[Beginners Gudie for Crypto Scams]

[aysg76]

I am creating this thread to spread some awareness among the newbies related to crypto scams which are becoming very popular these days.Scammers and hackers are fooling people to get their funds in different ways and people who have no knowledge of crypto market ends up losing thier money to them easily.

Table Of Contents:

1.What is cryptocurrency scam
2.Types of crypto scams
3. Some crypto scams in history
4. Tips to avoid them

What is Cryptocurrency Scam

As it is clear from the name "scam" that something is phisshy is going around.Whenever a hacker or scammer ask users to deposit money on fake address or if people get hacked and they lost their money to fake sites or persons it is called scam.For example: You saw an advertisement claiming that you can double your coins and when you click on the link and deposit the funds over there you cannot trace them and you just became a victim of crypto scam.These types of scams are similar to normal ones in fiat but only thing is that it's tricky to judge crypto scams as they are more technical and people have less knowledge of them so they lost their funds.These types of things contribute to such scams

Watch out for anyone who:

-guarantees that you’ll make money
-promises big payouts that will double your money in a short time
-promises free money in dollars or cryptocurrency
-makes claims about their company that are not clear

Types of Crypto Scams

With growing crypto market and btc and other altcoins becoming popular the number of scams are aslo arising day by day due to profits associated with them.Hackers are finding new ways to fool people and get funds from them without their knowledge.Here we will discuss some of them briefly.Some of the scams are mentioned below:

(1)Social Media Scam

They are one of the new scams which are becoming popular these days and under this scam hackers gained access of twitter backend to hack the Twitter accounts of celebrities to and then ask for crypto donations from people to a fake address.They also tweets like "double your coins" and people who are greedy and have no knowledge of this sends funds to them which cannot be recover afterwards.

(2)Cryptojacking

Cryptojacking is when scammers use your computer or smartphone’s processing power to “mine” cryptocurrency for their own benefit, and without your permission. Scammers can put malicious code onto your device simply by your visiting a website. Then they can help themselves to your device’s processor without you knowing.
If you notice that your device is slower than usual, burns through battery power quickly, or crashes, your device might have been cryptojacked.

(3)Mining Scams

Cloud mining allows regular investors without expensive hardware to mine cryptocurrencies. There are many fake pools who will just promise high returns and in the end you will not get any return in the end and get scammed easily.The only one profiting from this will be miners not you.You rent your server space at fixed rate but you will not get any interest over them if it is fake so choose wisely.

(4)Fake crypto Exchanges

Another major types of scam in which many users fall unintentionally is presence of fake crypto exchanges which deposit users funds on thier own address and when the user base increases and they have huge funds they just vanish.Back in 2017, a South Korean fake exchange was operating under the name of BitKRK. While it looked legit and presented itself as a part of the crypto trading community, it swindled investors and buyers out of millions of dollars before it was intercepted by the South Korean financial authorities.

(5)Ponzi Schemes

Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investing scam promising high rates of return with little risk to investors. A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investing scam which generates returns for earlier investors with money taken from later investors. This is similar to a pyramid scheme in that both are based on using new investors' funds to pay the earlier backers.The hackers never invest their money and people loose funds at rapid pace and when the customer grows and they can't cope up they collapse and scams are open to the public.These types of ponzi schemes have become very common in crypto world and you need to avoid such schemes.

Some crypto Scams in history

1) OneCoin:To start it off it was never a cryptocurrency (means it got no blockchain) however for years to this day it is promoted as a cryptocurrency with great success. According to unofficial sources they’ve scammed more than $19.4b out of OneCoin users. Official sources are talking about $4.9b, however, the officials are working with leaked papers that have the data from 2014 to 2017, not including the boom in 2018 and 2019.




2)Bitconnect:Everyone in crypto space knows Bitconnect. When you think of a cryptocurrency scam you instantly think of a Bitconnect. It was released in 2016 as a so-called lending platform a proper Ponzi-scheme. During the time it runs, it was promoted by huge YouTubers that were earning money through ref links. CryptoNick, Trevon James, and Craig Grant were actively promoting it. They scammed around $3M combined from their communities.



3)Pincoin and iFan:Pincoin and iFan where tho ICOs run by the same company Modern Tech. The companies were offering 48% of a profit for investors just after a month and full investment recovery after 4 months. Modern Tech was accused by several reports as being a Ponzi scheme. The founders were able to steal as much as $660M. There were many protests organized by the victims of a scam outside of their office in Vietnam.

How to avoid them

1) Never give anyone remote access to your machine. This effectively gives the scammer full access to your computer, online financial accounts, and digital life.

2)Do not reveal your 2FA security codes or password to someone in any respect.

3)Do not fall for screenshot, phisshy email asking you to deposit funds over a particular address in order to double your coins immediately (which is definitely a scam) as there is no legit site for this work.

4)Do a proper research before investing, about the exchange,ICO and check for grammatical errors in the links like fake sites don't have https or SSL certificate so have a look for it.

5) Don't be greedy in this digital and decentralised market because it will lead you to loss of funds directly.

6)Become experience and have knowledge of the market before investing blindly in any of the project.


Note: The intention of this thread is to compile the common types of crypto scams at one place for the beginners to read. Some part of the text has been directly copied from various online articles, the source for the same has been presented below:

https://www.livemint.com/technology/tech-news/crypto-scams-are-on-the-rise-5-ways-to-avoid-them-11588775510857.html
https://hackernoon.com/biggest-cryptocurrency-scams-whats-the-damage-4c9u32ri
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-know-about-cryptocurrency
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/ponzischeme.asp

[qwertyup23]

I remember back in 2017, I was new to the cryptocurrency world and the forum. Fortunately, I was able to earn at least a few bitcoins from all the campaign signatures that I have participated in the past and I was looking for ways to earn as much.

A good friend of mine invited me to a conference of USI-TECH in our country as it was their anniversary. I was able to meet lots of people who have invested thousands of dollars into purchasing their so called 'packages'. Unfortunately, I got convinced and I deposited 0.01955 BTC (roughly around $100-$120 at that time) to their website which all came from my signature campaign earnings.

After a few months, their website crashed and all of the money that I have invested into the project were gone. This fuelled my anger and this motivated me to be very active into spotting fake projects across the forum.

[tbct_mt2]

One coin is very famous in 2017 but one year after (in 2018), with bear market and police actions, the CEO of Onecoin was arrested. Many branches were shut down by local governments.

Welcome to Collection of comprehensive guides on identify and avoid scam projects

[Charles-Tim]

The above article truly revealed some ways someone can be scammed, or his/her computer be hacked, and the OP really tried. But there are few other scam and hack tactics not yet mentioned.

1. There are some people that have been scammed through airdrops, in the process before having access to the airdrop, victims will be told to pay VIP fee in order to have access to the promised airdrop coin, but if the VIP fee is paid, no airdrop coin will be released, which results to scam.

2. Cryptojacking is when hackers uses someone's device to mine, like mining Monero which is ASIC resistant. But this is just one of the many malware that can be used to hack into devices, cryptojacking are bots/botnets. There are others like Rootkit, Trojan horse and Worms that are very dangerous, together with some modified ones called Spyware which can be used to steal sensitive information from someone's device, like revealing 2fa. That is why it is not advisable to store seed phrase, private key, password and other sensitive information on device, but rather on offline on paper. There was a time a certain type of Trojan revealing 2fa, although not common, but it can happen.

3. There are fake exchanges, but including fake wallets will be good. There are many fake wallets, hundreds of them have been reported on google playstore while many are still been created, and also later reported. There are some exchanges that we also need to be careful of, such exchanges will list shitcoins and promise people high yield return if they are invested, but the investor will invest and yet lose because the coins are shitcoins.

4. There is one called recovery service providers. Like in cases someone is scammed, he can come across service like recovery service, they will promise the person to pay certain amount, that the coins which is lost will be recovered, but the money will be collect, and nothing will be done. People need to avoid recovery service providers, 99.99% are fake.

5. There is another one called pump and dump scam, a coin will be invested on by the brain behind the coin, in the process, some other people will also invest on the coin, this will make the price to increase, but later dumped by the brain behind and result to dump, while investors that invested later will all lose.

6. You really need to mention phishing scam, that is why it is said that kyc is extremely dangerous, like during applying for airdrop, on exchanges data leak and many other ways like ledger data leak. The information stolen by hackers can be used in a phishing attempt through email, call or text messages in order to scam people, while some novice will fall being victims.

7. Another type of scam is hijacking a domain, you can use legit site today, but taken control by hackers, it can be less than a day, but during the time, because some people already trust the site, the hackers will demand users to input their seed phrase, and use it to steal from the people. Many people could have inputted their seed phrase before knowing it is as a result of hack. Although, the domain will later be taken over back by the legit owner, but many peoe would have been scammed.

[lovesmayfamilis]

I am creating this thread to spread some awareness among the newbies related to crypto scams which are becoming very popular these days.Scammers and hackers are fooling people to get their funds in different ways and people who have no knowledge of crypto market ends up losing thier money to them easily.

First, I want to warn the OP that I appreciate your efforts, but the rules of the forum say that copy and paste, that is, plagiarism, is threatened with a permanent ban. Today I just advise you to add the links where the quotes for your post came from. But if one day a plagiarism search bot walks through the forum, as happened in 2019, your account will be blocked. Don't neglect links.







A lot of copied material
https://web.archive.org/web/20210404140207/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5328362.msg56708306
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After a few months, their website crashed and all of the money that I have invested into the project were gone. This fuelled my anger and this motivated me to be very active into spotting fake projects across the forum.

I followed the same path, after a very large number of scam projects that were not paid to bounty hunters, I had a desire to learn how to figure out how to expose scams.
But we all know that there are scammers and will be as long as they have victims. This is a cycle. Some people think that you can get rich in a short time, and some scammers teach such lessons.
Greed and thirst for profit sometimes overshadow the human mind. People begin to believe that someone can give them a large amount. Always ask yourself the question, why would someone give something that does not bother him? Why would anyone give out money if it’s not charity? In order not to be a victim, you need to learn the rule that nothing is free.

[aysg76]

I am creating this thread to spread some awareness among the newbies related to crypto scams which are becoming very popular these days.Scammers and hackers are fooling people to get their funds in different ways and people who have no knowledge of crypto market ends up losing thier money to them easily.

First, I want to warn the OP that I appreciate your efforts, but the rules of the forum say that copy and paste, that is, plagiarism, is threatened with a permanent ban. Today I just advise you to add the links where the quotes for your post came from. But if one day a plagiarism search bot walks through the forum, as happened in 2019, your account will be blocked. Don't neglect links.
-snip-

Thanks for the warning lovermayfamilis. It was foolish on my part to not mention the source of the content. The main intention of this thread is to compile the common type of scams in Crypto world at one place. I appreciate the replies of Charles-Tim, qwertyup23 and others who added to the cause. I have now added the sources of the major articles from where I have taken the content as it is for this guide in OP.

[Maus0728]

(3)Mining Scams

Cloud mining allows regular investors without expensive hardware to mine cryptocurrencies. There are many fake pools who will just promise high returns and in the end you will not get any return in the end and get scammed easily.The only one profiting from this will be miners not you.You rent your server space at fixed rate but you will not get any interest over them if it is fake so choose wisely.

Speaking of Mining scam  ? Well, surprise! Up until now, there are people who are still for falling for this kind of trap, much worse, they are also inviting other people on the social media that will eventually brick their hardware devices.

[seoincorporation]

6 Fake casino scams

A couple of years ago i got scammed on a fake casino, and I think this kind of scam should go to this list... Let me explain how it works.

I see a publication on this forum where a casino offers 0.01btc to test the casino, so I created my account and start playing, after 2 bets i win a huge amount of BTC, something like 3btc. And when I try to withdraw them, they ask me to make a depo to verify my account.

What I will never forget was the sensation, in my mind I was thinking, risk a 0.005 depo to withdraw 3btc worth it. And you can imagine what happened after that... So, I started a thread on the forum to report this kind of scam and at least that helped a lot of users here, here is the link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5081286.0

[DdmrDdmr]

<...>

I recall vaguely experiencing something similar during my first few days on crypto:
Not sure if it was a meant to be a full-fledged casino, or something less pretentious, but the principle was the same: play some kind of slot machine game, make a few quick (pretend) wins, accumulate a bit, and then, when you want to withdraw, you are required to forward some of your real satoshis in order to proceed. It sounded fishy, and although by then I was nowhere near my current sense of awareness for scams of any and every type, I had the minimum caution to pullback. I did fall for worse cases later on ... ICOs ...

[Zilon]

one has to be careful with their wallets and how the login to different devices with their details. Scammers are increasing in number and with this outbreak it would be advised that we all guide our details with caution. For me Authenticators would also go along way to safe guard wallets and it's contents. Transferring your funds to scammers who come with different formats to deprive you of your coin would be a very wrong approach to double or multiply your coin. Instead hodl your coin and apply patience to it you will smile at the long run.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

After a few months, their website crashed and all of the money that I have invested into the project were gone. This fuelled my anger and this motivated me to be very active into spotting fake projects across the forum.

You just took me back memory lane, I was a victim of this scam too. It was also my early days in the crypto industry and just like most newbie I was eager to multiple my btc. Unfortunately while some withdraw their profits I was stranded as I couldn't withdraw due to me not having the minimum withdrawal amount.

I had to deposit more funds but unfortunately it was when the website started experiencing some difficulties and finally it crashed. Sometimes I just imagine if I had held unto to those bitcoin until now that it seems like, nothing is stopping the price appreciation of bitcoin at the moment.

But guess what some random altcoins would had still taken the data from me and given me $$$ (lol).