What do you think causes crypto scam, a Blockchain bug or some personal vendetta ?
The fall of ftx, Luna and some other market rundown has thought some people a lot to never trust crypto but where these actually a fault from the blockchain or the people's vendetta ?
As with any new technology, those who are knowledge will always want to take advantage of those of are not vast in it. Crypto scams are something that we have started seeing as a market feature, but it is not. Most people fall for crypto scams because of their greed, they fail to do research, they neglect due diligence, every crypto scam can be traced to one of these things.
So how can you avoid crypto scams in general?
1. Use hardware / cold wallets.
There is this famous saying in Blockchain, not your keys, not your crypto, if you don't hold the private keys to a wallet, the centralized exchange can at anytime crumble and go away with your funds. It is best to use cold storage for large funds you are not ready to use in the long run.
2. Use multi-factor authentication.
Your wallet is as secured as your weakest link to that wallet. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
3. Don’t Ape into influencer tokens without DYOR.
The honest truth about this is that most influencers promote tokens so they can use their followers as exist liquidity, they will tell you when to ape in but won't tell you when they leave the token.
4. Keep a close eye on website URLs to prevent fake website scams.
This is now very prevalent, even on social media handles, most of them are being cloned, you can report a social media handle but you can't report a website so be careful.
5. Make sure your crypto wallet is secure and don’t save your seed phrase on a device that is connected to the internet.
Your seed phrase should not see the light of the internet anywhere, once it does, consider that wallet as compromised, an influencer mistakenly revealed his private key and in less than 3mins $50k was wiped from his account.
6. Only download apps from official platforms. Be very careful of where you download apks, some are malicious, aside crypto related apps, some apps are programmed to change wallet addresses, be very mindful of this.
7. Use @DeDotFi’s scanner
spotting red flags in a tokens contract distribution and more has never been easier than with dedotfi. It easily scan several chains and bring out the red flags and percentage trust score.
8. Use @bubblemapsto spot token distribution red flags. Most of the rugpulls can be spotted insult you understand tokenomics and how much a a token a wallet should possess
9. Don’t accept “free” money or crypto from strange sites
As crazy as it may sound, there is not free money in Crypto, if it is free, you are the product, airdrops reward you for doing some particular activities.
10. Don’t use your main wallet to interact with multiple DApps when trading.
This is the reason why you should have multiple burner wallet, this type of wallet should contain very little funds and be used to interact with Dapps or smartcontracts you don't trust.
A personal experience with scams
I got a a DM from a project saying I won $500 and I could only collect it from their app (never entered any giveaway btw).
I decided to play along.
The app was a setup, and the funds were there in it but it required me to connect my wallet which would compromise my seedphrase.
For this reasons, they refused to transfer the funds to me.
Also, don’t play any crypto related game that requires you to install a software on your computer, especially if they DM’d you and promised rewards.
If it looks too good to be true then it is not true, nobody is Santa Claus in Crypto. Don't expect random free money.
Until next time, stay SAFU
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