Cybersecurity & IT Blog

The cryptocurrency market cap has literally gone from 0 Dollars to close to 3 Trillion Dollars since Bitcoin was launched in 2009. With such success in its adoption, the crypto field has attracted scammers willing to do anything to steal money from you.

It’s very easy to fall for a crypto scam because most cryptocurrency projects are run by an anonymous team. This never raised a lot of questions with crypto traders because anonymity is one of the core pillars of cryptocurrencies. Some legit and successful projects have been launched in anonymity, including Bitcoin. But not all anonymous founders have the same goal as Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. Unfortunately, most crypto founders stay anonymous because it’s easier for them to scam without facing any legal actions from their victims.

Also, Decentralized Exchanges (DEX) like Uniswap and PancakeSwap have made it easier for anyone to trade a scam token. DEXs are crypto exchanges where anyone can list their tokens on there. All they have to do it’s to provide initial liquidity, promote their fake token on social media, and wait for potential victims.

Here are some common crypto scams you could come across and to avoid them:

Phishing Scams

Phishing Scams: This is a type of scam where scammers send fake emails or messages that appear to be from a legitimate cryptocurrency exchange or wallet service, in order to trick people into giving up their login credentials, private keys, or other sensitive information.

Do To: First of all, Metamask is a crypto wallet. Because of how they work, no one can ever suspend your crypto wallet. Your crypto is accessible by only you or whoever has your seed phrase. A seed phrase is a series of 12 or 24 random words that provides the data needed to recover a lost or broken crypto wallet. You can obtain that seed only when you create a crypto wallet.

Next, when you receive a suspicious email, it’s always good to double-check the sender’s email address. Usually, their email will have nothing to do with the company they pretend to be coming from. Below is the sender’s email who sent me the above email. It’s funny to find out that they are from meta@anpdm.com🤣 Definitely fishy!

Also, the email sender has never signed their names at the end of the email, which is not professional at all.

So never click on a suspicious email.❗️

Pump and Dump Schemes

Pump and Dump Schemes: This is a type of investment fraud where scammers promote a low-value cryptocurrency to artificially inflate its price. Once the price reaches a certain level, the scammers sell off their own holdings, causing the price to crash and leaving other investors with losses.

To Do: Always be suspicious of tokens that are promoted on social media. There is a high chance that tokens that need promotion to attract buyers are no good. A good project usually talks for itself by delivering good results. For example, Bitcoin did need an enormous marketing promotion to be adopted by so many.

Do your own research (DYOR) and beat social influencers in their own game. You can research and find potential projects even before they become popular on social media. This way, you are only relying on influencers to find cryptocurrency to buy, but you are also benefiting from their influence on social media if you already hold the same tokens they promoting. Keep in mind that not all tokens that are promoted are scams. Promotions can be used to pump the price and dump it for profit.

Fake customer service agents from social media

It’s can be very hard to find customer support assistance in the crypto space. Most crypto projects handle customer support through email where you usually open a ticket for your case. Replies can take up to 2 or 3 business days, even weeks. When dealing with issues, it’s that people couldn’t afford this long.

One way for reaching crypto projects in the hope of a quick response is via their social media profile. Unfortunately, scammers lurk there and would wait to reply to anybody that seems in distress.

They will act as a customer service agent and ask you for private information like your wallet key or lead you to visit suspicious sites or Apps.

I have personally been scammed and lost more than $1000 when I was trying to find help on Twitter. You can the whole story here and see how that happened.

To Do: Never share information with anyone suspicious from social media. Even if it can take longer to reply, stick to whatever method the customer service you are trying to reach is using as a channel to submit a case. You can submit multiple case numbers with the same issue in the hope to double your chance for replies.

Look for other options like talking to a customer service agent via telephone if available.

Definitely, avoid looking for help on Twitter. In my own experience, Twitter has also been a platform favored by crypto scammers.

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