- With the rise of cryptocurrency, crypto is also increasing.
- To protect themselves from scams, users should be aware of ongoing scams and how to identify them.
Crypto is safe and secure, but there are still several methods through which scammers scam people. The only way to be safe from these types of scams is to be aware of how people are tricked. Let’s have a look at the 10 most common cryptocurrency scams in 2023!
Here are the most common types of scams in the crypto world:
1. Rug Pull
Rug-pull scams are the types of scams in which a particular crypto asset is hyped unnecessarily to gain investors’ attention and then disappears after taking investors’ assets. These types of scams are common when trading and investing.
2. Phishing Scams
Phishing scams are pretty common. In phishing scams, an email is sent to users to collect their data. Crypto phishing aims to collect information like crypto wallet details, user credentials, and crypto wallet information.
3. Investment Scams
Investment scams are related to scams that try to trick users by giving them unrealistic return offers. These offers and promises revolve around ‘making money quickly.’ One of the easiest ways to identify such scams is by their return rate and carefully examining the opportunity.
4. Ponzi Schemes
Ponzi schemes are hard to identify, as these scammers initially give payouts using investors’ money instead of making real profits. When an investor’s money isn’t sufficient, then these scammers disappear. Project Terra (LUNA) is a common example of a Ponzi scheme.
5. Celebrity Scams
Celebrity scams, or influencer scams, are types of scams in which celebrities are used to scam people. In most cases, stars don’t have any knowledge regarding the scam. It seems like a promotion by celebrities but that is just a scam to trick common people. Elon Musk’s deepfake video is the biggest crypto scam to date.
6. Attack by man-in-the-middle
In the attack by the man-in-the-middle scam, users’ details are accessed whenever they log in using the public palace. Later, this information is used by scammers for illegal purposes.
7. Social Media Scams
Like any other social media scam, users try to mimic popular brands and scam users through their schemes and benefits. Social platforms like Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are used to impersonate the brand.
8. AI crypto Scams
AI is used to scam people by providing various offers. Scammers are using AI bots to interact with users to make real offers seem like real ones. They have a variety of offers, such as fake tokens, fake initial coin offerings, and high-return opportunities.
In short, AI is making it hard to differentiate between real offers and fake ones.
9. Fake Job Listing Scams
A fake job listing scam is the same as a traditional job listing scam. Initially, scammers create a job listing related to AI, crypto, and similar fields; later, they ask to pay a certain amount before starting the job.
The simple way to detect such types of scams is to require a certain amount before starting a job. These types of scams are easier to detect.
10. Fake or anonymous Identities
Cryptocurrency is known for its decentralized nature and secure transactions. These types of transactions don’t need KYC or other similar identification; therefore, scammers sometimes use this as an advantage to scam common people.
Due to the same reason, most illegal transactions happen through this method.
Conclusion
Although cryptocurrency is considered the safest option for secure transactions, there are still multiple ways scammers use it to trick people. As scammers can’t alter the transaction details, they discovered a method to attract legit users by providing lucrative offers.
To identify such types of scams, users should be aware of the types of scams and how to identify them.