Cryptocurrency scams: How to keep you being safe.

[KrisAlex18]

With the widespread use of cryptocurrency and lose regulations, many users have been tricked and scammed by fraudsters. You have to make sure that the right gateways are being used, your information is not being traced and your details are not being hacked. With so much going on on the internet, it is essential that you safeguard yourself from such scams.

Cryptocurrency scams
1. Initial Coin Offering - ICOs act as a way to raise funds, where a company looking to raise money to create a new coin, app, or service launches an ICO. Interested investors can buy into the offering and receive a new cryptocurrency token issued by the company. This token may have some utility in using the product or service the company is offering, or it may just represent a stake in the company or project. There are some ICO's that are meant to scam people by bot giving something in return.
2. Unregulated Brokers & Exchanges - There are so many unregulated online exchanges ee can see through the internet and most of them are a scam, once you deposited something they will offer you something in return but as time goes by, nothing happens.
3. Bitcoin trading system - There are so many websites for the bitcoin trading system but always be wise on choosing the best one, Because Bitcoin is on the internet, they are even easier to steal and much harder to return and trace. Bitcoin itself is secure, but bitcoins are only as secure as the wallet storing them. Investing in bitcoin is no joke, and securing your investment should be your top priority.

Ways to have safely trading cryptocurrency
As we all know trading cryptocurrency is just taking a risk but we can make some ways to lessen its risk.
1. Invest only what you can afford to lose - as what I have said above trading is taking a risk so always set aside the money that you are going take a risk, the money that you are willing to lose in a way that you will no be so much be affected if you lose it, of course, w should be open about that.
2. Research investment opportunities carefully - it is really important that we have knowledge or information before we do something because this will be our key to success. There is no better weapons than knowledge.
3. Trade cryptocurrency CFDs instead - If you want to speculate on the price of a cryptocurrency then the use of a Contract for Difference (CFD) is an option to consider. You won't actually own the cryptocurrency, which means you don't face the hassle and hurdles of trying to buy via one of the unregulated exchanges. Instead, a CFD is a financial instrument that allows you to speculate on price movements, which is really good for you to make your time more productive because you won't need to check the price movement time by time.

Read more at: https://commodity.com/cryptocurrency/avoid-scams/
 

[hugeblack]

3. Trade cryptocurrency CFDs instead - If you want to speculate on the price of a cryptocurrency then the use of a Contract for Difference (CFD) is an option to consider. You won't actually own the cryptocurrency, which means you don't face the hassle and hurdles of trying to buy via one of the unregulated exchanges. Instead,

It is strange advice for newbies, especially if he does not know much about cryptocurrency CFDs. It is dangerous to start trading CFDs contracts for beginners, especially since they need to know the brokers and ensure that they do not scam them.
Also, trading CFDs comes with a price in the form of a difference, so you will face losses and initially with no knowledge that might lead to a loss of the full capital.

[asianguy845]

xD im a newbie and i kinda had no idea what you were saying, i suggest you simplify this

[cryptoaddictchie]

Might wanna remove the third suggestion on trading CFD. Even for me, this is too much. It is leverage trading, and you might wanna spend more than you can earn here. Not so optimistic about this, though there are perks of using this method. However, the risk is even greater to bear.

Leverage gives you exposure to the markets by depositing just a percentage of the full value of the trade you wish to place. This means that while you could make a potential profit if the market moves in your favour, you could just as easily make significant losses if the trade moves against you and you don’t have adequate risk management in place.

​For instance, if you place a CFD trade worth £1,000 and the margin rate for the applicable tier is 5%, you only need to fund 5% of the total value of the position, known as position margin. In this case, you only need to allocate £50 to open the trade. If, however, the price of the product moves against you by 10%, you lose £100 – double your initial stake in the CFD trade. This is because your exposure to the market (or your risk) is the same as if you had purchased £1,000 worth of physical shares. This means that any move in the market will have a greater effect on your capital than if you had purchased the same value of shares. However, retail client accounts have negative balance protection, so your losses will be limited to the value of the funds in your account

_{This type of trading method has to be educated and knows its potential risk on your funds. This is another method that newbies will not easily adopt.}

[Wenbing]

<snip>

Cryptocurrency scams
1. Initial Coin Offering - ICOs act as a way to raise funds, where a company looking to raise money to create a new coin, app, or service launches an ICO. Interested investors can buy into the offering and receive a new cryptocurrency token issued by the company. This token may have some utility in using the product or service the company is offering, or it may just represent a stake in the company or project. There are some ICO's that are meant to scam people by bot giving something in return.

This comment trigger some questions to I need to enquire about.

1. How do we know authenticity or credibility of an  ICO
2. Is ICO similar with the investment rounds called IPO?
3. Who are those that carry out ICO
4. Do crytocurrency companies allowed to go on an IPO? If yes, what are the examples of companies that have done it before.

Looking forward to hear insightful responses.

[demonica]

2. Research investment opportunities carefully - it is really important that we have knowledge or information before we do something because this will be our key to success. There is no better weapons than knowledge.

Research is essential, especially when you are a newbie and uneducated because it will help you understand various things. Nowadays, there are plenty of fraudulent investment that takes advantage of people's unawareness. Thus, people should do background research to distinguish information that will guide them to find an opportunity to earn and be knowledgeable of the things that they need to consider.

[Upgrade00]

1. How do we know authenticity or credibility of an  ICO

Difficult to tell with certainty, a lot of ICOs out there are scams, so you'll have to be very careful when dealing with them, or avoid them outrightly. If you plan on investing in one;
Look out for originality of their project; try running a search on their white paper and road map to ensure it's not an imitation of another project.
Do background check on the team involved; look out for previous scam scandals and their ability to handle the project.
Understand that you are most likely to get scammed, so only invest what you can afford to lose.

2. Is ICO similar with the investment rounds called IPO?

Not technically, in an ICO, you buy utility coins of a project, which you can use to access their services, but in an IPO, you buy a share of a company and would profit from revenue generated by it. So basically in ICOs, you're a token holder, but in IPOs you're a shareholder.

3. Who are those that carry out ICO

The team/developers

4. Do crytocurrency companies allowed to go on an IPO? If yes, what are the examples of companies that have done it before.

Yes, they are called security tokens, their launch is called an STO (Security Token Offering) rather than an ICO. You can look it up for examples

[asianguy845]

there is a scam going around where they tell you to buy btc using some site (with their ref link), then convert to eth with another site (using their ref link) and then yet another site from eth to btc (using their ref link). they say you will profit from the transactions, but you don't, and you will lose some money from transaction fees, while he makes a small fortune because of the ref links. hope no one will fall for this scam

[Pmalek]

Snip

How do people think they will profit this way

Lets break it down.

You buy Bitcoin on site A. You pay a trading fee.
You withdraw the coins from site A and pay a withdrawal fee.
You deposit the coins on site B and exchange them for ETH. You pay trading fees again.
You withdraw ETH from site B and pay a withdrawal fee.
You deposit the coins on site C and exchange them for BTC and pay a trading fee.
After that you will probably withdraw them again and pay another withdrawal fee for sending them to your wallet.

1. Deposit
2. Trade
3. Withdraw
4. -
5. Profit

Bulletproof 
 

[nakamura12]

Well it's no longer a surprise for old bounty hunters. Many people know that it's not easy to find a legit bounty to join and get rewarded after joining and profit for investors. Many people use this scheme to scam people by pretending to be a legit team that have bounty created to foold investots with their fake token.