When something gets this popular and this sought out for, you can be sure that there will be a lot of bad people eyeballing this as well looking for their victims. New things that blow up this fast as Crypto has, and the thing that no one, in particular, understands fully will mean a lot of hassling and a lot of scamming going around it.
This is, unfortunately, what plagues the cryptocurrency market and holders as well. The scammers will not give up the opportunity to make some easy money doing this shady stuff especially when you have something like crypto that is still not all-clear to most of its holders and traders.
You have to be aware that a good chunk of crypto enthusiasts are jumping aboard the crypto train because they heard or they were suggested by someone. Most of those people only take the bare minimum info regarding this because this is all that they need to purchase crypto to store and keep or trade. This is where scammers see their chance to make a quick buck and hassle people just because.
There is plenty of info on the internet regarding this and you should also check that out just make sure you have proofed yourself from scammers. Also, if you are a new crypto holder or investor check out bmmagazine.co.uk and see what they can tell you. Now let’s see what the most popular scams are!
1. Social media
Source: trendmicro.com
Social media is a huge issue in almost anything, especially when it comes to crypto scams. Social media is a number one source for any sort of info on you that scammers can get. When crypto blew up and when everyone started tweeting, DM-ing about it scammers thought of a neat little idea. Why not hack a legit profile of someone with high influence in the society and make everyone around that profile believe in whatever that profile brings to the table. If you recall we had accounts from Elon Musk, and other huge personas are stolen/hacked and they were tweeting about investing in particular crypto that benefited no other than the scammers themselves. When hacking a big account like that becomes difficult, they hack some other blue check marked account slap a picture of someone popular, and simply rinse and repeat.
2. Crypto giveaways
Another popular means of duping you for your hard accumulated crypto or your hard-earned money is giveaways that are most visible in social media from Twitter to Facebook, Instagram and Telegram. Believe it or not just in 2024 more than 100,000 people from all over the world have been conned out of their money by doing these giveaways. Several ones circle but you can see them, most commonly, in a format “like follow and you can enter the crypto giveaway pool” or “invest little and create a chance to win a lot” type pool. There are also giveaways that state you will win if you share the post around bringing in friends and whatnot. As you can see with these things, the scammers don’t have to be that creative because people are generally easy to fool especially when you offer them a lot for a low price. Just imagine what would you do if I told you that you could earn $1,000 in a raffle-type game and you only need to pay $1 to enter?! Would you try it? I know I would because gambling and taking high chances are in our DNA.
3. DeFi Rug pull
Source: coingape.com
Yet another relatively obvious crypto scam that has become quite common. As decentralized platforms gain popularity with the aim of reinventing the traditional financial models, they are attracting scammers from all over the world. If you didn’t know already, DeFi models are providing people with the opportunity to stake their cryptocurrency into networks and then earn more through the interest. As the currency is locked in the network you as the owner will receive periodic payments from the interest. Now don’t get scared right away because most DeFi platforms are genuine and do create revenue for its investor, others on the other hand are built solely for scamming people. The way that this works is that your investment is locked in the network through a smart contract and after accumulating enough, scammers then steal the funds, or rug pull, without you even having the chance to recover your investment.
4. NFTs
Now you have all heard about this one for sure. It is somehow all the rage and receives the hype that is simply not understandable, at least to me. NFT or Non-Fungible Token are currently the biggest investment craze in the crypto market thanks to the high prices that they are commanding. What NFT essentially is, is a digital art that exists on a blockchain and can be transferred back and forth between different marketplaces. Although it seems, and it is easy, to duplicate the image/ video of the certain NFT, the specific code that points to the NFT’s location is a bit tougher cookie. This means that whoever holds the hashtag possesses the power, but scammers were not discouraged to make duplicates. This is why everyone is advised to go through legitimate websites that verify the hashtag code and use two-factor authentication.
5. Altcoin pump and dump
Source: beincrypto.com
This is probably the easiest crypto scam to fall victim to. Although everyone is warning everyone about these and there are numerous articles and eye-opening videos and testimonies, somehow there is always someone new that fell for this type of scam. These work exactly like penny stocks where they are usually cheap and have market caps small enough where their price can be greatly influenced or pumped. This is done again through social media and influencers who sell these pump and dump schemes like hotcakes. Their communities simply eat these up even though these influencers don’t have any background in crypto or trading. This is the world we are living in, sadly. They usually buy enough of these altcoins and start hyping it up and pumping its price high. Their followers invest heavily in these coins which in return raises the price of the coin and when enough investment, or when the desired price has been reached, these influencers dump these coins as fast as they can and draw away all the profit for themselves. If you need a good example of this sort of scam that was made public research the case of John McAfee the famous cyber security pioneer.
