Beware: 4 Typical Bitcoin Scams in Mining, Investment, Wallets, Exchange

[Patatas]

Though this topic has become a cliche,I can see everyday someone is scammed somewhere on the internet with fake bitcoin related services.The following article is brief and to the point about the easiest bitcoin scams unknown to a beginner.

Typical Bitcoin scams

We looked at the findings of Marie Vasek and Tyler Moore and here are their key findings. The common element among all these scams though is greed and naivety on the part of the users:

1. Bitcoin Investment Programs: If it is too good to be true it probably is not goes the old adage and it is as true today as it was in the past. When people are promised higher yields on their deposits, they are often swayed by greed.

You should be wary of wallets that offer returns if you keep money in them or if some investment program gives you way more returns than the prevalent market rates.

2. Bitcoin Mining Scams: A lot of mining operations are alleged to be scams but to narrow down the definition mining scams can be described as operations, which take a fee to mine Bitcoin on your behalf but never deliver. Cloud mining particularly has been in the eye of the storm. Researchers Moore and Vasek:

“Active Mining and Ice Drill are operations that raised money to purportedly make ASICs and share the profits but never delivered. AsicMiningEquipment.com and Dragon-Miner.com are fraudulent mining e-commerce websites.”

3. Bitcoin Wallet scams: Getting pickpocketed sucks but having your money vaporize under your very nose is brutal. The usual modus operandi of scam wallets is that the victim deposits Bitcoin into such a wallet and when it reaches a certain threshold; the money is transferred to the scamster’s wallet. In its analyses of fraudulent Bitcoin wallets, the report states that:

“We were able to analyze three of these services (Onion Wallet, Easy Coin, and Bitcoinwallet.in), in which all transfers from the victims were ultimately delivered to the same address held by the scammer. These particular scams advertise themselves as offering a mixing service that enhances transaction anonymity for customers. In fact, all three services appear to be operated by the same scammer, because the siphoning transfers all go directly to the same Bitcoin address.”

4. Bitcoin Exchange Scams: Exchanges are the point of entry into the Bitcoin universe and many victims of scams are attracted to lower exchange rates, promises of anonymity or offerings such as PayPal or Credit Card processing that other exchanges may not offer.

Once the victim deposits payment for buying Bitcoin, they never actually receive their cryptocurrency leaving them high and dry. Most fraudulent exchanges seem to have a short life span.

Source : https://cointelegraph.com/news/beware-4-typical-bitcoin-scams-in-mining-investment-wallets-exchange

[mobnepal]

Good one to read about, specially this one will be usefull to new people who are lately getting attracted towards investing in this types of bitcoin related ponzi schemes. Quite surprised to see cointelegraph posting this as in several ocassions they have been one promoting known ponzis in their paid article section as well as in their banner ad. I think they should also filter possible scam/ponzis before posting review about those programs and also filter the ads they will be showing in their site.

[CHALLCHI]

   I just came across this post and the rate at which this happens is alarming. These culprits are everywhere trying to cart away with your hard earned money like its nothing. Sometimes, greed pays a huge role in these scams and most times naivety so one needs to really be wary of investment profits sounding too good to be true because there's a plethora of these schemes out there. About  six months back I was lured into a mouthwatering investment program through twitter which made me lose over 35K worth of Ethereum but it didn't end there.

   I first made a police report but that yielded nothing. After months of rigorous research, i found out about vaultech recovery services, i was quick to report my issue to them through  vaultechservices at protonmail . com   to see if it was possible to get my money back. Low and behold the recovery team were able to get back over 80% of what i had lost and that was enough for me, i would have been devastated if i lost it all. Many of us have been a victim of this culprits on various platforms. I'll advice any new or old victim who is yet to find a way to report any related issue to the emaiI adress in this message. I wish you goodluck.

[kryptqnick]

Several scams are easily avoidable if you follow the rule of storing your own BTC in a non-custodial wallets. This way, you're not going to fall for investment scams or wallet scams, and can avoid exchange scams as well. More on exchanges: only use highly reputable ones, and don't store coins there or at least withdraw regularly if you need to keep some on the exchange.
An extremely common Bitcoin scam is also a 'giveaway' scam where, often pretending to be someone famous if not even hacking an account of a famous person, you're asked to send a bit of money to an address and get a lot more in return. I think newbies should be aware that even if it's a popular Twitter account, a verified YouTube account or a corporate email address, such 'giveaways' aren't to be trusted.