How to identify Crypto Scams?

[Henri Cartier]

Many users are attracted to the crypto market for acquiring massive returns on their investments. There are many cryptocurrencies in the market, it is tough to identify the good ones from the bad ones. Scammers will be waiting for the opportunity to scam the users. It is important to know which is a good cryptocurrency to invest and what not to invest?

Some of the common characteristics of crypto Scams are:

• Absence of Key information

• Unrealistic claims and

• No codebase

1) Absence of Key information like "No WhitePaper" and "Absence of team members info". It is important to check the white paper information of any coin. Also, information about the founders and developers team of a crypto should be found, if not then it is a doubtful project.

2) Unrealistic claims: Some of the common fraudulent schemes in the cryptocurrency community that promotes unrealistic claims includes Cloud Mining Services, Bitcoin Investment Packages, and Multi-level marketing.
 

• Cloud Mining Services: Many fraudulent cloud mining websites offer Bitcoin mining operations to earn mining rewards by just providing initial capital upfront without investing in your own computing hardware.

• Bitcoin Investment Packages (BIPs): BIPs are high-yielding investment programs that promise high returns with small payout structures. Due to some scam projects, BIPs have limited life.

• Multi-level marketing schemes: MLM scheme offers referral schemes promoting cryptocurrency investments and users will easily get trapped by this.

3) Non-Existence Of Code Base: Majority of the cryptocurrencies are Open-sources and not all coins that are closed-source are scams. But all coins that have been branded as scams do not reveal their code base or simply doesn’t have them.


I read an article and felt that there are many crypto scams running around us which many users are not aware of. Please share your experience about the scams which you have come across and what all methods you use to identify a crypto scam?


Source: http://masterthecrypto.com/identifying-scam-coins/

[Polina_21]

Yes, I agree with you. We need to check all the info about a crypto before investing on it. I have come across many Referral scams. Basically they will target on Telegram. They will send a link which redirects to a referral link. We should be careful about it. Thanks for this post OP.

[Furryball]

The most popular one is too good to be real investment plans,the scam team give out unreasonable and unrealistic promises on their project details to lure innocent vitcims

[elda34b]

1) Absence of Key information like "No WhitePaper" and "Absence of team members info". It is important to check the white paper information of any coin. Also, information about the founders and developers team of a crypto should be found, if not then it is a doubtful project.

Keep in mind that not all anonymous project are outright scams, especially if they don't look for ICO and just went straight developing codes and releasing stuff. Bitcoin is the example of this one.

So, if you find an anonymous project that doesn't look to raise funds and just want to develop a product, don't be too quick to judge them.

[tbct_mt2]

Crypto projects have open source codes, and everyone who have IT skills can clone available source codes and launch their own coins. However, there are smart scammers who use fake old Github accounts to launch their projects.
Just because It’s on GitHub. It doesn’t mean it’s safe

[hugeblack]

Cloud mining services are not SCAM projects in themselves but are exploited for scams, so you should research before investing in any of these sites.
In fact, 99,5% of these sites are scammers but it does not mean that cloud mining itself is a scam.

The essence of cryptocurrencies is decentralization The imbalance of decentralization makes you invest in currencies according to the guarantee of the issuers. If you trust their promises, it is better to trust the promises of governments and buy some cash.

When you talk about identifying a scam, you should learn how to detect scammers by searching for images "using google/yandex image search," conducting a thorough search of the platform, plagiarism, and others.

[leowonderful]

A ton of crypto scam sites also just use cropped pictures of other people from various other places for their 'important people' list or list of people that 'contributed' to the scams. Some of them also just rip pictures without editing, and if you right click on images on Chrome and select 'Search Google for image', you're able to perform a reverse image lookup that should reveal whether or not the pictures are original or not. I imagine it's harder to perform a good reverse lookup if the image is cropped and/or mirrored, but for the simplest ones you can just do a quick lookup.

[tbct_mt2]

I collected lots of useful threads on scam identification: Collection of comprehensive guides on identify and avoid scam projects. If anyone know new threads, on methods (not scam accusations) to identify scam projects, please tell me with links to those threads.

Cloud mining services are not SCAM projects in themselves but are exploited for scams, so you should research before investing in any of these sites.
In fact, 99,5% of these sites are scammers but it does not mean that cloud mining itself is a scam.

Correct, but crypto investors should take care of themselves and be very careful with cloud mining services, like masternodes hosting services or mixing services.
Cloudmining 101 (ponzi risk assessment) (this thread made 5 years ago, but I think we can get good points from it)

[Duelist]

When a project is at his "early stages" it's rather difficult to identify if it's a scam or not. That's why investing in ICO is a very risky thing. I prefer to invest in the projects with working "demo" or "beta" versions. If you see that the project has a working demo it's a good sign that it's not a scam. Of course, it's not a 100% guarantee. But it's much better to invest not just in a Whitepaper...

[tbct_mt2]

How about this one?
Collection of comprehensive guides on identify and avoid scam projects.
I believe you can find lots of helpful information from those guides listed in my thread, and some of them can be used to improve your thread.

[HeRetiK]

1) Absence of Key information like "No WhitePaper" and "Absence of team members info". It is important to check the white paper information of any coin. Also, information about the founders and developers team of a crypto should be found, if not then it is a doubtful project.

Keep in mind that not all anonymous project are outright scams, especially if they don't look for ICO and just went straight developing codes and releasing stuff. Bitcoin is the example of this one.

So, if you find an anonymous project that doesn't look to raise funds and just want to develop a product, don't be too quick to judge them.

Also keep in mind that having a white paper does not automatically make a legit project. Sometimes it's just scammers going the extra mile to appear legitimate.

Additionally, even once you've successfully circumnavigated the cesspool of scam projects, remember that crypto is still a high risk environment. You don't have to get scammed to lose money in crypto.

[Indamuck]

1) Absence of Key information like "No WhitePaper" and "Absence of team members info". It is important to check the white paper information of any coin. Also, information about the founders and developers team of a crypto should be found, if not then it is a doubtful project.

Keep in mind that not all anonymous project are outright scams, especially if they don't look for ICO and just went straight developing codes and releasing stuff. Bitcoin is the example of this one.

So, if you find an anonymous project that doesn't look to raise funds and just want to develop a product, don't be too quick to judge them.

Also keep in mind that having a white paper does not automatically make a legit project. Sometimes it's just scammers going the extra mile to appear legitimate.

Additionally, even once you've successfully circumnavigated the cesspool of scam projects, remember that crypto is still a high risk environment. You don't have to get scammed to lose money in crypto.

Ya just because something fails and investors lose a lot of money doesn't mean it is a scam.  The market is just highly competitive and they couldn't find a demand or they had bad management making the decisions.  Same thing applies for new businesses in the real world.

[tbct_mt2]

Also keep in mind that having a white paper does not automatically make a legit project. Sometimes it's just scammers going the extra mile to appear legitimate.

Additionally, even once you've successfully circumnavigated the cesspool of scam projects, remember that crypto is still a high risk environment. You don't have to get scammed to lose money in crypto.

Scammers can spend their time and write polish Whitepaper, but they can not build up good blockchains and real applications on those blockchains.

As much as I like blockchain, I have to admit this is more or less accurate. We don't just need another blockchain. We need blockchains with real applications.

[HeRetiK]

Also keep in mind that having a white paper does not automatically make a legit project. Sometimes it's just scammers going the extra mile to appear legitimate.

Additionally, even once you've successfully circumnavigated the cesspool of scam projects, remember that crypto is still a high risk environment. You don't have to get scammed to lose money in crypto.

Scammers can spend their time and write polish Whitepaper, but they can not build up good blockchains and real applications on those blockchains.

As much as I like blockchain, I have to admit this is more or less accurate. We don't just need another blockchain. We need blockchains with real applications.

To be fair even non-scammers sometimes fail at building up a good blockchain and real applications. Crypto is one of the few environments where legit operations can pivot into a scam within a heartbeat.

[tbct_mt2]

To be fair even non-scammers sometimes fail at building up a good blockchain and real applications. Crypto is one of the few environments where legit operations can pivot into a scam within a heartbeat.

Failed projects or scam projects, sometimes are not different in level of losses for investors. If investors are brave enough to make their decisions to jump out of probably failed/ scam projects early enough, they might reduce their losses. Unfortunately, there are always investors whom hold their coins/ tokens for too long, with hope that after months, or years, those coins/ tokens will rise again. At the end, they end with dramatic losses, and nealry unable to recover.
The main difference is scam projects give investors instant losses, and make them shocked. In contrast, failed projects give investors gradual losses over time when price falls gradually, but people who hold their assest at the ends will get nearly same terrible losses as from investments in scam projects.

[Malvika_sitlani]

There are dozens of exchanges now a days but choose the one which gives you the best market rate with hassle-free experience.
In trading always try to put the small amount of your portfolio.
Take your investment decisions very carefully means double check the exchange where you are going to invest your money.
Always be assured about the fees of the particular transaction and the timeframe of the order completion.