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Top 5 Crypto Scams to Avoid in 2023

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NFT Scams: How to Avoid them and Keep SAFE!

News

Bad actors caused over $7.7 billion in losses from cryptocurrency scams in 2021, an 81% increase from 2020, according to a new report from blockchain insights company Chainalysis.



Chainalysis <a href="https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-crypto-scam-revenues/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">explains</a> that the decrease from two years ago was largely due to the relative absence of crypto ponzi schemes last year, and the reemergence of them this year.



In particular, Chainalysis makes note of the notorious Finiko scheme that originated in Russia, which stole over $1.1 billion from investors primarily in Eastern Europe.



The other main contributor to the surge in scams, according to Chainalysis, are rug pulls, or when a crypto project raises money and then disappears with investor funds before actually delivering on anything. As many in the space already know, rug pulls are mostly commonly seen in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector of crypto.



“Rug pulls are prevalent in DeFi because with the right technical know-how, it’s cheap and easy to create new tokens on the Ethereum blockchain or others and get them listed on decentralized exchanges (DEXes) without a code audit.



That last point is crucial — decentralized tokens are meant to be designed in such a way that investors holding governance tokens can vote on things like how assets in the liquidity pool are used, which would make it impossible for the developers to drain the pool’s funds.”



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter"><img src="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2021/12/2_chart-8-top-rug-pulls-1024x848.png" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><a href="https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-crypto-scam-revenues/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chainalysis</a></figcaption></figure>



According to Chainalysis data, the biggest rug pull of 2021 — by far — was Thodex, a Turkish crypto exchange whose founder went missing with over $2 billion in investor funds. Faruk Fatih Ozer, the exchange’s CEO, has reportedly fled Turkey and has yet to be found nearly 8 months later.



An honorable mention was AnubisDAO, a project which claimed to provide a free-floating currency backed by a basket of assets. With no working product or public team members, the project managed to raise nearly $60 million in funds using a stylish dog-themed logo. All the funds, held in Wrapped Ethereum (wETH), vanished from the prohect’s liquidty pool and was sent to various addresses.



“It’ll be difficult for DeFi’s growth to continue if potential new users don’t feel they can trust new projects, so it’s important that trusted information sources in cryptocurrency — whether they’re influencers, media outlets, or project participants — help new users understand how to spot shady projects to avoid.”

Rug Pulls Took Over 7.7 Billion From Crypto Invest

RugPullsTookOver7.7BillionFromCryptoInvestorsThisY

Scams and Rug Pulls Took Over $7.7 Billion From Crypto Investors This Year

Analysis

For months now Twitter has been under fire for allowing cryptocurrency scams to flourish on its platform.Even though the company has admitted its aware of the problem, and has claimed to be working on a fix, nothing has changed and scams continue to proliferate, making us wonder if Twitter is even capable of stopping the cryptocurrency scams.Surely there must be some programmatic checks that can be put in place to at least minimize the damage being done by bad actors on the Twitter platform.<h2>Where it all Began</h2>It’s difficult to say where it all began, because for as long as I can remember there have been cryptocurrency scams floating around on crypto-Twitter.In the past many of these were of the <a href="https://{MIGRATED_DOMAIN}/analysis/pump-dump-scams-crypto-traders-look/">pump and dump type</a>, where a small alt-coin was promoted heavily by a group just to pump up the price of that coin so it could be sold by the scammers, or dumped, for a nice quick profit.The most recent example of this was taken to a new level after hackers took control of John McAfee’s Twitter account in December 2017 and tweeted about a “<a href="https://{MIGRATED_DOMAIN}/analysis/john-mcafee-twitter-coins/">coin of the day</a>”. He was able to quickly regain control of the account, which has the handle @officialmcafee, and tweeted this:<div class="raw-html-embed"><twitter tweetid="946154726307127298"></twitter></div>Later he wrote to his hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers:<div class="raw-html-embed"><twitter tweetid="967446341621338113"></twitter></div><h2>Beware The Giveaway</h2>The McAfee giveaway scam must have been quite successful, because a month later scammers were at it again with a giveaway scam, but this time with a faked Charlie Lee account.Charlie Lee is the creator of Litecoin, and is known to be very active on Twitter. In late January 2018 scammers began creating fake accounts with handles similar to the real @SatoshiLite handle used by Lee. For example, one tweet looked like this:<blockquote>“I am donating 180 Litecoin to the LTC community. First 60 transactions with 0.3 LTC sent to the address below will each receive 3 LTC to the address the 0.3 LTC came from LKGMCZZxp4hSCkwDQCuefBiwh93diTKt2z Don't miss out. Claim your LTC now! — Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLitez)”</blockquote>Note the extra “z” at the end of the Twitter handle.While experienced cryptocurrency enthusiasts and Twitter users would notice the difference, many novice users would easily be tricked. And the scammers got their message spread far and wide quickly by replying to any tweets or comments made by Charlie Lee himself, making it look even more like the giveaway was authentic.And if that wasn’t enough, a new month saw a new scam as imposters began targeting Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, in February 2018.Early in February the real Buterin had tweeted satirically that if users sent him 0.1 ETH, he would send them nothing, “because I am too lazy.” Scammers, posing as @VitalikButter or @VitalikButerjm, took advantage of his tweet by replying to it with tweets continuing to ask for small amounts of Ether.<blockquote>But if you send me 0.2 ETH, I will send 2 ETH back to your address, because I can. My address: 0xCDDd354cd8550c5E30eaB2d63cDC48156a344f0A Beware of fakes!#eth #ethereum #airdrop #donation pic.twitter.com/PiHzc3xUl4 — Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerjm) February 8, 2018</blockquote>While all the above mentioned <a href="https://{MIGRATED_DOMAIN}/news/twitter-scams-photoshop-creative-ways-online-fraudsters/">scammer accounts</a> have since been suspended, there are new ones being created all the time, and Twitter seems to be unable to keep up with the onslaught. Other crypto-celebrities have also been targeted, as have cryptocurrency wallets, exchanges, and altcoin projects.<h2>Evolution of Twitter Scams</h2>Of course as the community becomes increasingly aware of scams, the scammers become increasingly resourceful and tricky. The latest round of scams has seen scammers taking over “Verified” Twitter accounts and using these to establish trust.<figure class="image"><img src="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2018/06/twitterVerificationCheck.jpg" alt="Verified Twitter Accounts"><figcaption>Verified Twitter Accounts</figcaption></figure>The Verified accounts are those with a blue checkmark, and while this blue checkmark is only intended to verify identity, it has become a badge of trust on Twitter. Only it isn’t, because verified accounts have been traded, sold, and yes hacked.Worst of all is that a verified account can change its name and handle, which is exactly what happened to the <a href="https://{MIGRATED_DOMAIN}/review/tron-trx-review/">Tron Foundation</a>, which offers the cryptocurrency $TRX. It’s official Twitter handle is @Tronfoundation, but in February an @Tronfoundationl account appeared – with a blue verification checkmark!It turns out that the scammers hacked the verified account of non-profit @LiteracyBridge and subsequently changed the name and handle of the account. Twitter spokespeople claim that this should have removed the verified checkmark, but for some reason this was not the case. The account has since been suspended, and there’s no way to know how much the scammers were able to steal using the fake verified account, but this is only one example of many.Making all these scams even more damaging has been the use of bot-nets and fake user accounts. Basically these accounts are used to share and upvote the scamming tweets, thus adding social proof and fooling other users into taking action, or to retweet the scam tweets as well, spreading them further.<h2>No More Verification</h2>Twitter suspended public requests for verification all the way back in November 2017 as evidenced by a tweet from @TwitterSupport:<img src="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2018/06/twitterSupport.jpg" alt="Twitter Verification Suspension">&nbsp;&nbsp;This message was repeated following the Tron Foundation scam, so it’s obvious that Twitter is aware of the issues being caused by their verification system. Yet it remains in place, even if it isn’t accepting new requests for verification. And here we are 7 months later, no closer to any solution to the issue.<h2>How Will Twitter Stop the Scams&nbsp;</h2>As I said, Twitter is aware of the problem, and CEO Jack Dorsey has both acknowledge there is a problem, and that the verification system is broken. He’s also tweeted that they are working on a solution, but as we all know, there has been no solution forthcoming so far.<figure class="image"><img src="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2018/06/jackResponse.jpg" alt="Jack Response Twitter Scams"><figcaption>Jack Response Twitter Scams</figcaption></figure>Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera suggested that Twitter could at least police the verified accounts, looking for changes to usernames, real names, profile pictures and header photos. Certainly there aren’t so many changes among verified users that it would be too difficult to have an actual human check each account with such a change.Another suggestion was to block the creation of account handles that are similar to the known or verified cryptocurrency projects and leaders. The thinking is that there’s really no good reason to create a handle that’s basically the same as a cryptocurrency celebrity, or a blockchain project, or one of the popular wallets. In almost every case the only reason to create one of these closely related alternate accounts is to scam people, or to perform some other nefarious action.There have also been suggestions that Twitter find a way to scan for “grouping” type behavior. That is, many of the bot-nets tend to swarm around the same types of fraudulent and scam posts, retweeting and upvoting en masse. Because these bot-nets work together it should be possible to discover at least some of the networks simply based on the shared behavior.Another suggestion is to give people more control over what appears in their feeds, similar to the way Facebook allows users to specify not only who sees their posts, but what posts they see. In this way Twitter users could defend against the spammers themselves by only allowing trusted people’s tweets be seen in their feed. Of course this diminishes the utility of Twitter to some extent, and might not be the best solution.&nbsp;As for Twitter themselves, they’ve been quiet on the matter, aside from acknowledging that it exists. So, when a solution is finally implemented it will be a surprise to us all, and will almost certainly cause a good deal of consternation in the crypto Twitter-verse, despite the good intentions.It’s also possible the initial solution won’t work as planned, and further iterations and tweaking will be necessary to get things mostly right.<h2>Conclusion</h2>It isn’t realistic to think that Twitter will be able to completely rid its platform of spam and scammy actors. The reality is that scammers can come up with new methods for stealing from people almost as fast as fixes can be put in place.It should be possible to limit the number of scams occurring, and this is what Twitter needs to put in place as soon as possible. It’s been far too long that these scams have continued, robbing thousands of people of millions of dollars.And it isn’t just the cryptocurrency space that has a scam problem.Bot-nets and scams exist in the dating, eBay, and Amazon niches, and likely in many more. In fact, some have suggested that up to 15% of all the Twitter accounts are fake or bot accounts. And it has also been suggested that Twitter, which is graded by investors at least in part by its number of users, isn’t all that interested in cutting its userbase by 10-15% for fear of investor backlash.Whatever the case, something needs to be done, and soon. If Twitter fails to at least provide some relief from these bot-nets and scams it’s likely they have to worry about a declining user base anyway – as real users decide that it simply isn’t worth using the service any longer due to the deluge of bots and fake accounts.

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Why is Twitter Struggling to Stop CryptoCurrency Scams?

Traditional financial markets are tightly regulated these days, so it very problematic for con artists to pull off frauds and get away with it. Things are different in the cryptocurrency landscape due to its unregulated nature.Some of the common scam vectors targeting this decentralized economy include <a href="https://{MIGRATED_DOMAIN}/search/?page=1&amp;search=ponzi+scheme">Ponzi schemes</a>, <a href="http://macsecurity.net/view/158/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">extortion viruses</a>, <a href="https://{MIGRATED_DOMAIN}/search/?page=1&amp;search=phishing/">phishing</a> attacks that dupe people into trusting threat actors with their funds.A relatively new type of hoax referred to as ICO exit scams has splashed onto the scene recently, causing multimillion losses to wannabe investors in cryptocurrency startups.Below is a low-down on the most defiant scams of this sort that popped up over the past few months.<h2>LoopX ICO exit scam</h2><img src="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2018/03/loopx-logo.jpg" alt="LoopX Scam Logo">&nbsp;&nbsp;The idea behind the LoopX startup appeared commendable. The crew behind it claimed to have elaborated a unique algorithm to build an innovative cryptocurrency trading app. Unfortunately, this story turned out to be a bluff as the unscrupulous “entrepreneurs” raised $4.5 million during an Initial Coin Offering and vanished in mid-February 2018. They took down their website and deleted their Facebook, YouTube and Telegram profiles without any commentary.Perhaps the only good news is that the fraudsters didn’t go all the way collecting $12 million, an amount they purportedly needed to implement their pseudo-project. That’s still cold comfort for those who lost money, though. Having realized what happened, those who were unlucky to invest in LoopX teamed up and plan on filing a class action lawsuit against the scammers.Interestingly, some reputable players in the cryptocurrency business had <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7p5lzg/discussion_loopx_a_scam_ico/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pointed to some red flags</a> regarding this ICO shortly before the bubble popped. It is always worthwhile to monitor signals like that before investing.<h2>Prodeum ICO Fiasco with a Flavor of Trolling</h2><figure class="image"><img src="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2018/03/prodeum.jpg" alt="Prodeum &quot;Promo&quot; Girl"><figcaption>Prodeum Fiverr "Promo" Girl</figcaption></figure>For the record, Prodeum was a Lithuania-based project whose purported objective was to combine conventional PLU (price look-up) processes with the blockchain technology. Specifically, its founders claimed to “revolutionize fruit and vegetable tracking” so that buyers could monitor the supply chain and track where their food came from using <a href="https://{MIGRATED_DOMAIN}/education/what-is-ethereum/">Ethereum’s</a> transaction ledger.Although the idea was catchy, it all <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yw5ygw/ethereum-startup-prodeum-vanishes-after-seemingly-making-11-leaves-message-penis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ended ingloriously</a> in late January 2018. The Prodeum team suddenly went dark by deactivating their Twitter account and replacing the content of their website with a single word – “penis”. Go figure what that’s supposed to mean. By that time, the ICO had raised only $11 worth of Ether.This scam stands out from the crowd in several ways. First of all, investors lost a ridiculously small amount of money. Secondly, Prodeum boasted a professionally tailored website and conducted some good marketing.For instance, its operators paid people on Fiverr to promote their startup by posting pictures with its name written on their bodies. Such a well-orchestrated fraud could have potentially raised millions, but fortunately, it didn’t.<h2>Confido ICO team’s foul play</h2>An ICO for another cryptocurrency initiative called <a href="https://{MIGRATED_DOMAIN}/ico/confido-price-crashes-creators-delete-projects-online-presence/">Confido</a> took root on October 28, 2017 and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/21/confido-ico-exit-scam-founders-run-away-with-375k.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">didn’t bode well</a> for investors, to put it mildly. Having raised about $375,000 to supposedly build their product, the group called it quits without notifying fundraisers. They deleted their website and social media accounts, ran off with the pretty penny in their sack and were since never heard of.Confido’s declared market niche was to implement a fusion of <a href="https://{MIGRATED_DOMAIN}/education/ethereum-smart-contracts/">smart contracts</a> and a sophisticated shipment tracking feature facilitating the interaction between a seller and a buyer.Their app was supposed to secure escrow payments without involving a third party and release funds only after a package has been delivered. This Initial Coin Offering was conducted via TokenLot, a well-known platform that hosts fundraising campaigns. The general aura of legitimacy lured potential backers who purchased Confido tokens worth some $375,000 during the ICO.According to TokenLot, Confido met all requirements to be listed on their service. After the exit scam was pulled off, this “ICO Superstore” started an investigation into the shenanigans to track down the fraudsters but has had no success thus far.<h2>How to avoid ICO Exit Scams</h2>With the number of fraudulent ICOs growing, here are some tips on how to tell the wheat from the chaff and not invest in something that will never go live:<h4>1. Explore LinkedIn pages of the startup’s team members</h4>In the Confido incident described above, the LinkedIn profiles of the project’s four main roles (CEO, CTO, and key developers) were brand new and had scarce connections. This should have become a wakeup call for stakeholders, but it didn’t. The lesson learned is to scrutinize LinkedIn pages of the crew and do some OSINT to vet their previous work experiences.<h4>2. Question the claims</h4>Read between the lines when it comes to claims made by representatives of a project. Going back to the Confido case, the crooks boasted cooperation with <a href="https://www.smartcontract.com/link" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ChainLink</a>, a sophisticated decentralized service facilitating smart contracts. In fact, though, that was an outright lie. So, treat serious claims with a fair degree of paranoia before investing in an ICO.<h4>3. Look for the actual product</h4>Steer clear of ICOs that have no working product. We’re talking about a viable service that should have an implementation roadmap and be at least at a certain stage of development, not simply an <a href="https://{MIGRATED_DOMAIN}/search/?page=1&amp;search=erc20/">ERC20</a> token.<h4>4. Treat microcap projects with caution</h4>A low fundraising threshold of an ICO doesn’t mean it’s a scam at all, but it might indicate felons’ desire to evoke trust and attract as many backers as possible within a small timeframe. The manipulative aspect of this tactic also revolves around an ostensibly big price potential of a token that lures a lot of people.<h4>5. Remember all that glitters is not gold</h4>If a new cryptocurrency startup appears out of the blue, claims to be revolutionary to the bone and promises a significant return on investment in no time, you’d better take a closer look at it before investing. Swindlers are good at making ungrounded promises and false claims.<h2>Summary</h2>ICOs are a great way to get the bang for one’s buck and become a part of the big cryptocoin rush. People love such opportunities, and fraudsters know it. The ICO exit scams dissected above demonstrate how an investment can end up becoming a disaster instead of bringing profit.So, exercise caution when participating in ventures like that, don’t take promises for granted, do your own research, and follow your intuition to stay on the safe side.

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Five Top Tips to Avoid Falling Victim to ICO Exit Scams

There is no doubt that you would have heard of it by now.Large scale Twitter scams are being perpetrated by bots that try to impersonate influential people.These operations have been operating for some time and despite the fact that Twitter clams to be doing something about it, they still seem to be proliferating. Even with the warnings from nearly every crypto insider, these scam tweets keep popping up.Now it seems as if the scammers are getting really creative with their tactics. Not only are they resorting to impersonating the celebrity in question with advanced algorithms, but they are also using photoshop to doctor images of said indivdual.Let's take a look at their sneaky tactics.<h2>A Familiar Offer</h2>As a bit of background, the scammers in question will usually create an account of a celebrity that looks nearly identical. They will use a near identical twitter handles with a minor change that should appear unnoticeable to the untrained eye.These tactics are used with great affect in <a href="https://{MIGRATED_DOMAIN}/search/?page=1&amp;search=phishing/">phishing</a> domains where the attacker will only slightly change the domain lettering to make it look legitimate.The scammer will reply to the celebrity in question with an offer to their "followers". This offer will usually be to donate cryptocurrency to their followers. They offer to send more cryptocurrency back to the first users who send in to them. Below is an example in one of the latest Vitalik Buterin tweets.<img src="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2018/02/vitalikScam.jpg" alt="Vitalik Scam Tweet"> Scam Tweet from Fake AccountAs you can see, they have taken a handle with the "i" and "l" closely switched around. I am not a guessing man but I assume that people who send their ETH to this address are unlikely to get it back. However, the scammer are also much smarter than one would initially think. They use a number of other tactics to make the offer appear legitimate.<h2>User Replies and Transactions</h2>In order to legitimize the offers, the scammers will use bots to promote them. Not only will they like the tweet in question but they will also reply to the tweet claiming that it worked for them and that they are so grateful.<img src="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2018/02/scamsReplies.jpg" alt="Bot Replies to Scam Account"> Bot Replies to Scam AccountThere have also been reports that the scammers will replicate the transactions on the blockchain to make it appear as if they are happening as promised. They will send a small amount of ETH from a number of addresses and then send back a large portion to the same address.The user who is "so grateful" will then post they links to the transactions below the tweet. This may provide added impetus for the users to send the money to the ETH address in question.Are the scammers making money?They are indeed. There are some reports that in one night they made over $5,000 from users when they imitated Elon Musk and Donald Trump. They are investing even more time and effort into their scheme which can only mean that it is having an affect.The crème de la crème of the scams is someone who took to photoshop to alter an image of Vitalik Buterin in a tweet earlier this morning.<h2>Photoshop Pro</h2>In the tweet by Vitalik, a user responded with an image of Vitalik holding up a piece of paper. For those who may not know, this was the image that Vitalik shared last year to prove that he was not killed in a car accident contrary to rumours.<figure class="image"><img src="https://image.coinbureau.dev/strapi/twitter_1_61bb138458.jpg" alt="twitter 1.jpg" srcset="https://image.coinbureau.dev/strapi/thumbnail_twitter_1_61bb138458.jpg 142w,https://image.coinbureau.dev/strapi/small_twitter_1_61bb138458.jpg 454w,https://image.coinbureau.dev/strapi/medium_twitter_1_61bb138458.jpg 680w,https://image.coinbureau.dev/strapi/large_twitter_1_61bb138458.jpg 907w," sizes="100vw"><figcaption>Image via twitter/VitalikButerin</figcaption></figure>The image was of an Ethereum block number and a corresponding hash. This was supposed to prove that the internet rumours were false. However, a scammer got hold of that image and got busy with Photoshop. Below is the tweet with the doctored image.<img src="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2018/02/viltalikPhotoShop.jpg" alt="Photoshopped Vitalik"> Photoshopped Image with OfferAs you can see, the scammer used a near identical handle but merely changed it to add an extra "l". They also inserted the familiar scam in the picture itself with the text replaced with the offer. A copy of the address was placed above the image.This must no doubt of taking some time to do and it is unlikely that it could have been automated. Moreover, it seems as if the scam has worked on a few people. At press time there were <a href="https://etherscan.io/address/0x68E392D82BB5996A20F5B2504DbE4D6157133654">4 transactions</a> that were sent to the address of 0.4 ETH each.Hence, this exact twitter bot has managed to pull in $1,158 from unsuspecting users. This will no doubt cover the expenses of the Photoshop lessons.<h2>Important Lessons to Learn</h2>The whole benefit of cryptocurrencies is that the ecosystem is supposed to be trust-less. Even if the real Vitalik Buterin tweeted offering you free cryptocurrencies, you should not expect it to be a trustworthy offer.In this case, it is an age old example of something that sounds too good to be true. If someone is offering to send you more money than you are sending them it is likely a scam. It will help you a immensely in the long run to think twice before sending any crypto.As for our scammer with the photoshop, the fake account is still active. It seems as if Twitter have their hands full dealing with the numerous ingenious tactics of the scammers.However, you can do your part by calling them out the moment that you see them and alerting Twitter by reporting them.Featured Image via Fotolia &amp; Twitter

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Twitter Scams and Photoshop: The Creative Ways of Online Fraudsters

Since <a href="https://{MIGRATED_DOMAIN}/news/bitcoin-gold-pros-outweigh-cons/">Bitcoin Gold</a> launched, there has been a lot of confusion about how to claim the newly forked currency. Scammers are also having a field day as phishing sites and fraudulent claims flood the internet and appear on search engines. So what is the correct way to claim a Bitcoin Gold balance without getting scammed? Read on.<h2>Get a Wallet</h2>The first step to holding a cryptocurrency is getting a wallet. There aren't many wallets or exchanges that hold Bitcoin Gold yet since the currency is so new. Multi wallets like Jaxx and<a href="https://{MIGRATED_DOMAIN}/review/atomic-wallet/"> Exodus</a> may eventually support it, but they don't yet.To get a wallet, log on to the only official Bitcoin Gold website, <a href="http://bitcoingold.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bitcoingold.org</a>. Any other website claiming to represent BTG or offer you a way to claim BTG is almost certainly a phishing site. More on that later.You can check your BTG balance on the main page, just be sure to only enter your public receive address, not your private key or your 12-word recovery phrase. Your Bitcoin wallet may have multiple receive addresses where you BTC may be stored. Check with your wallet developer for details.<h2>Choosing the Right Wallet</h2>At the present time, you can choose from up to five officially supported wallets. The first is the main Bitcoin Gold wallet. Most users should avoid this as it requires that you sync up and download the entire Bitcoin blockchain, which at present is in the hundreds of gigabytes and grows constantly. This choice would only make sense for users that intend to solo mine BTG, or that want to operate a full node.Most likely you will want to use one of the three mobile wallets that currently support BTG. Those wallets have posted guides for how to claim BTG. They are <a href="https://medium.com/@coinomi/collecting-your-free-bitcoin-gold-btg-coins-da937d4255d1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Coinomi</a>, <a href="https://guarda.co/?utm_source=btg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Guarda</a>, and <a href="https://freewallet.org/support/2017/10/18/freewallet-announces-support-for-bitcoin-gold/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Freewallet</a>. The final choice available at the moment is the online BTGWallet, which can be found at <a href="http://BTGWallet.online" target="_blank" rel="noopener">BTGWallet.online</a>.<h2>Thieves Target BTG Seekers</h2>The cryptocurrency world has and always will have large numbers of inexperienced users. These users may not realize what a private key is, or a 12-word recovery phrase, and how much power these security measures hold. Scammers know this, so whenever a high profile event like a Bitcoin fork occurs, they will try to take advantage. Bitcoin Gold is no different.A quick search on Google for 'Bitcoin Gold' results in a number of first page scam and phishing sites. Some have names like 'claimbtg' and 'btggolds' and 'mybtg', among many others.<a href="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2017/11/fake-btg-site.png"><img src="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2017/11/fake-btg-site.png" alt=""></a>A typical BTG phishing site will ask for your private keys or recovery phrase&nbsp;These sites work by trying to trick the site visitor into giving up either their private key or their 12-word recovery phrase. On the 16th of November, Exodus support <a href="https://www.exodus.io/status/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that a user had all of their funds stolen when they gave out their recovery phrase to a site claiming to "the Bitcoin Gold balance".To avoid getting scammed while attempting to claim Bitcoin Gold, never give out your private keys or recovery phrase.

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Scams Abound - The Right Way to Claim Your Bitcoin Gold

So-called “pump-and-dump” schemes are understandably illegal in traditional markets, but in the still majorly unregulated crypto space, they occur seemingly on a daily basis now.The thing about these nefarious moneymaking ploys is that a few get rich while the many, i.e. the investors not in on the ploy, typically lose everything.That’s why today we’ll be walking you through the basics of this illicit phenomenon so you can better protect your portfolio from getting burned.<a href="https://shop.trezor.io/?offer_id=10&amp;aff_id=3283" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow"><img src="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2021/09/Trezor_Inline.jpg" alt="Trezor Inline"></a>&nbsp;<h3>Pump-and-dumping crypto: what and why</h3>First off, if you’re a stranger to the idiom, your memory of the phrase “pump and dump” may be jogged by the infamous Wall Street penny stock scams that cropped up in the early 1990s.The scams involved brokers “in the know” intensively hyping up garbage microstocks they held stakes in as a means of artificially boosting these stocks’ worth before dumping them for major profits.Then, as prices sagged from these profit dumps, all other investors watched their investments dissipate into the red. These other innocent investors would lose most, if not everything they’d put in, hence why performing a pump-and-dump scheme is brazenly illegal in traditional markets today.Alas, the dynamic works the same for crypto: a group of large investors coordinates “shilling” campaigns for what the crypto community’s wiser minds have come to call scamcoins—coins that are all talk and no walk, lacking real devs, whitepapers, and so forth.&nbsp;<div class="raw-html-embed"><twitter tweetid="920275777844850689"></twitter>
</div>If you’ve been on the crypto scene for a while, you’ve surely seen no-name coins skyrocket several hundred percent in one day and for no apparent reason whatsoever: these are clearly pump-and-dumps coordinated for quick profits.Even some less-than-promising ICOs, too, have been decried as inherent pump-and-dump schemes.Jordan Belfort, the infamous “Wolf of Wall Street” who pioneered the penny stock scams of the 1990s, is of this line of thinking. He declared as much in past <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/739f8954-b61a-11e7-a398-73d59db9e399" target="_blank" rel="noopener">comments to the press</a>:<blockquote>[ICO] promoters are perpetuating a massive scam of the highest order on everyone. Probably 85 per cent of people out there don’t have bad intentions, but the problem is, if five or 10 per cent are trying to scam you, it’s a f***ing disaster.</blockquote><h3>What’s it look like?</h3>The tell-tale sign of a crypto pump and dump comes from looking at the charts: do you see a coin with a low price in an illiquid market that suddenly bursts in both price and volume?&nbsp;That’s a pump-and-dump scheme at work by the looks of it.Check out the insightful pic below to see what we’re talking about:&nbsp;<img src="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2017/10/pumpDump.jpg" alt="Pump and Dump Examples">&nbsp;Notice the incredibly low volume that then begins to pump upwards, taking the price with it. Afterwards, the price crashes as the dump occurs.If you see the beginning of this general formation, chances are something foul’s afoot.&nbsp;<img src="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2017/10/pumpDumpCoins.png" alt="Pump and Dump Formation">&nbsp;Another thing that you might’ve seen or heard about and that you can look out for is “pumper” groups coordinating on Telegram and Signal chat groups. Many of these groups have been outed as coordinating with one another, amplifying their power in numbers. These types of coordination became even more popular after the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/28/gamestop-fun-turns-deadly-serious-reddit-wallstreetbets" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wall Street Bets movement</a> that impacted GameStop stock in 2021, which highlighted just how powerful a “strength in numbers” coordinated market push can be.<div class="raw-html-embed"><twitter tweetid="924729886773858311"></twitter></div>There are also the phenomenon of automated pump-and-dump scams. To give you an example, there are crypto trading robots which are scams like the Bitcoin Code, which, <a href="https://coincierge.de/bitcoin-code/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">as reported by Coincierge.de</a>, was being advertised across diverse social Media in Germany.<h3>Who’s pumping?</h3>Aside from the public pump-and-dump groups that can be found on sites like Reddit and Telegram, no one definitively knows who is pumping and dumping these coins, but reasonable speculation points us in the direction of large investors and miners.These are well-coordinated cons that necessitate anywhere from $15,000 to $100,000 in liquid capital to pull off properly (for the smaller coins at least), meaning miners and large investors are the likeliest culprits.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@coinbureau?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow"><img src="https://img.coinbureau.dev/strapi/2021/09/TikTok_inline.jpg" alt="Tik Tok Inline"></a>&nbsp;<h3>How to Avoid Pump and Dump Schemes</h3>From the pictures above, it’s clear you definitely don’t want to get caught on the tail-end of a pump-and-dump scheme.If you’re thinking about investing into a coin that’s really getting hyped on the forums right now, but you’re not so sure, go to the charts and check for yourself.Are there abnormalities with the volume?Was the coin’s market super illiquid just days ago but is now exploding?If you see this sign, your best bet is to stay away—the dump could start any time, burning your investment in the process.There are some helpful tools that can help prevent falling for pump-and-dumps scams, such as <a href="https://de.fi/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">De.Fi</a>, a free online platform that lets users gather in-depth valuable insights into tokens, DeFi platforms, and smart contracts.&nbsp;De.Fi can help keep users safe in crypto with a contract address scanner where users can enter a token contract or smart contract, a risk shield, and a <a href="/education/blockchain-security-audits/">blockchain audit</a> database, but to avoid pump-and-dump schemes, the first port of call should be the scanner where you can enter the specific token contract you are looking at scooping up.&nbsp;Here is how that looks when I entered the token contract address for TrueUSD (TUSD) into the scanner:<figure class="image"><img src="https://image.coinbureau.dev/strapi/De_Fi_token_risk_af48e5102c.jpg" alt="De.Fi token risk.jpg" srcset="https://image.coinbureau.dev/strapi/thumbnail_De_Fi_token_risk_af48e5102c.jpg 95w,https://image.coinbureau.dev/strapi/small_De_Fi_token_risk_af48e5102c.jpg 305w,https://image.coinbureau.dev/strapi/medium_De_Fi_token_risk_af48e5102c.jpg 457w,https://image.coinbureau.dev/strapi/large_De_Fi_token_risk_af48e5102c.jpg 609w," sizes="100vw"><figcaption>A Look at the Token Scanner at <a href="https://de.fi/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">De.Fi</a></figcaption></figure>Within seconds, the De.Fi platform generates in-depth insight into the TUSD token. I added the numbered arrows to show information that is useful when trying to determine if a token could be at risk of a pump-and-dump.#1- The token contract address. If you are looking to buy a token based on a token address, be sure to check it against the database to make sure it is a valid and official token and not some scam token someone made to appear like the real thing.#2-De.Fi provides some comprehensive analytics about the token. If there are any red flags, they will be marked with a red exclamation point as opposed to the blue checks shown above.#3- Token Liquidity Analysis. Remember earlier when we mentioned that low liquidity could be a warning sign, as this makes it easy for a token's price to be pumped? This section gives you valuable insight into a token's liquidity along with information regarding what percentage of the tokens are locked, held by the owners, unlocked and burnt.&nbsp;#4- Top 10 token holders. This is often overlooked by beginners but can often reveal one of the biggest red flags. If a large percentage of the tokens are held by one or two addresses, this centralization of tokens held can lead to serious sell pressure if the majority token holders decide to sell everything at once and dump their tokens on the market. Concentrated token holdings can be a sign of an impending pump and dump or rug-pull.&nbsp;And there you have it folks, some quick and easily actionable steps you can take to help defend yourself against being someone else's exit liquidity. Until next time, happy hodling.