outright scam. Today, there are 1000 new crypto coins that have appeared in the last 5 months. are we going to say average they are scam all. certainly not. There must be potential, of course, and it needs to be looked at carefully and thoroughly for sure.

They are essentially not but they are prone to being scam given that they can run anytime. There are many anonymous defi projects out there that still exist but among the total anonymous projects exist, only a very small percentage of those projects becomes legit. Remember those money making projects back then that has a completely anonymous developers? Where are they now? One factor before I personally trust a project is the project team background. It is one of the first thing that I am checking before investing on a project and having an anonymous project, I can't verify them and that's why I don't invest on that kind of projects unless they are established already and fully functioning.

Scams are never 100% predictable. Often the company is bankrupt and the owners just scam its investors and leave.

Point is that the above lines and many more are only pointers towards a possible legitimate project but any of these well running projects may not be able to face whats coming in the future and shut down - in the words of the investor it is a scam.

If the above lines match, then defenitely the project should be a no-go. But the doubt arises and the best practice is never to buy at ICOs but give the project a time period of at least 2years to observe and then invest.

Those were just common indicators. The fact that if scammers become even smart from day to the another day. It's not only people who become even smarter but scammers are also trying so hard in fooling people.
You shall aware how scammers were using various modern trick like sending dusting tokens and many more.

I have seen some scam tokens owned by scammers who tried to be transparent, have big community, even this scammer offers realistic promises. I will prefer to avoid non doxxed project. A project that has not backed by a big company must be avoided. That being said that if this gonna be the main problem for ordinady people caused by it will become even harder to know which was scam or non scam tokens in the market. Im thinking about there shall be a new parameter that being used to identify the scammer.

The scammers can tricked us with various trick. You can see that so many meme tokens being launched. Even some tokens have sense idea but these turn to be scam tokens.
It's very hard to differentiate between legit and scam project.

The clear line that it's a scam us a zillion things but here are two indicators to me:

1)  if a coin is named after another coin its never legit. Those scammers are just trying to scrape some of the success from the coin they named theirs after from

2) planned coin or token burns as a feature.  When a mass amount of tokens are planned to be burned with no mechanism other than someone burning them its a scam.why even build those coins in to begin with only to burn them with the perception of lowering supply lol

the projects requires you to pay for minting, seriously there are many project like this right now the devs outright just try to get some money out of the minters
and some people being too greedy just blindly pay for the minting fee and ended up getting scammed since the coin or NFT they minted are basically useless.

this should be basic rule of thumbs of determining scam projects basically too much of an unrealistic promises and big profits in short term just outright means that its a red flag and everyone should avoid such projects in general.
after all the big project that I knew never ever giving such promises yet they become big project anyway. meaning commitment and efforts worth more than just some bullshit.
but nowadays there are many scammers that already knew that, despite not promising anything they still outright scams. like shitcoin project in general that are just outright trying to make pump and dump scheme which usually ended up with the devs dumping their coin to the market until the value become zero.

This may sound as inappropriate to some people out there, however we gain nothing by being nice and we gain a lot for not trusting at all on the developers behind all of those projects.

So anyone thinking about investing in any project needs to assume that the project is a scam, and as soon as they find something wrong with it no matter how small then such project needs to be discarded immediately, now this may seem like a standard that is too high for most projects to pass, but that is the whole point about doing this.

All of the above are not only limited to scam projects. Because there are numerous projects that took off without transparency , lack of community engagement (which is kind of normal for new projects), and of course no real use case/utilities (meme coins are a living example).
All of what you have posted are all generic reasons and also a vague one. There's actually more indicator for a scam projects. Some were too obvious and some aren't. Some projects are even legitimate, but did not meet their target market and failed eventually.
You can research about the scan projects and maybe you will get an idea of how these frauds operate.

There are many factors to be considered for a project to be appraised as a scam or a possible scam because of some red flags shown as mentioned above. However, we should also realize that scammers can be adopting...so they are already good on what they do by being effective deceivers. I am always sad whenever a project will turn out to be just another fraud...in fact in the past many years I am involved in bounty hunting I think more than 90% of the projects I supporters turned out to be scams or just failures - such a big waste of time and effort on my part and this is something I really regret.

There are two more warning signs, so let's look at those. Poor programming and exclusive approaches.

A crypto project whose code is not available for public review is like a gift whose contents you havent seen before. That is to say, you are investing in something of which you know nothing about the contents. And believe me, thats a surefire way to meet with failure in this world.

Second, its a red flag when a crypto project has a pre-mined supply and keeps back a large percentage of it for themselves or a select few. Its a red flag if a project uses this template.

The ancient adage "buyer beware" rings truer than ever in the rapidly changing world of cryptocurrencies. If you can avoid these warning signs, you can lessen the likelihood of suffering massive losses.

But sometimes when the crypto project is active in their telegram and any other social media activities they just do it for some reasons that they want to attract more investors to their project and when they get what they wanted, they start to stop their updates and they start to delay their response to their investors in the telegram. That's why I'm saying that's not totally reliable when a project is active on their social media because sometimes they only do it to lure their victims and do not sincerely make any progress to complete their project or to be listed in some exchanges.

Scammers are wise nowadays and yes there are fake projects who seems to be a good one but after reaching their target, problems will start to happen. Again, if the offer is too good to be true, then that's a clear scam for me and also, don't expect easy money because usually those projects who offers a quick return becomes a scam later on. If you're still not sure if the project is ok or not, try every resources and market to confirm it and if still in doubt, then just buy the top coins for your own peace of mind.

Can we check the projects through their social medias, that also include their twitter, Instagram, GitHub, and their telegram as well. Because most of the projects have blue ticks on their twitter account, but I have seen they can also do scam with the users who are connecting their wallets through their websites.

I think that biggest sign is that scams always offer a big profit that is so much attractive that many people invest money in the scam projects without any checking informations.

people with common sense, at least slightest of it, honestly should have gotten the idea to check for some further information when they heard some project offering massive returns of profits.
but sometimes its true, some people just outright invest because they got overtaken by their greed. because they are so eager to get rich quick, instead they got broke quick this time around.
one more improtant thing is partnership with reputed ventures and other reputed company, you will know instantly that they are legit from just looking at that considering the simple fact that they've most likely already being reviewed by these ventures for investment purpose.

That is an obvious sign especially when they tell that the price of their coin or token will always goes up and it never  dump so buy now before its to late then this is obviously a scam. People need to realize that there's no like that exist so its a scam and they just want people to believe on their words deliver then scam them. Also a obvious indicator is when they hide their identity since they will not do that if they are confident with their project and if they doesn't hide anything.

True, that's why people just need to avoid any projects that was offering something that was too good to be true. So many people have been trapped in this kind of trick caused by they want instant profit. People shall always try to aware if there will be no thing that can be achieved without process.

People never learned from their past experience. That can be considered as main sign to determine the scam project.

Social media verification can now be paid for so you don't have to trust every account that has the verification badge. Also scammers are hacking the account of verified business to scam people so trusting social medias channels is no longer a secured way to confirm if a business is real or not. This is  happening on all social media and not just twitter or Instagram.
We can't also trust platforms that are reviewing projects because they can be bought, project pays this platforms to give them good reviews or rating. Scammers can do everything that make their projects look genuine so they can scam many investors. The difference between a genuine project and a scam project are very small because tables can turn at any moment.
Also a project can turn into a scam at any minute because of the decisions of the owners of the project therefore you shouldn't invest everything into a project so that if it falls you don't lose everything. Most project owners are inexperienced in management so they can make mistakes that'll make investors not to trust the project again and this will make the project to fail.

Use cases about projects will really change everything. Meme coins might be hyped now but in the future, they won't do anything good but just for whales to manipulate them and reap the rewards in the short run.

Many projects today don't really have good use cases behind them but I guess we can still find gems out of all that. The other problem is how to market it. The eyes of the investors today are mostly on shit coins and they don't care as long as they are on the hype.
Those are the actual scam projects who will not run long and yet they gain support from many people by just being active in social media. It's the sad truth of the crypto industry today, that's why scams are happening everywhere while the good projects are kept in the shadows.

Such market dynamics tells me there is not really a lot of projects out there anyway, after all if the good projects were abundant I doubt there will be many people excited about meme coins and other similar shitcoins as they will have their pick of good projects to invest.

However it is precisely because of the lack of good projects that meme coins can get so much attention on the market, and scammers are taking advantage of it as the majority of those electing to invest in those coins do not really know much about this market anyway, the only thing they know is that other coins like them have gone in price on the past, and then they wonder why it could not happen to the coin they fancy and obtain massive profits this way without exerting themselves or study the markets for years?

99% of projects do not have a real product or their product does not work as it was intended. The goal of all crypto startups is speculation, and the product itself is just a wrapper to lure investors into altcoin and sell it to them, thus enriching early investors and developers.

How many times have we been told these stories about altcoins infiltrating our daily lives. About life where we walk the streets and get paid for it with M2E projects. About life where we spend time in meta universes and sell various items and digital items for tokens and NFTs. About life where we can secure ownership or access some unique items or locations with NFTs. About a life where we gamify and get tokens for it in P2E projects. About life where we engage in learning through L2E projects and get tokens for knowledge.

All these ways of utilitarianism among altcoins are just beautiful stories, in reality nobody is interested in it, nobody uses it on a mass scale and all these tokens are only needed for speculation.

I guess the only solution to avoid being scammed is to focus directly on bitcoin. Because if you continue to entertain a lot of crypto projects, you will be deceived in the long run because you will be confused which of them are real and which of them are just too good to be true. So just stay away from altcoins, but stick to bitcoin. No if’s and but’s. It’s okay to experience profits at a long term at least you know it’s legit, than fail in the trap of altcoins and you’ll only lose in the end.

That's one of the solution in avoiding getting scammed. There are other solutions as well but I don't have to share it one by one. There are altcoins that are already existed for a long time if a person is still looking for investments but as you have said if they don't want altcoins or scam cryptos then focusing on Bitcoin only is the best choice. In altcoins, there's ETH, BNB and more if a person wants to spend less fees on each transactions although Bitcoin fees right now is okay.

5. Tokenomics, if you do see that liquidity isnt locked or simply their contract isnt renounced then better to avoid and not trust up that project.

6. Whenever they project team do give out guarantees about 10x or 100x or even 1000x return of investment or simply having those kind of sweet words into their investors then better doubt it.

7. If they do start out on making excuses on such key area and slowly pulling out those funds and telling that those are for marketing purposes then better think twice.

8. Everything is trying out to be hyped despite of having no working product or utility which you could eventually be able to see these stuffs
on the process.

It will be very hard to check it. I meant if sometimes the scam project was able hiding their intention to scamming the users who add liquidity on their pool. However, it's quite easy by spotting it through use too good to be true mechanism.

Scammers become even smarter and start to explore so many ways in scamming people.

That sounds like an inexperienced person jumping into a new project that has no details and that is bound to be a scam. While there are many such projects we are here discussing more about those who can determine these scam with relative accuracy and need opinion about more advanced detection. Such simple textbook scams are easily avoided by them.

Even then some kids will always make such mistakes and I hope they read this and learn something. Team background check, token economics and previous similar competing projects all should be checked. I also suggest at least a 2year watch period to observe progress before actually putting in money.

I have seen quite alot of scam projects fail that right now, any site or crypto project without proper contact details/information in any form or without a responsive customer care representative identifies as a scam project to me.

Even those projects that want to gain customer trust by being up and doing won't be able to fake their intentions after 5years, that's if they aren't figured out before this sited duration expire. More people are getting aware by the day and this is also why government is trying so hard to get involved in the decentralized game, monitor certain of its activity, and why they launched the CBDC, so as to keep a tight lid on the project inorder to protect its citizens funds and data, which the customers present when signing up for these crypto projects.

Well, I would tell that the market is soo tricky and these scammers are too clever as well. They are smarter than us because even we know that these are the ways to determine scam projects but guess what, they're making another way to gain trust and to fall for their evil plan. In fact, as you can see still a lot of people had fallen into scam projects meaning, no matter how we spread things like this, they still win and can't rid of them. Honestly, when it comes to money, people become a fool and this is how scammers do.

The biggest sign is that they do not have a good audit, not from a place that matters, like CertiK, and yes I know that it costs a lot to get that but if a project doesn't have enough money to get it, then I am sorry but I am not going to get in neither. Why would I fund their entire thing, you should be spending a few thousand dollars, even tens of thousands of dollars if you believe in it, if you do not have that money then you shouldn't make a project to begin with.

There are projects that spend a million dollars on their project, and not that rarely, they end up failing too and losing that money. But at least they tried, I could see myself funding them, they could make more or fail. But I am not funding any project that can't even afford a CertiK audit.

Two years is a very long period in my opinion, because a project that isn't legit and doesn't have strong fundamentals won't even survive a few months after it has been released in the market. The team if isn't professional and experienced won't be able to keep the project going as per their roadmap and there will be uncertainty seen by their followers and there will be a lack of proper management which will give it all away and investors and the public will come to know about their reality.

So those who are not much experienced in the industry and can't determine if a project is legit or a scam and whether they should invest in it or not, shouldn't do it at the initial stage, especially if they are conducting an ICO or something to collect money from investors.

It is really difficult to predict which projects are going to be scams. But even if you can't identify completely, I think you can try to identify something or if you follow some basic things, you don't have to fall into the trap of these scammers.  For example, whether their white papers are correct, then whether their various sources are correct, who are they projecting.  Or they are getting certified from any organization. And scams tend to be mostly new coins so it is better to avoid them

honestly nowadays whitepaper is rather irrelevant, though they serve their function as technical description in regards of the project but determining whether a project might turns out a scam hardly can be judged by the whitepaper alone, i think the fact that we should check the smart contract, total supply, the devs themselves and so on are more important these days. heck whitepaper could even be faked, so i don't think its really that meaningful.
but what easy is determining that a project isn't scam from its partnership alone, just see a project that have partnership with big figures and companies even venture capital, i doubt they'd scam, otherwise their seed funding of million dollars if not hundred millions dollars would go to waste.

Scammers have been doing this for so long that they have become incredibly good at what they do and if we were to enter their game then most likely we will get burn.

It is because of this that we should not even entertain the idea of doing so, and the best way to do this is by avoiding all new coins being released these days, if you do that then you will avoid a great deal of the scams on this market, and if you add the use of a safe OS while you also make an effort of keeping your coins safe and only download your wallets from safe sources then your chances of being scammed will drop considerably.

Whitepapers stink! These sophisticated documents are just sheets with words and objects. What is a whitepaper? There are only words, codes, and nonsense. But look at those ties with significant individuals and businesses. Thats where the bright gold is? Who would reject a billion-dollar seed investment? minor players! You may wonder why whitepapers exist. They are old, boring, and dated. Discuss crucial topics like smart contracts, developers, and endless statistics. Anything like that. The difference is them. Who wants old, mouldy whitepapers?

I would rather look first if the project was backed by reputable VCs (venture capitalists) like Binance Labs, Pantera Capital, etc.

Regardless if that project has a nice looking website, Twitter (X) blue account with many followers and engagements, etc., as long there are no venture capitalists claimed to back then, I won’t be investing or engaging on that.

Unverified smart contracts are also a sign of red flag like the latest allegation against Trait Sniper. Many people are going FOMO mode into that airdrop but with many red flags such as their Discord verification pointing towards a phishing site, wallet drainer, etc.

Many factors that we can consider if the project is scam aside from the few points made by the OP.

Totally agreed with all the reasons above  except the lack of transparency cause when it comes to cryptocurrency there is generally lack of transparency even with its big and most popular projects don't think that is a valid point to label a project as a scam. Most people  fail into scam because  of promises too-good-to-be-true returns on investment cause many want to get rich real quick and they end up been scammed of their hard earned money. People should just be very careful and make good research before investing into any crypto-Projects that just it.

But unfortunately, most of the time investors never spend a few minutes reading the whole concept of the project and know who are the people behind it because what is in their mind is focusing on their false promise. If you can see earning xxx in a few days, many people got crazy with that offer not analyzing whether it was a scam or not. That is why we can stop these scammers and still see a number of investors become a victim.
Sad to say but, it was too sorry for those who no ability to determine a scam project/s but I encourage them to try opening their eyes and analyze the project first before investing.

You'd only know a project is fraud or scam once they have shown their motives. Therefore, no such thing as transparency would be there to help us out on determining which is 'which'. Labelling a project as scam would be only an acuse unless things are proven and that is also the point wherein that project will no longer mind the label. Just unfortunate.
Rule should be; if it is too good to be true then we should all be cautious on engaging into it. However  people keeps on falling from such 'scheme' simply because of the belief that projects would often be a shortcut to success and huge profit. But as we all know, that's not true. There are ways to check for credibility but there's no way we could figure things out in a single glance of the project.

It is not difficult to predict which projects are going to be a scam, we can always look at the new emerging projects as a scam.  It is how to prove that the project is legit and is the most difficult one.  Since most incoming projects are often overpromised and they always present exaggerated bios of their developers.  It is somehow hard to gather information about the validity of those claims. I have seen too many crypto project that looks legit but turned out to be a scam, they even have beautiful website presentation and even lots of members and followers on their social media channel.

This will at least let the newbies know the previous or already existing ways those scammers use, and with time, all of their tactics will come out one by one, and discussing those tactics will help new people who are unaware of them gain knowledge and be safe from them. I know this works because I have been a victim of a lot of scams in the past because I didn't know anything about them, but now that I know everything, I won't fall for them.

So people who enter the cryptocurrency market newly should first do some research before getting involved with any project and invest their money in it, because as you said, scammers can be everywhere, but there will always be someone who will find a clue that will reveal their real identity to the public.

Once the beliefs of a person have been formed it is very difficult to change them, so if they believe it is possible to invest in a single project and make a fortune in a short amount of time then regardless of our warnings they will not change their mind, and if anything they could get even more stubborn and try to show us that we are on the wrong.

Only once they have tried several times to achieve their goal and failed that is when they will be more open to change their mistaken beliefs, and even then it is not a sure thing they will, as they could get desperate due to the losses they have suffered and they may keep investing in those coins trying to recover the money they have lost already.

Agreed with all the points you have given all can be an indicator of weather a cryptocurrency project is scam or not.But its rear to find transparency in any cryptocurrency project ,one should just make a very good research before investing in any project to avoid scams .

But that is exactly my point here.

If the project is legit, they will be able to cross this observation period and prosper. On the other hand scum projects will get washed away and keep investors safe if they are willing to screen them and not go for high-risk-short-term profits.

What makes this difficult to determine is that most projects remain in the market but in the background the owners have abandoned them and are ghosting the social media. Its a wild west and takes a big safety net to check out the bad ones.

To be fair, the market is congested now and projects often need to warrant to basic tactics like the exaggerated bios and stuff. I've personally witnessed some projects with great use-cases that struggled to attract users and investors until they warranted to hype and exaggerated info. Not that I'm supporting using that to exploit people, but I dont think it deserves to be graded as a scam tactic.

For me I'm yet to see such project with great use case and not growing by attracting investors just like other projects that are good have done. Agreed that during bear season coins may not do well as panic will increase especially if btc is down but if it bulls then such project can embark on strategic marketing, new synergy to renew its community base. Most times the exchange where a coin is listed can be important. Listing a great use case coin in binance will surely bring great volume because binance is well visited and that is what some project require to grow .

Fake Social Media Presence: Some scam projects create fake social media profiles and followers to give the illusion of community support.

Most of the crypto projects that are being launched are more on a theoretical approach.  Many of them are unrealistic the reason why we rarely see a project that has even a use case.  Most of them should be considered a scam until they have proven themselves, not a scam.  I used to be an altcoin person but due to the events where many new altcoin projects are created to scam people, I started avoiding them and just focused on the cryptocurrencies that are legit and proven ones.

That's right, you can see hundreds of projects with evil intentions doing that in the market, and it's not really difficult to spot such things if you have a little bit of experience. When a project tries to create a fake social media presence, they will first buy followers which will obviously be fake because you will barely see them interacting with their posts or tweets. However, if they also buy interactions from a website that sells such services, it will still be clear.

When a project has bought followers and post interactions, the comments that the fake accounts will be making will give it all away because they won't be related to the project at all and we all can know how a real person writes and how a bot does the same thing, so that gives it all away if we check properly.

Signs, that a crypto project is a scam ????? Now there are more than 1300 crypto coins. Stable coins are better, but on average almost all crypto coins can be scam projects, which have a very large market.

this is one sign that majority aren't really observant about, there are some scam projects that outright just buying accounts in social media like twitter and use it to market their scam projects.
if we see from the history of account sometime its also account that being used to promote similar scam project in the past, basically we could tell that a project is an absolute scam just from
the history of the account itself since sometime scammer just doesn't bother building account and building followers from scratch.
they'd just rename their twitter account and call it a day. thats why observing the twitter account sometimes give immediate result whether the project is scam or not.

Stablecoins are better in terms of what? They are coins whose value is fixed against the dollar to protect capital from the volatile market, but they are not an investment from which you earn returns. Secondly, there are more than 22K cryptocurrencies in 2023, but the active currencies are more than 8K. Source through this article (https://explodingtopics.com/blog/number-of-cryptocurrencies).

Despite what You mentioned regarding the fact that currencies that have large markets may be vulnerable to scams and many other risks, through conducting research and following the developments and updates of these projects' currencies constantly and the movements of its team, you will be in the safe side, and scam projects can be condemned and detected through many signs, the most important of which is what the OP mentioned, and through the currency contract address as well, and from its project whitepaper, and the project goals that were achieved, and through the exchange platforms that listed the currency, and many other factors that can during one of them, you will discover a loophole and not fall victim to any scam projects.