Crypto Scams – How to Avoid and Detect The Scam
Cryptocurrency is very common nowadays and everyone especially the young one is very keen to invest this instrument.
What Is Cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrency is a virtual digital currency, no physical mean is transacted, it only works in virtual world.
If you send cryptocurrency to someone else, it is done through online transactions and it is not reversible.
Why do people nowadays like to use cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrency transaction is online and fast. It does not work like banking transaction whereby the bank charge a transaction fee and need to verify your authenticity of the fund and purpose of the transactions.
Crypto transaction offers anonymity and the value of cryptocurrency varies and moves very fast, hence it is a very attractive item for investment.
A lot of people like to enter cryptocurrency as investment as they think it is another get rich fast investment with lucrative return within a short time.
As more and more people are jumping into the bandwagon of cryptocurrency, without really understand how it works, they are only after the high return cryptocurrency can give to them, and thinking this is the investment to go to.
What does this tell us with this hot potato?
Every time when there is some lucrative instrument which can help people to make money fast, the vulture will sure lurk around to prey on its victim.
The vulture is the scammers here, they will find ways and means to lure unsuspecting victims to invest in the scheme they design.
Then the main question is – how do you know it is a cryptocurrency scam?
Scammers always look for new ways go for investors’ money, they can come up with so many methods and tricks to draw the investors to give up their money.
What are the signals you can detect in spotting the scams?
- If someone offer you some good investment opportunities and business deals.
- They even offer you to double your investment return and
- Achieving financial freedom you are looking for.
- That you can get you investment in double quick time.
- Telling you that you can pay in cryptocurrency if you can recruit others into their scheme.
- Offering you help that they can help you to grow your money.
- Asking you to login into certain trading platform.
- Once you have done that, you realize you are not able to withdraw your money without paying a fee.
- There are scammers who will post some scam jobs on job websites and they promise you a job if you pay a fee.
- Some scammers even have videos made saying how lucrative is the scheme they have.
- They even have celebrity to endorse their success and testimonials to show the track records.
- A lot of people do not realize all the videos and testimonials are fake.
What are the common scams in cryptocurrency?
- Phishing scams.
- ICO scams
- Malware scams
- Crypto mining scams
- Fake crypto exchanges scams
If you want to learn more about the common scams in cryptocurrency, you may want to read up this in https://mainstreetcrypto.com/articles/common-crypto-scams/. In here, it is more in-depth and informative.
What can you do if you think you have been scammed?
If you think you have been scammed, try to do the following as soon as possible.
- Make a police report
- Gather all the evidences.
- Document all the evidence in chronological orders.
You can also report to the following organizations:
- the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov
- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) at CFTC.gov/complaint
- the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) at sec.gov/tcr
for those who want to know which organizations are on the blacklists, you may want to check out the following:
https://authentic-review.com/2022/01/29/crypto-scam-list-2022-update/
https://tradersofcrypto.com/guides/crypto-scams/
Stay vigilant whenever you want to deal with cryptocurrency.
Some pointers for you to avoid falling into the scams
- Always check the addresses and domains of the site you are surfing.
- Never share your private information with any one else.
- Be wary of easy money and fast returns on investment.
- High risk high return, so do you believe it is good?
- If you are in cryptocurrency, use a cold wallet.
- Always use a new account to test out something new.
- Leave as little in the wallets.
- Use a 2FA verification method to login to your account.
- Always check the rating of a platform.
- Carry out due diligence before you embark on your cryptocurrency trading.
Conclusion
Do you still want to invest in cryptocurrency?
Despite all these reports about scams involving cryptocurrency, still we have a lot of people diving into this, this is typical human greed.
A greed to have more money in the shortest time possible and at all cost.
Some people have the mindset that this will not happen to them, and maybe they need to pay some school fees to learn a hard lesson.
At the end of the day, unless and until the government start regulating the cryptocurrency transactions, and unless you have done enough researches and learn more about the mechanism of cryptocurrency transaction.
Final Advice
The simple advice is to stay out of it.
