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The Rise Of Crypto Scams: How To Spot And Avoid Them?

By Stephen Carter

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The Rise Of Crypto Scams How To Spot And Avoid Them

The current growth that the crypto market is undergoing is enormous and breathtaking. Crypot influence has reached all realms and the further developments seem to be unpredictable.

More people have adopted cryptocurrency and global users have increased, many other platforms that previously operated related to games, music, and more have transformed into decentralized platforms with their own utility tokens. 

What happens when something yields higher popularity in society? Its demand will increase meaning more people will be focusing on it. That’s the case with crypto as well.

With more demand and interest in crypto, the opportunities in crypto also increase. This will lead to an increased number of attempts to deceive people through various crypto scams and forgery. 

How To Spot And Avoid Crypto Scams?

Now we are about to start discussing exclusively crypto scams. Here we have added the common crypot scams. More bad acts are reported to be in the market. However, there seems to be a common pattern that they adopt while trying to trick people and steal their money.

When you have a basic knowledge of the different outlooks that the crypto scams may have and the different loopholes in the industry that allow these illicit actors to function, you can easily avoid falling victim to the crypto scam. 

You all already know that crypto is highly volatile, and the amount that you invest into a crypto project – let it be any amount and let it be any crypto project – has high loss chances. You can not really predict whether you will lose your money.

However, all you can do is research thoroughly about a certain crypto before you invest in it and be alert about the latest trends in the specific platform and the crypto as a whole. Some of the major crypto scams are pump-and-dump schemes, giveaway scams, crypto phishing scams, fraudulent websites, and fake apps. Let us start by looking at the ways by which you can spot a crypto scam. 

How To Spot Crypto Scams?

  • Poor Whitepaper

A whitepaper of the crypto can be said as the most important factor and the soul of the crypto. You should thoroughly go through the white paper before you make an assessment of the crypto.

Note that the white paper should be easy to access and easy to read through. If you can not find the white paper of the crypto anywhere, and if the official website has a link to the white paper but you end up getting redirected to something else, the probably crypto is a scam.

Also, even if you easily find the whitepaper, it should be a perfect one. If there are excessive spelling and grammatical errors in the white paper and if it seems like a poorly made one or made in a rush one, then it is probably a crypto scam. 

  • Overhyped Marketing Using Promotional Marketing 

Note that crypto projects do not use excessive marketing. If you feel that the marketing of crypto is overhyped, then you need to be more careful. Crypot projects do not use promotional terms, phrases, and methods in the market.

Remember that, you are not buying a gadget or wellness product, but rather a cryptocurrency. Using promotional methods to spread the news of the launch is very unlikely for crypto projects. 

  • Offering Lots of Free Money

If a new crypt project is offering you loads of free money, then do not take interest in it. No cryptos offers you a huge amount of free money. Also, no crypto projects offer you free crypto coins even before you join them. There may be pre-sales or initial coin offerings where you can buy the crypto for a discounted price. 

How To Avoid Crypto Scams?

How To Avoid Crypto Scams
  • Do Not Rush to Make Investments

You should always take your time to make an investment. Take all the necessary time that you require to learn and educate yourself about a crypto project, its native token, multiple utilities of the token, and more before you decide whether you want to make an investment in that particular crypto. 

  • Ensure the Safety of Your Wallet

When you invest in cryptocurrency, it is advised that you save your crypto to an external safe wallet rather than strung it directly on the exchange platform.

This is suggested because the crypto in your wallet can withstand any theft or hack that the cryptocurrency exchange platform may have to suffer. Often, hackers target crypto exchanges and there have been instances before huge amounts of crypto got stolen.

You should make sure that your private keys that grant access to the crypto are safe. Also, you should not be sharing it with anyone and it should be kept extremely confidential.

Note that anyone who has access to your pirate keys and access your wallet and your hard-earned crypto inside the wallet. 

  • Do Not Consider Cold Calls

If you get a random call claiming to be from a crypto project asking you to invest, ignore the call. Know that, a crypto project will not call you directly and persuade you to make the investments.

Also, no one calls you from a verified crypto project directly approaches you to provide you with an orientation about the project. So, if you receive any such calls, make sure that you do not do what they tell you to do. 

  • Verify the Legitimacy of the App Before Downloading them

When you see a crypto app, you have to be very careful before you download it. There are reports of an increased number of fake apps being present in the market. Downloading fake apps can lead to further consequences. Note that, no crypto project will send you direct messages or emails with the link to the app asking you to download them. 

Are More Users Falling Prey to Crypto Scams?

Yes, as per the latest data and records, more users seem to be falling into crypto scams. The reason is noted as the lack of awareness and knowledge of the crypto realm. New users are the ones that get most scammed by the bad actors in the industry.

With the advent of a lot more communities in crypto investments, whether it be small or big, the number of crypto scams has also increased. Some fake crypto websites have a poor outlook and can be identified at first glance whereas some others are well-designed and hard to identify. 

The Bottom Line

The reason for the rise of crypto scams can be attributed to the widespread crypto adoption. If you are new to the crypto realm, you need to be extremely conscious when you are to make crypto investments.

You can use the above methods to identify crypt scams and also to avoid them. However, in this article, we only mentioned the common crypto scams, and the most used ways to spot them note that, along with the growth of the crypto industry, the scams may also increase, and scammers are coming up with new ideas every day to deceive you. We suggest you make informed decisions when it comes to crypto, and if you feel suspicious about any project, do not take the risk of proceeding to invest in it without further research. 

Stephen Carter

Stephen Carter is a software technology expert. He writes about market research on various hot topics like cryptocurrencies, explaining how they started. He's good at making complicated tech ideas easy to understand for everyone.

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