{"id":4520,"date":"2020-10-24T22:41:54","date_gmt":"2020-10-24T19:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alfacash.blog\/?p=4520"},"modified":"2024-02-19T21:53:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-19T18:53:00","slug":"%d0%bc%d0%be%d1%88%d0%b5%d0%bd%d0%bd%d0%b8%d1%87%d0%b5%d1%81%d1%82%d0%b2%d0%be-%d1%81-%d0%bf%d1%80%d0%b8%d0%b2%d0%bb%d0%b5%d1%87%d0%b5%d0%bd%d0%b8%d0%b5%d0%bc-%d0%ba%d1%80%d0%b0%d0%b6%d0%b8-%d0%be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alfacash.blog\/ru\/2020\/10\/24\/%d0%bc%d0%be%d1%88%d0%b5%d0%bd%d0%bd%d0%b8%d1%87%d0%b5%d1%81%d1%82%d0%b2%d0%be-%d1%81-%d0%bf%d1%80%d0%b8%d0%b2%d0%bb%d0%b5%d1%87%d0%b5%d0%bd%d0%b8%d0%b5%d0%bc-%d0%ba%d1%80%d0%b0%d0%b6%d0%b8-%d0%be\/","title":{"rendered":"\u041f\u0440\u0438\u043c\u0430\u043d\u043a\u0430 \u0434\u043b\u044f \u043a\u0440\u0430\u0436\u0438: \u043f\u043e\u0437\u043d\u0430\u043a\u043e\u043c\u044c\u0442\u0435\u0441\u044c \u0441 \u0440\u0430\u0441\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0441\u0442\u0440\u0430\u043d\u0435\u043d\u043d\u044b\u043c\u0438 \u043c\u043e\u0448\u0435\u043d\u043d\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u0442\u0432\u043e\u043c \u0441 \u043a\u0440\u0438\u043f\u0442\u043e\u0432\u0430\u043b\u044e\u0442\u043e\u0439"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The blockchain is the safest place to keep your funds, but it may have a critical vulnerability: yourself. In the cryptocurrency world, you\u2019re mostly the one and only in charge of your own money, and sometimes malicious people out there take advantage of it to make you transfer them your cryptos in exchange for nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When someone deceives you in some way to take your money, that\u2019s called a \u201cscam\u201d.<\/strong> If the fraud involves cryptocurrencies, we can call it a crypto-scam. And, sadly, the scammers inside the cryptocurrency world and their creativity are almost endless. There\u2019s also hackers and malware<\/a>, but that\u2019s another story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s know here some of the most common crypto-scams and how to protect yourself from them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Magical trading<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI will teach you how you can earn $2,500 bitcoin everyday all directly inside your wallet, with a legit and a guaranteed stuff (\u2026) Earn $20,000 in 5 days (\u2026) Giving out info to first 60 serious persons that inbox me\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Does it sound familiar? You\u2019ve probably seen it already (and multiple times) on Facebook and other social media. The method is simple: an unknown person makes that extraordinary offer in some group, promising high returns for small investments<\/strong>. How\u2019s that? We don\u2019t know. We always should ask directly for a private message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But wait, let\u2019s check another one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLast week, he [some celebrity, no matter who] appeared on [some local show] and announced a new \u201cwealth loophole\u201d which he says can transform anyone into a millionaire within 3\u20134 months. [The celebrity on duty] urged everyone in [the target country] to jump into this amazing opportunity before the big banks shut it down for good\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is the typical announcement that the magical trading platform Bitcoin Billionaire<\/a> (also known as Bitcoin Evolution, Bitcoin Era, Bitcoin Compass, etc.) uses to promote itself. The mentioned celebrities<\/a> never said that anywhere, but isn\u2019t difficult to make it up in a text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bitcoin Billionaire. Source: screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Somebody will be always there to propose some kind of magical business\/platform or automatic cryptocurrency trading, to make huge quantities in no time and for just a small initial investment. However, they only want your cryptos, and they\u2019ll never give you something in return. There\u2019s no magical trading<\/a> and easy money! Be skeptical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fake ICOs<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As we\u2019ve discussed before, an Initial Coin Offering<\/a> (ICO) is a mechanism of fundraising in which a company, organization, team, or individual (anyone, really) offers to the public an established quantity of new blockchain-based tokens for sale in a given period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They can be legitimate and the devs might deliver awesome products at the end (like happened with Ethereum, EOS, or Filecoin<\/a>). But they can also be a huge scam, designed and promoted to steal the people\u2019s real cryptocurrencies.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pincoin fake ICO by Modern Tech. Source: Meteofinanza<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Luckily, some factors always give them away. A fake ICO usually has little or no documentation at all. If they have a white paper, is very probable that it\u2019s poorly written and doesn\u2019t specify the actual operation of the product; only focusing on how amazing is blockchain technology<\/a> in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anonymous team, aggressive marketing (sometimes, involving celebrities), and too-good-to-be-true promises are also part of the recipe.<\/strong> If they offer you 40% of monthly (and inexplicable) returns thanks to their new-created-token, just run away ASAP. That\u2019s exactly what the infamous scam Modern Tech did in Vietnam before disappearing with all the money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fake g<\/strong>iveaways<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By now you must\u2019ve heard about the last Twitter hack, where the accounts of high-profile people and companies (including Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Apple, and Uber) were hijacked for a while. In that opportunity, a message like this appeared on their accounts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fake tweet by Bill Gates hacked account. Source: screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s indeed typical: send me $1,000 and receive back $2,000 in Bitcoin<\/a>. Before the Twitter hack, these kind of messages appeared regularly in phishing accounts, where you could spot a different handle from the original. But the extraordinary promise was the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comparison between a fake and real account by Elon Musk. Source: screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Of course, if you send those $1,000 (or anything), you only will receive a huge disappointment in return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imaginary Cloud Mining<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The so-called Cloud Mining might be a legitimate system, but it\u2019s often used just to scam people. It\u2019s a method where a company asks for money to buy cryptocurrency miners<\/a> (specialized machines) and build and maintain some mining farms. When these machines start to produce cryptocurrency, the earnings are shared with the investors, usually every month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image by WorldSpectrum \/ Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Although, there\u2019s a thing. Cloud Mining webpages are all around the Internet, offering contracts to anyone for a small investment and promising guaranteed returns for the mining, without having to worry about the configuration and maintenance of the equipment. This might be true, but it might be fake as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before investing in Cloud Mining, you should research thoroughly the company behind the product.<\/strong> They should have real evidence about the owning of the machines and its performance, including photos, videos, and figures registered on the blockchain. If they can\u2019t provide those simple things, they\u2019re probably a scam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pyramid schemes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The referral system is always a sign of a pyramid\/Ponzi scheme. Someone asked you to get into a new amazing project with cryptocurrencies, where you can earn some percentage for every person you bring to join and invest in the platform? Scam alert!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Classic (and non-sustainable) pyramid scheme structure. Public domain<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A pyramid scheme doesn\u2019t offer any real product but instead is just waiting for new investors to pay the promised percentages to the oldest ones<\/strong>. When there are no more enough new investors, then the pyramid falls and the admins flee away with the rest of the money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the cryptocurrency world<\/a>, these scammers use to mix this fraudulent structure with a fake ICO, a fake token, some magical trading, or imaginary cloud mining. They feign to have a real product, but they don\u2019t: their only source of revenue is the referrals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should note that the referrals systems in other circumstances are legitimate. For example, a company (with a real product, like a crypto-exchange) can offer that program as a bonus to their customers. But, in those cases, the referral systems are only an additional benefit, to attract more customers to use their product, not the real source of revenue for the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inflatable cryptos<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes, the cryptos (and also the stocks) are like balloons: they can be inflated\u2026 and then punched and discarded. That\u2019s known in the financial world as a \u201cpump-and-dump schemes\u201d. They happen when a group of people coordinates themselves to buy in the same period a lot of some token (usually new or not well-known).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image by Pexels \/ Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In that way, they manage to increase the price artificially, to sell it more expensive later (also at the same time). <\/strong>When this massive sell-off happens, the price of the token plummets again, and the people that were attracted by FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and bought it at the highest value, lose their investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This happens often with some less-known altcoins<\/a>, but now it\u2019s been practiced especially with some new DeFi tokens<\/a>. The fever for yield farming<\/a> fed, in a matter of hours, tokens like PIZZA, HOTDOG, and KIMCHI just after their launch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They reached very high prices (like $6.000+ for HOTDOG), but it didn\u2019t long last: in only a couple of hours, the price dumped to sub-dollar levels, and the next day they were all dead. Like a punched balloon, yes. That\u2019s why it\u2019s not advisable to invest in tokens which price suddenly surged without explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t fall for it!<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Image by Aria Gmitter from Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n