Bitcoin Forum

Last year, I almost fell victim to a crypto scam that disguised itself as a staking platform. The website looked professional, had a whitepaper, fake user reviews, and even a Telegram support group. Everything felt legit.

They promised 20% monthly returns if you "locked" your coins for 30 days. I was suspicious, but greed won. I sent $500 worth of crypto. Within a week, the site went offline and the Telegram group vanished.

Here’s what I learned:

1. **If it sounds too good to be true, it is.**
2. **Always research the team.** If there's no real info on the developers, walk away.
3. **Never trust returns with no risk.** Real investing always includes risk.

I hope this post helps others avoid the same trap. Scammers keep evolving. The best defense is awareness.

If you see user reviews on their website as fake, not everything legit actually!

It is too high yield rate and one of most famous scams in cryptocurrency, that happened in the last market cycle is Terra.

Top Hedge Fund Manager Who Warned Investors, Says Terra’s Project Was Destined to Fail Due To High Yield. (https://thecryptobasic.com/2022/05/16/top-hedge-fund-manager-who-warned-investors-says-terras-project-was-destined-to-fail-due-to-high-yield/)

It is Ponzi scam and works in early months when hype is hot enough for bringing new victims together with new money inflow. When inflow stops, Ponzi will collapse very quickly and after death spiral starts, it can not be stopped.

It's much easier to get fake reviews these days mate, so be careful while judging some websites using the number of review. You too a big risk.  Trying a new sites for the first time and already depositing $500 is not a good idea. Just last month in my country, an investment platform CBEX had vanished into tin air with a lot of peoples money. From what I heard, they had been operating for a long time and has paid out to a lot number of people before now. Let's all try our best to be investment wise. Some scammers can create a long term scam scheme taking several years just so they meet the total amount of targets they need.

Stay vigilant and always do thorough research before investing!

This is enough to conclude that it is a scam.

And the simple tip to find when you are not sure about is just look at the domain registration date and see whether there is any threads about them in the crypto forums from actual users not the paid articles.

The realistic return a platform can provide is 10% per year with a cap limit.

To distinguish between what is too good to be true and what is actually good and at the same time true is usually a deficult thing to do and most times, because of the opportunities that abound in the crypto space and the fact that some of the things you tag as might not necessarily be all that bad, it becomes a thing of trial and error with regards actually knowing an investment that is false and another that has a long term potential. Usually, regardless of the potential you've seen in the investment options you're considering to make, it's best to invest in a way that at the entry level, you're not putting too much into your investment. Even though you invested into a scam project, had it been you didn't rush to invest with a big amount, even if you will be at loss, the loss won't be something that is all that pronounced.

Apart from doing proper research and not getting carried away by reviews, being conscious of the amount you're using for your investment at the start will save you from a a lot of avoidable risk.

I'm happy you shared this your experience and the lesson you learnt I believe a lot of people will get something from this your story and believe me people that read this your story can't easily fall for scam like this.
The only reason people fall for scam like this is because of greediness how can you just invest in something you don't even know about and expecting huge amount of money as return have you asked yourself what the company do to get such huge amount of money to give you as profit, some of them will say they will use your invested money to trade and then send you 50 percent of the trade every day and some people will believe and forget that in trading you lose sometimes and win sometimes so there's no way it's possible for a company to be sending you such return every day after investing or giving them your money, some people are so blinded with greed that they don't even understand or wants to make good research before investing there money all they just want is to make huge amount of money in less than no time.

The real lesson to learn in this case is don't be in haste to deposit huge sums of money into any investment platform that promises high returns on short notice, it doesn't end well.

Another lesson to learn is don't go by the reviews you read about on the social media handles of a project; they paid chillers to chill the project. Don't be deceived by that or circle your investment on that to be legit

I have a few questions that I want to know on how you discovered that website:

• How did you stumble upon the staking website? Were you browsing on this forum and saw it here; or did anyone invite you to visit that link from a stranger?
• When you checked their website, did you really check their domain, whitepaper, and team members?
• Lastly, did someone message you randomly to download anything from their website?

Normally, scam websites often message random people to join their Telegram group and download phishing links from their website. If you suspect that these people are somehow forcing you to do those said acts, you must avoid them completely.

Good thing OP that you somehow managed to avoid losing all of your cryptocurrencies. With the emergence of AI, it's becoming increasingly difficult to spot whether a said project is genuine or not. They can easily use ChatGPT to create a fake WP, upload AI-generated images for fake team members, and purchase an old domain.

I just hope that this becomes an awareness to newbies and to old members as well that there are lots of fake websites being used to scam. Prevention is always better than cure to be safe!

The best way to avoid this kind of scams is to abide by the security rule of holding Bitcoin, the rules is usually respected my so many Bitcoin holder and because of that, they don't even become victims of cryto staking scams. The rule of "not your key, not your coins" Has been mentioned by so many post on this forum and I learned its importance on this forum. If you don't let your coins into the platforms of those scammers, there's no way they will scame you but because of greed, some people have become victim and others are still getting enticed by those big reward offers that those fake platform displays.

The topic says "How I Almost Lost Everything in a Crypto Scam, My Hard Lesson". Were you able to recover the $500 you invested?

The first red flag I saw in this post is where your coins would be locked for a period of time. I am usually careful about the things I invest in online. It took me some time before I was convinced enough that Bitcoin was safe to invest in. Proper research is what some people who have fallen victim to scams just need. Just like you said, greed won.

To add to your advice, people should just avoid investing in unpopular coins. If they must, they should invest only for the short term and withdraw immediately once the hype starts to fade. But if the investment forces them to lock their coins, just like this one, they should avoid such a coin.

What is the name of this scam platform?

I'd say their big red flag would be the 20% in a month “guarantee”, that would make me think twice

But my big recommendation: ask around here on the forum before making a decision like that. I'm sure the users here would tell you it was a scam
If you have a trusted community on X or Discord, that's fine too, but asking here would be a great precautionary measure

At least you now have experience and are unlikely to fall for another scam

I immediately knew it was a telegram scam the moment I read the title. No surprises.

Stop chasing huge returns. There is no free meal. Buy bitcoin and hodl. That’s the safest path to victory. It won’t be fast and easy but you’ll get there in the end.

If you feel adventurous, you may try your luck with established alts like ltc, eth, xmr etc. but these probably won’t outperform btc as well.

If that’s not enough, get a better job or lower your expenses to increase your monthly income.

It’s great that you shared this, so we can see that even things that look 100% legit sometimes aren’t. I believe it’s a whole “network” of scammers who, after scamming 3-4 people, shut everything down and move on, creating new websites using the exact same concept.$500 is not a small amount, but you had to go through something like this because, as you said, greed won in the end...

So you were a scam vicitim why you wrote, almost you got scammed. Well, losing $500 is a big amount, and it can really hurt bad, although we should never fell for anything that promise us passive income and where we dont have to worry about the market too.

I guess in compared to these platforms, we should trust old staking platforms of like ETH, SOL, or nowadays we even get to stake BTC but many won't prefer it. Point is why we have to give a try to these, we can now directly stake our sol from our trezor wallet to with %7 APY. We actually go for bigger rewards therefore we lose more.

I agree if a thing is too good, there is a chance that it is fake. We should keep ourselves save from these types of scams, in my region people lost there money to Treasure NFT project which gave reward at first but now they ran away with people's money.

You said you almost fell in victim of this crypto scam but from what I read you already invested 500 in cryptocurrency in this business. It means that you already felt for it or it means that you withdrew, it before the time maybe you should clarify that.

As for falling for crypto scams, there will always be crypto scams and it is not even about greed that is in play. It is sometimes ignorance that makes people to fall for it.  Individuals want to become financially free and investing their crypto is one way but but instead of going about it the right way, they don't read up and fail to know what is real from what it is not so. Therefore become victims.

Everything that is too good to be true should be a red flag. Getting updates on how scammers do their thing, knowing their current tactics and strategies would help you a lot. So make it sure that you know well what you are doing, and be aware of those risks as no risk will have an easy returns.

Don’t fall on every feedbacks left by some people, those are just manipulated. But make a thorough research as much as possible before you will entrust your funds to them.

It is better to avoid been greedy whenever you are trying to invest in any crypto project; if it sounds to be too good, then it is likely to be a scam project.

For you to stake your money in any crypto projects, you should have gone through the project and be sure of them and you should also check their history, but it seems you just sent in your money because of the huge return they promised that is why you said they vanish; did you get your money back or you get scammed since you said that they website went down and their telegram also went down?

I understand the message you are passing, but such website should be reviled for security reasons so that others will avoid the website when they come across it.

If its sounded too good to be true then think it over. I assumed you are staking on a new cex. There are some platform that has staking but only trust those that are long enough to be trusted or big names only. Theres a lot of scammers out there trying to extort money to newbies and if you dont get cautious youll definitely got burn.

Why do you say that you almost lost, when in reality you lost your 500 bucks? Scammers these days will do everything to make their victims believe in the reality and honesty of the project. 20% is the first thing that should immediately make you close the site. Neither the team that scammers can fake with the help of AI and their reviews nor the reviews themselves should be an incentive to believe them. We should rely on the popularity of the project and not rush to invest our money in new, in our opinion, "promising" projects. With the advent of AI, I became very skeptical, since in our time all the "movies" that promise profits will most often be fake.

Let the awarenesses to how vulnerables can lost their monies keep spreading. The decentralization of cryptocurrencies has looked like an easy way to scam people but when we understand the risks of following the media influences, it'd help to stay safe from the scammers because they'll always want to make curve a looking smooth ways to how you can make good riches when invested on their platforms or follows their investment schemes.
Be sure that the crypto markets is unpredictable and making profits in a short term as that of 30 days of your scammed experience is inevitable to be true.

You need to add one more thing:

4. Only use the money you can afford to staking.

$500 seems too big as a start. Next time you need to reduce that and not use more than $50 to start. You can check the progress weekly or monthly.

But if you want to invest, Bitcoin will be the best investment for you. $500 worth in Bitcoin could be much when Bitcoin price increase so high.

But thank you for sharing your stories.

Last year and you're just sharing it? Well, I hope it wasn't all that you earned from bounty you lost  :(

Next time you don't hide anything when making a post like this. Share every details including their website and other necessary information because scammers don't deserve privacy.

Good enough you admit you were greedy in the first place. Losing the small you have has always been the result for being greedy and there is no exception in your case. Everyone is greedy in one or the other but believing a platform that offers 20% ROI is not just greedy, it's criminality.

O boy, sorry for your loss, now at least you learned something.

People fall for even more disgusting scams where they are promised 100% return in a week or monthly, if you can't find the ways they are going to generate the gains then its obviously a scam..

And using $500 for your first trial is even crazy, that's way too much to stake on a new platform that have no credibility, if it is a must for you to stake then use Binance exchange, I've never lost fund staking on Binance exchange before.

Still as popular is Binance is I only risk what I can afford to lose, I know getting my fund back is possible because Binance have reimbursement plans on place when hacks takes place but still got to be careful.

I think that, after some time in crypto, people develop some sort of sense and they smell scams like these. But even for newbies, it should be easy to avoid schemes like the one described by the OP.

Banks are paying no more than 3% for your money. We all agree than banks are not here to make you rich, but to make money, but thinking that a 20% is normal and they get 17% for themselves is delusional. Even the best stocks that pay dividends are far from 10%, why a project that came out from nowhere would be able to guarantee such benefits?

A lesson learnt for the OP, I hope, and for those beginners who read these lines.

Crypto scams is on the increase nowadays, especially Ponzi styled scams and people are still falling for their baits and losing their money, there are many of them including CBEX that just shutdown. They often entice their victims by paying the first sets of investors just to attract more people to invest in their scams, what greedy people needed to hear was that the platform had paid some investors. Multitudes will use all their savings and even borrow money to invest and suddenly the platform will shutdown. I never take any get rich quick schemes seriously because they are all scams.

Its really unfortunate to read this story at first but when I check this post thru AI detector the result shows like this.

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2025/05/04/U2llk8.png

Next time its better to share your original story and don't rely on AI generated results since you provably can't get anything for using it.

I don't know what's your aim for sharing fake story, but its really better if you share genuine stories since for sure there's lots of thing to learn from that. Rather than faking everything just to get sympathy or other things you try to get from here.

Let me guess. You received a PM from an unknown user who acted all nice to gain your trust and later introduced you to the platform where you were scammed. I've received such message before and If that's what happened, maybe you need to reconsider changing your telegram settings so that only your contacts can send you PMs.

There should be no next time. Op and other persons seeing this for the time should learn and never put their penny in such investment.

I think what you experienced is one of the most common scams we have encountered in the past few years. I don't know scammers still use such methods to get new victims. Where did you get the site? You can share it to make some forum users also aware. Even if you find such a site, before you decide to deposit your money, you can actually ask in the forum, and you will see some opinions from other members.

Scamer always make it difficult to detect fraud and disguise their scam project as a real one. The presence of attributes such as a whitepaper, user reviews and others should not mislead, because all this is easy to fake and has no trust power.

One must always ask oneself, "Where is the money where does the money come from, Lebowski?".

20% monthly returns seems too unrealistic. Such profitability can't come out of thin air and this project is either a pyramid or a scam. In any case, such profitability is associated with colossal risks that should be avoided.

This is also not a 100% indicator of the authenticity of the project.

In my interpretation, it sounds like this: "never trust those services where you give your money and lose control over it".  Who do you have to be to give money to staking, voluntarily agreeing to the freezing of these assets and the impossibility of withdrawal at any time (although scammers can block this option at any time)?

The best defense is to not give your financial assets to anyone. And don't let greed control you.

Greed is the biggest enemy of man, and addiction is a terrible thing.
Before investing money anywhere, you should ask yourself why they will give me extra money in exchange for this money of mine?
What will they use my invested money for?

Having a well articulated Whitepaper is no longer an indication that a platform is genuine. Fraudsters can easily plagiarize an existing document or use an artificial intelligence bot to develop a document. It is always important to engage in comprehensive research about an investment before investing.


The profit they promise shows that it is either a Ponzi scheme or a scam project. If you can control your desire to make fast and high profit, it might be difficult to be a victim of a scam. $500  in my country is the standard minimum wage for seven months. Sorry for your loss, you learned the hard way.

If you're close to losing everything, $500 is still a small allocation you have, and maybe you can deposit more if you're really greedy.
I really wouldn't believe in a 20% profit just by staking, let alone a new platform that is unknown and needs to make a deposit to the website.

If you want to be safer, just use a Tier 1 Exchange like Binance and stake and things like that, it's safer and more secure than the random platform you find.
Any event does have risks, the most common is the risk of losing value because the crypto being staked falls when the market is bear and the returns are small, but it won't be a serious problem.
But if the platform you're using is offline and suddenly disappears, it's the worst and there's no hope of getting the money back.

I've had it too, but not because of the website, but because the person who impersonated it became the official admin of a group I trusted and ended up losing $200 easily.
Have to be wary of anything and anyone, the crypto world is free and anything can happen in just an instant.

Well, if someone promises you guaranteed and high returns but can’t explain how that profit is generated, it’s very likely a scam or a ponzi scheme. Serious investors use the money for business development, production, or similar ventures, and they share a portion of the profit with you. But if you don’t have any insight into that process, the risk definitely increases.

Op you should change the statement to you lost instead of you almost lost because i didn't no that you lost money on that because I was thinking you were able to manage and get back your money, however is unfortunate you had to loss such amount of money to people who doesn't even no how you managed to have it but you have now understand that all this things are not usually the way they present because we are now in the time were many fake and unknown platforms will arise to manipulate people's mind in terms of offers that will not even be fulfilled, so people should be very smart and avoid short routes to money so that you don't end up on scammers.

He said he almost lost everything but he only sent them $500 (obviously not everything), so his statement is correct. What he should actually change, though, is saying he almost fell victim, because he obviously got scammed regatdless of how much he has lost.

The tips he gave at the end of the OP are supposed to be common sense except for the second one as not everyone are good at making proper and in-depth investigations and research.

If you felt all that to be legit, you don't have enough experience in the field. Since you got burned this time, you will do better next time around.


Greed is often the cause why people get scammed.


It's true that scammers keep evolving but the way you got scammed is usual, my brother was also scammed in similar fashion sometime ago.

It looks like these scam investment platforms _{(which law enforcement doesn't seem to care about by the way, hur dur)} barely get any users, such that the first victim that falls into their portal, they immediately shut the doors to their website and telegram. That is at least a silver lining in these kind of scams, knowing that a large percentage scammers are largely unsuccessful in their attempts.

This point might not be totally correct. Let me use the early days of Bitcoin as a case study. In the early days of Bitcoin, you could practically get Bitcoin with little or no effort. With a desktop or laptop, you could mine Bitcoin and keep ir safe. Majority of early adopters got Bitcoin very cheaply but what makes them exceptional is that they kept hodling. There was nothing to risk in mining Bitcoin with less electricity and little effort _{(This analogy can be applied to some valuable altcoins that were distributed through airdrops and easy mining )}. While your position regarding risk-less assets or investment is correct there might be some exemptions.

That is the obvious though, not blaming you, but there are a lot that could also fall for this trick. I mean this scammers really knows how to play with our emotions and so they try to entice us with that huge returns.

Just think of this as a educated lessons for you, although it's very expensive to learn from crypto as we could have lost assets in very large sum before we walk up that we have been scammed. As for me, it was very early when I fall for a scam and so it's good for me to experience it at the start of my career and so I've learn not to trust specially too good to be true offers.

Scammers will make everything look legit but you have to be the one to use your thinking faculty and make some research to verify if it's legit or not. Also avoid staking platforms or keeping your bitcoin with third-party because you can easily fall for their scam. Be contented with the little that you have and use your hard earned money to buy bitcoin.

Bitcoin can be staked? I think its Proof Of Pow so it does not have the ability to be stake.. But Ive seen platform that offering bitcoin staking on cexes, I just dont know how it works though. Maybe its an 1:1 printed btc on the cex but not actually the coin you deposited.

To be honest, that's not an evolved way of scamming users because they've been doing this for years; they only change the type of platforms they create, but their way of luring vulnerable users is the same, which is to offer high yields on investments, and this is because they know users usually fall for it since humans are greedy by nature, especially newbies, who generally think that earning that much yields is possible in this industry even though it sounds too good to be true.

What's ironic is that these sorts of scams have been around for so many years, and people still fall for them. I wonder why people don't think that the amount of profits they offer can't be achieved so easily, that too for so many users. If a platform is offering 20% or more a month, and if, let's say, they get at least 10k users trying to get that much, they will have to pay every user 20% of their total investment. How can they earn this much money from staking if they say that they are earning the profits from staking or even trading?

So, generally, if someone has a good IQ, they should be able to understand that such offers can only be scams.

Scammers are also updating themselves with time and coming up with new techniques to lure in investors. It's up to us to invest wisely in schemes by doing proper research before investing our money. I personally never invest in any new scheme or something that's giving too much incentive. Whenever you see any attractive investment plan follow the stop, think and act strategy to proceed. If we act blindly without any research then end is loss of our money.

Many times the scammers will keep the scam going by allowing you to withdraw your first deposit with the promised interest, they know that this will riase your interest and greed and you might deposit a high amount the next time. Since you deposited $500, if they had done that, you may have deposited $5000 the next time, even if you do not have it, your greed might push you to borrow or take a loan.

That said, it is good you have learnt your lesson, though in the hard way, but at least going forward you will know when to put your greed aside and use common sense.

And they will continue to work on their craft just to see that they are able to convince you to believe in whatever they are projecting towards you, and this is why there is a need for everyone to take information seriously, so that you don't make any mistakes. And staking is one of the common scams, and after people have staked their USDT, the next thing you start seeing will be that they are going on maintenance, and from there, you don't hear from them again, and every platform should be seriously researched so that you don't make a mistake and send your money to their wallet, and then eventually it's a scam.

It is possible to wake up one day and see things like this get shut down. It is very risky to put your money into a platform like this that you don't even know about. Only those who want to make quick money will fall victim to situations like this. Instead of staking money on a platform that you know nothing about, why not invest in Bitcoin, which is well secured, You have control over your money.

 Accumulate Bitcoin and get yourself a better profit if you can hold. A platform like this, which looks so real, doesn't guarantee that it is safe for you to invest your money in it. Remember, scammers can do anything to appear real in order to take advantage of people's money.

That depends on the scam type and on how much effort and money the scammer is willing to invest in it.
For example, in ponzi schemes, scammers will allow the early investors (victims) to make a few withdrawals to build trust and attract more victims (more money to steal).
Luckily for OP, the scammer pulled the exit scam as soon as he made his first deposit but I'm pretty confident he would have deposited more, and probably referred some friends, if they have let him make a successful withdrawal.
Thankfully, this didn’t happen.

Staking is one of the form to have a passive income right now I've seen before with the SUI network but of course not all of them are secured to get a profit gains because sometimes they can rug the project once they think its already profitable, also considering watchout to those investments giving a huge return in just a small time frame that they can double up your money instantly without having much risk, if you can make an investment on yourside at your own handled with your money I guess this is must preferred than letting others handled your money.

Aside from those lists, the most important is not to be led by greed.  Greed makes people's minds muddled.  Even if it is as clear as a day that a scam is coming, greed will prevent us from seeing it.  Like a friend of mine who lost around $100k  from a cryptocurrency scam offering the same scheme as the one that scammed you.  The difference is that the owner, and managers of that scam company is present  and are actively motivating them to invest more, and refer more people to the platform.

I have warned them several times but they did not listen.  After their year of investing, the company got an issue since people can't withdraw their funds anymore.  I warned them when their investment was at around $1k (initial investment to the company) but they did not listen, instead, they continued pouring in money blinded by the figure on the website that they can't withdraw.  Now they are into legal action suing the company but the owner and managers are nowhere to be seen.


The example I wrote above is a good example of this Ponzi scheme.


Yeah, at least @OP had never refer a friend (hopefully) as it will bring more problems if the law in his country makes the person who refers people who got scammed be held responsible too.   That would be a double-black eye, getting scammed by the company and at the same time having a criminal case because he refers people to get scammed by that same company.

Platforms used by scammers always appear legitimate, and if you are not careful, you will become their victim. Ponzi schemes, in my opinion, are nothing new, especially in the cryptocurrency space. The majority of people complaining today are those who are looking for quick money because they are well-aware of platforms like this but still invested their money and ended up regret it. This is why you should choose to invest in bitcoin so that you have complete control over your assets because you cannot escape scammers when you keep diversifying your money to any platforms you see that promise you a high return of profits.

Truely, op reminds me more of those over on binance community, where couple of dudes keep sharing the exact same trading PnL screenshots, fake scammed comments, trying hyping some shitty coins definitely gonna moon soon, claiming to be real owner, plus with ai.

I'm kinda just wondering too about what the op said , they commented "almost fell for crypto scam last year" which they sent 500$ worth of crypto to the scammers. Their post ain't sounds they actually get scammed, said "Almost" and ended up getting scammed, lol  :D.

I do like to see people create thread on how they are scammed, at least they are sharing awareness on the new strategy which scammers are using, and we might not really know about yet. Scammers are always trying to make everything look real,  sometimes no matter how you try to do research about some scam strategy, you will find it difficult to see fault, and you will believe they are real. Scammers are going on a research, and they are coming up with new strategies on a daily basis, so we just have to be smart, and share ways that scammers are using to scam with each other. Always learn to keep your bitcoin, don’t trust any site or exchange with your bitcoin.

He definitely would have. If he could deposit an initial deposit of $500, he would have been screaming for joy if the scammers had paid him the interest they promised, and that would have increased his greed. The scammers know this, and that is why on many occasions they pay their victims what they initially promised them, and then when they deposit again, this time a more substantial sum, they steal the money and run away, i wish many people would know these things.

I don't like this thing because it harms people but it is interesting to see how they do it but for that we should have the ability to not get scammed. There are many things that are scammed but we don't know about it or we don't work on it because of which we are avoid. If they will bring so much in this thing then they will never scam us and apart from that people who are influenced by their work and money force others to influence them too which is why this rope goes on for a long time. They have a lot to scam but they try to run a project for a long time somehow so that the project can run for a long time and the profit can be more.

I also usually pay attention to the date of domain registration. As a rule, such fraudulent sites do not work for a long time and if you see that the domain has been registered recently, then you should not trust them with your money.

Most of the people lost in crypto due to greedy behaviour. When we see a project offers high returns, we just jump on that blindly. But the reality is, scammers want to scam us in various ways and attract us with lucrative offers. That's how the project raised millions and scammed.

If you notice such lucrative offers, you don't really need a verification team or white paper. Simply think they are scammers, and they will skip with your funds. Nowadays anyone can create a fake team and write a white paper through bot commands. So don't trust what they are writing.

well all i can say is that you need to be careful this days with what you do research on, the internet this days is full of scam, and the level of scam is been upgraded to the extent that you won't know the deferent between it and the and the original. they go as far as mimicking the original. they pay some folks to give a fake review an the review might look so interesting and convincing to invest in, but all appears to be fake. as far as i know a good crypto staking website offers less profit ROI par annum, and this could just be %3 per annum by staking with such site, but the problem is that greed will never allow you to see such site. i have done research sometime ago, looking for a site that can give me a good return, but all seem to be void. i decided that i will invest in bitcoin myself instead of looking for others to invest for me. and of course even buying bitcoin and HODLing it in your wallet can even give you enough profit or return within a month or more if the market is bullish especially this period than looking for staking site.

You're right.  Sometimes these scams are often just too real, sometimes they even go as far as cloning real establishments, much so that even when you conduct your research, you could still end up being swindled without knowing it.
The best way I try to avoid these scam attempts is by completely staying away from any kind of random promos and free offers, especially those that promise to double or triple your money. I know this could also lead to missing out on a few opportunities but trust me, it's better to stay safe and miss a few opportunities than putting your ads on the line and end up losing everything.

Yes you are right some of all this scammers are really out to make sure they get people and they make everything look so real, they make there site look so real and they even use fake government certify certificate but which look so real and you won't know if is fake or real and this has been the way they have scammed a lot of people, some of all this scammers have agent in the countries they operate so they send there agent to you in other to make sure you believe them, there was something that happened some time ago a man was scammed by buying fake house he saw a fake account that was posting house that they want to sell and he went through there page and saw that they where giving buyers house document after purchase so he thought they where legit so he bought the house and as soon as he paid for it they blocked him and I really blamed him how will you pay for a house you have not seen face to face, so please let be careful like you said Tungbulu is better to staying away from any kind of random promos and free offers.

This life now we’re living we need to be extra conscious about what we do especially in the cryptocurrency aspects not everything we see online really. Because the scammers are in everything platforms they can form their own website and be using it to deceiving people, and the problem of most of the people is that they do not did much research about what their in too; and that’s why most of the fall in victims the scammers easily.

That’s just the fact the investing every investment is included of the risks, because some times if we don’t take a risks won’t win that’s take the risk is also included in the investment. However, if you want to invest in the future you need to invest in the right project and the right time, because their some of the coins that a person will just buy and in few days it will lose value.

The bolded text alone is enough for me to stay away from that "PROJECT" if I were you. Where did you find a project or coin that gives you that huge of a return. Staking coins only give at average around 2%-10% depending on the coin. Of course, there are some who gives way higher like TIA which is around 10% I think or ATOM which gives 16%-18% but that's annually, and we consider it as huge already.

You said it already that "If it's too good to be true, then it's not true." and that's the reality of things. If you're a newbie, maybe getting scammed once is fine and consider that as a stepping stone for you not to get scammed in the future. Researching the team nowadays doesn't matter anymore. I mean it matters, but not as much as what it was a few years ago. Just look at PEPE coin. All of the red flags are there, but it's on the top 100 still. I'm not saying that you don't research the team or the developers, but there are better ways to look for red flags other than that.

Scammers are evolving so the best thing that we can do as investors is to learn, learn and learn. Learn to avoid these scammers, learn the red flags of a project, learn to determine which are legit and which are not, learn to distinguish scam projects and not. There's too much to learn still, so let's not stop learning so we will not lose our money.

Unfortunately there are dozens, hundreds if not hundreds scam websites like this. What's even worse, if you try to do some research, you'll more than likely find many users writing positive revieews about them.... these are fake users and bots.
So i agree with you, if APY seems too good to be true, like x% per day, or more than few percent per year ( this excludes meme coins and shit like this) then it's probably a scam

You know why I can't blame him too much? Most of these scammers actually copy real procedures and patterns of real companies. In this case, there are realtors and real estate companies that give out houses and properties to their clients, without them necessarily have to see the properties face to face. It could be that the client may not actually be within the country, state or that jurisdiction, and in such cases, they have no other option but to trust the company, and being a licensed company, they have no reason to lie or deceive their clients. So some of these victims have no single idea that these companies are actually cloned and they end up trusting them, thinking they're the real ones, and that's how they end up being deceived.

That's supposed to be your first red flag but you ignored it. For any project that promises you a fixed return, that's a scam, Ponzi scheme or any fraudulent name that you want to call it. Investing in crypto is investing in volatility irrespective of the project that you're buying into. Bitcoin is volatile and altcoins are the worst so there's no way you should be getting a fixed return. Alot of those sites are just hand made to scam and not like they're into any real trading business. Just glad you didn't lose much although I don't know how much $500 is to you but this should be a lesson to you and others reading this thread. In this space everything is likely a scam and shouldn't be trusted,

Do you think that the fake project vanished because of your $500 or it was a coincidence?
Assuming they returned your capital and profit at the end of 30 days, you would have staked even higher amounts right? Thank your goodness, you almost lost everything you have in crypto.

• Don't trust random platforms
• Don't try to multiply your money through unproven ways
• Suspect everything to be scam in the internet
• If you want ROI, buy coins and hold in your wallet.

I guess you learned your lesson the hard way. And the next time, you encounter something like this, you would think twice before greed can take over. Tbh, now I feel bad for you. I don't know where you live, but where I'm from 500 bucks is a massive amount. I single person can last up to 6 months with that amount. I hope it wasn't much in your currency. One thing I have learned over the years is that there is no free money made online. If you wanna earn you must work hard! 20% monthly return? Nah man, I'll pass that. That's like the red-dest flag there could be.

I have to sigh a little bit because your lesson learn may have a plot twist. In the same crypto, there are things that are good to be true on a project level and might turn out well but not when someone want you to do something that is fishy. Like for instance, some people has made 4 figures from airdorp by doing simple volume transaction on Arbitrum and running testnet on Aptos, they made cool money so you can see that things can be good to be true and be scam as well.

Another point I will want to clear is the team detail research. This is good and basic way to avoid been scam by some scumbags but even good team at first turnout to be scam in the end. Some days a go, Mantra did well but the team had an insiders they gave free tokens and those people collapse an entire $6B market cap, people trusted the team and promised to be transparent but they weren't as they promised, they lied and deceived their community.

Always be suspicious when the promised return is higher than that offered by the market in general. Where I live, banks and investment brokers generally offer a return of 12 to 15% per year. No one is immune to falling for scams of this type. In the past, there were so-called HYIPs (High-Yield Investment Programs), a type of Ponzi scheme, which promised these returns with investments in bitcoin. I have tried some of them, at the beginning of my journey, I made money, I lost money. I learned from experience.

Actually there is no shortage of scammers in the crypto world. Before investing anywhere, we should research the platform thoroughly. Although there was no shortage of research here, you should still think twice before trusting newcomers. If the amount is large, you should verify it more thoroughly. In my opinion, checking the age of the website's domain is a little more reliable. However, in the end, I would like to say "there is no substitute for caution".

When you came across this particular information you should have understood that this is the way that scammers operate, they will always come if with interesting offers they will make you to put in a good amount of money promise you a good return just to tease they disappear with the money you have invested. Stop believing anything like investment on telegram they are all lies and scam and stop being greedy and just invest your money on your own business stop making scammers feel like kings.

Scammers are getting wiser everyday, they are doing further research just make sure they improve their ways of scamming innocent victims that’s why it is always good to get latest news about technologies in order to avoid scam that will come as a result of what you know as something good that has tired to a scamming ways.

The year of a domain is not something to take serious because old domain websites are used to scam people, that is why it is better to make sure you learn about crypto thoroughly before you start Bitcoin or crypto investment because you can’t blame anyone for your lost in cryptocurrency as you will be responsible for your losses.

Nevertheless, risk is the key, the higher risk, they higher your reward; but you will know how to manage your risk to avoid losing it all at once.

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2025/05/17/UauNSo.jpeg (https://www.talkimg.com/image/UauNSo)
Keep your wallet seed phrases in a separate and safe place, otherwise your wife will find them and ask for it on social networks.
You can survive the loss of $500, it is not a very large amount even in poor countries

These returns are really crazy.
if you do basic math you can understand that you can double something in 4-5 months - since 20% in a month lead to this. in one year could reach x8-x9 ::)
There are just 2 explanations: yes this is just a ponzi - no no don't join.
Your interest is paid in something that has no value like some baseless token.