Scams are SURGING in #crypto land!

10+ Scams that collectively lost people $billions.

Please share so no one falls for these,

1/ Thread

2/ Impersonators/Airdrops.

In the below cases, verified accounts have been hacked and 'rebranded' to impersonate popular personalities/projects.

On first glance, it seems legit. What's off?

- The handle,
- Airdrop promotions,
- Spelling, (lol),
- Account comment/engagement

3/ DM's on Discord, Telegram, etc by Admins, Projects leads, 'friends', influencers, etc.

The below is a Pranksy & DCLBlogger impersonator asking for 'help'.

Devil got scammed 10ETH, HP was safe. But either way, a VERY common scam on social apps.

4/ Paid Ads scams, (Google).

Google ads allow anyone to bypass rankings and appear #1 in search results.

In the below, many DeFi projects have paid ads phishing for user passkeys. https://twitter.com/DeFi_Dad/status/1348007800811778049

5/ MLM Pyramid Scheme/ Ponzi's.

Sadly, these appeal to many newbies. Park your money and get a % return every day. How easy?

Bitconnect was one of these, investigated, lead arrested, etc.

Went from $300 to $8 within a day.

If anything promises x% daily returns, probably ponzi

6/ Fake NFT sellers.

Probably will see a lot of this, people ripping other Art or NFTs, getting a BS verified check somehow and selling them.

Pranksy got scammed 3.6 ETH. But this has happened to MANY people on Rarible. https://twitter.com/pranksyNFT/status/1311218452363964417

7/ Getting your account on a #crypto exchange hacked,

This poor guy had his account hacked.

Sim swapped & email hacked so they had his phone number to verify 2FA & confirm transaction via email.

2FA via mobile phone number is a security risk.

8/ YouTube channels hacked and 'giveaways' streamed,

This happens a little too often.

Popular YouTube accounts hacked and some sort of BS giveaway streamed. Seems to have the same set up for now, but mane new ones will come.

9/ 'Airdrops'.

99% are scams or attempts to get you to provide your keys. Especially on Telegram.

In this case, an account attempting to be Uniswap and promising another Airdrop.

Also has a ton of likes and appears 3rd on Twitter search.

10/ DeFi Rug pulls.

There's been SO many of these in 2020.

A new possible 10x but only to take all staked money and run. Most are run by anon founders.

Anything DeFi related and anon, I don't touch. If they're anon, they have nothing to lose. Red flag.

11/ NFT or ICO projects that raise $ and do nothing.

Crypto Celebrities raised $10M+ selling images of famous people as NFTs lol.

Playing off the CryptoKitties hype where 'everything can be an NFT!'.

IP's matter, unless you have the rights, you're going to get shut down.

12/ Ledger Database Hack,

One of a few hardware wallets where you can access your wallet without entering passkeys online.

Secure. BUT all customer details were recently dumped on a forum. So now people are getting 'firmware update' emails/message links

https://twitter.com/Ledger/status/1340769565639233536

13/ Exchange Hacks.

Actual Exchanges getting their wallets hacked & funds stolen.

Most notable was Mt Gox. 850,000 BTC stolen! People lost a ton of $.

Hacks still happen. Kucoin & Binance to a smaller degree in 2019-2020.

Why some people don't keep their crypto on exchanges

14/ Above are just some of the MANY scams out there.

As tech innovates and people transact $ freely on the internet, scammers also innovate.

Doubt and verify everything. Double, triple check. Crypto is brutal and there's no way to be 'refunded. Once it's gone, it's gone.

15/ I've covered this on YouTube if you want a deeper dive