I saw a token in my wallet which I suspected could be a fake one. On visiting Coinmarketcap to check if the contract address on Coinmarketcap is the same as the one in my wallet, I noticed there was a difference. But that was not the problem, what bothered me most was the striking resemblance of the two contract addresses. There is some noticeable frightening resemblance:

Token Name: CryptoGPT
Blockchain: Binance Smart Chain

Original Contract Address (from Coinmarketcap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/cryptogpt/): 0x153c0c947177e631e3dfc594ba28750d3a921fb5  https://bscscan.com/address/0x153c0c947177e631e3dfc594ba28750d3a921fb5

Fake Contract Address (Fake token sent to my wallet): 0x513C285CD76884acC377a63DC63A4e83D7D21fb5  https://bscscan.com/address/0x513c285cd76884acc377a63dc63a4e83d7d21fb5

On comparing the two:  you notice the last five digits of the two addresses are the same. There is also some similarity on the four digits after the 0x at the beginning of the addresses.  Also there is a ‘77’ somewhere between the addresses. The striking resemblance marvelled me and I decided to share this experience to alert both newbies and experienced. Interacting with a malicious token may lead to loss of tokens in your wallet. Please share your comments. Perhaps some of you already have such experience?

There was a recent report about aviation blackouts in US, Canada and the Philippines (https://www.npr.org/2023/01/12/1148633623/flights-were-grounded-across-the-u-s-as-the-faa-scrambled-to-fix-a-system-outage), though there has been some explanations to the likely cause of the outage, but this man's reason (https://t.me/TuckerFans/1090) seems to catch attention considering that the aviation is a critical infrastructure that must not be toyed with. He says that the outage is a possible cyber attack on the Government infrastructures, including Canada (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/canada-flights-system-outage-grounded-b2260500.html) and The Philippines (https://www.thenationalnews.com/travel/news/2023/01/01/philippines-closes-airspace-to-international-flights-due-to-technical-issues/) and it is possible ransom payment have been made in BTC. Could this be the reason for the recent spike in Bitcoin price?

PulseChain is an Ethereum hard-fork with a snapshot of the entire Ethereum blockchain converted into a Proof-of-Stake blockchain. With faster transaction times and lower fees. Going by this, has Etheruem met its contender capable of overtaking Ethereum when it launches?

PulseChain is said to be the biggest airdrop in blockchain history - because you get the exact equivalent of what you have in Ethereum Mainnet in Pulsechain mainnet when it launches. PulseChain is currently on CMC as untracked data since they yet to launch.

Please what is your view: has Ethereum met its rightful contender that will overtake it in the near future? or will it help Etherem to grow? (https://pulsechain.com/).

Panama is the second country making effort to legalize crypto currency for civil and commercial operations. The central American country has introduced a bill to regulate the use of crypto currencies throughout the country. They intend to legalize Bitcoin and Ethereum (https://www.worldcoinindex.com/news/after-el-salvador-panama-plans-to-legalize-bitcoin-btc-along-with-ethereum-eth).

As far as I am concerned, this is good news for the crypto space. The Governments of El Salvador and Panama view this as a stepping stone to enhance the welfare of the citizens and growth for their economy. But I want to ask: what are the unforeseen potential dangers? Can anything go wrong along the line or is it rosy all the way?

Recent events on EIFI is phenomenal. This token entered the Coinmarketcap at about 25th June, 2021. As at 22nd July, EIFI price was over $360. That is, 1 EIFI = $360 or more. But as at today at Coinmarketcap the price is surprisingly $0.9972. Is it advisable to buy this token now? Is there any probability that the price of this token will go up again?

[Shitcoin Detective]

(I am not sure if this topic have been discussed previously, however, this is a kind of security alert/experience)
Recently, I noticed airdrops in my BSC wallet  (BestAir.io (AIR); BSCTOKEN.IO (BSCTOKEN); Minereum BSC (MNEB) ) not exactly sure how  and when I participated in the airdrops. The values were outrageous for an airdrop, so I decided to research the tokens in question and realized that it was a scam (scamdrop). (See:  Shitcoin Detective video on YouTube; Video Titles - BestAir.io 20000 USD Airdrop! (AIR) - Free money - Claim tokens – Scamdrop ; BSCTOKEN.IO (BSCTOKEN) Airdrop - Latest scamdrop info; Minereum BSC (MNEB) is a scam ).

I have often wondered why I have to pay for gas when I am the receiver of a token. If I am sending a token from my wallet, I am the one to pay for gas fees not the receiver, but this is not the case with Dapps transactions.  This technique is now being employed to defraud people of their hard-earned cryto coins/tokens by reprogramming to higher gas fees/values.

Video Summary: If you use Pancakeswap to swap the scam tokens, the transaction will not work, if you now go to the scam website to execute the transaction, you may lose all the valuable coins in your wallet and you will not get the swapped token. 

The question is : How safe are DApps connection to our wallets? How do we know which DApps are safe  to interact with?

I have come to realise that some bounty Campaigns are tagged as scam few days after being published in the bounty section of bitcointalk. While I commend those that fish out the scam bounties, I suggest having a section where these bounties will undergo some scrutiny before being allowed to be published in the main bounty section. This will save members of this group some time and intellectual energy that are wasted on bounties that will turn out to be scam. Legendary and senior members of this group that are already checking these scam groups can check the bounties prior to being published in the main bounty section.  While the section (Bounty Vetting) may not guarantee the success of the bounty, it will, at least, offer tremendous help to members of this forum by saving members intellectual energy and time wasted on the useless bounties.

What is the way forward to curb scam projects on this forum?

A report have it that out of 21million Bitcoins, 16.8 million coins have been mined (investipedia). This means 80% of the coins have been mined. That means we have fewer coins available till 2140 (when all the coins would be mined). The question is, What will be the value of bitcoin? What is the current rate of mining?  Will the price go up too high because the remaining Bitcoin is small?

Recent news on Donald Trump's decision as regards Venezuella Government launch of the new cryptocurrency "Petro" is worth giving a closer look. Trump placed a ban prohibiting US citizens from buying or trading with the currency. The country is also facing sanctions from US. Venezuella economy is facing tough times despite that it is an oil rich country.

Venezuella President Maduro, in a bid  to resuscitate the country's failing economy decided to creat the cryptocurrency. The inflation is estimated to have attained about 13000 % this year.

I view this action with mixed fealing but largely depends on the sincerity of the Venezuellan government.