🚨 Scam Alert! 🕵️‍♂️ Deep Dive Into Crypto Scams: Unveiling the Shadows of Deception 🌐💔 Stay Informed, Stay Secure! 🛡️ #CryptoSafety

Welcome back Fam to another edition of Re:crypto where you get the easy version that normal people understand. 😎 We are back this week with another exciting edition for you guys. I did a little pivot this week from a tutorial on how to buy and transfer crypto off of an exchange to a more relevant topic of scams. 💔 Now, the reason why I made the change is that I had a friend tell me that he had been bit by a wallet drainer and it hit him pretty hard. A large position that he had that he was excited about poof gone. 😱 So I decided that it be a good time to cover this seeing that the market is definitely starting to get a lot warmer seeing that Bitcoin is above $50,000 again. 🔥 Keeping you guys informed on how these work and what to look out for is key to keeping you and your funds safe. Now, not to say that I’m really good at operational security, maybe more lucky than good. 😅 But to help you be aware so you can sniff out if something is a little fishy so you can be more cautious. 🐟

Crypto Scam #1: The Phishing Scam 🎣

A phishing scam is not something that is native to the crypto world; this happens everywhere; it's pretty rampant in our everyday lives. 😟 So you’ve probably heard of this one before. How this may show up in the crypto space will go something like this.

You get a message from someone that you don’t know saying use their referral link and get added to a whitelist for an airdrop. It's from a project that you are following really closely; you know that they are planning an airdrop for early participants, and it looks to be from an official account for that project. You click on the link; it takes you to a site that looks like the official site for the project. There’s a button with instructions to connect the wallet to add to the whitelist. So you connect your wallet, and you get a prompt in your wallet to sign to approve access. So you sign the transaction thinking nothing of it because you sign to verify with your wallet all the time. Except this time you sign allowing unlimited on a large holding in your wallet. You check your wallet later to see that your funds are gone. 😨

This tactic may be one of the easier ones to avoid as phishing attempts are made by you receiving a message from an unknown party. Best way to avoid phishing attacks is not to open links sent to you by someone that you don’t know. Especially if someone direct messages (DMs) you on Twitter, Discord, or even email. Only use links from official sources like the official Twitter account, official links in Discord, and the official website. You would also want to verify the information in the message is accurate by going to official sources like the website in the Discord and on the Twitter page. Now also keep in mind that they may also have set up a phishing page that looks like the official page. Ways to counteract this is to ensure the URL is correct; they like to make it look like the correct URL but will change something like an 'I' with a '1' so that it looks close enough to the correct URL where it could go unnoticed. They can also spoof an official Twitter page; this one is easier to spot as looking at the follower count can be a telltale sign of a scam account. An account with a low follower count is more than likely a fake account, so don’t utilize any links from that account.

See an example below of a real Twitter account:

Here’s an example of a fake Twitter account. 😈

Other than the blue check mark, you can tell a fake account by their follower count and also how many posts they make. As you can see, the above has an account from 2012 but it has one post. An official Twitter page from a project that you follow depending on the size will definitely have a lot more than one post. Also, a good source for finding official websites is CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap. Seeing as they vet the projects before they list them on their site.

Crypto Scam #2: Deep Fake Investment Scheme 🎭

This one I’ve been seeing a lot of lately on Youtube. A deep fake is when you have a video of a famous person trying to influence you to do something because they believe in it or are doing it personally. The TLDR is someone made a video of an influential person and is using that person's influence to get you to follow them in some type of investment opportunity. But it's really a video made by a scammer, possibly using AI and clips for video interviews that the famous person has done over the years, to make a convincing video of them saying things that they never actually said. You may see an ad or two on Youtube that is like this. 😲

How this works is a scammer will create a video using someone like Michael Saylor, CEO of Microstrategies, a famous investor in Bitcoin. He’s talking about an investment opportunity where he can multiply your Bitcoin with no risk by a minimum of 2x. Double your Bitcoin with no risk sounds incredible so you bite; you click on the link in the add to go to the web page and register. Now, this website may ask you for some personal information to make it seem legit. Then it has you deposit your Bitcoin by sending it to an address provided on the site. It may also even have you deposit it into a liquidity pool by connecting and depositing your Bitcoin. So you do, but little do you know you just deposited your Bitcoin to a scammer's wallet.

Now deep fakes aren’t new, but they are getting a lot better with AI. But it’s still not perfect; the video is being created using many clips of many different videos of the person being impersonated and it doesn’t match up perfectly. So if you're watching the video and it looks a little glitchy or the mouth movements don’t match up with the sound of the voice like you're watching an old-school English dubbed kung fu movie. Then you probably watching a deep fake and it’s likely a scam. Also, if the offering is too good to be true, it more than likely is too good to be true. This type of scam is to play on your greed or your emotions of always wanting more. And by the way, if it asks for personal information this is a double whammy because you also gave your personal information to a scammer along with your Crypto. So be paranoid; it helps and don’t trust, verify the information with multiple trustworthy sources before you go and decide on sending your money somewhere.

Crypto Scam #3: The Crypto Investing Expert Course 🚫💰

Now where you may see this would be on Instagram, Twitter, or even Youtube. Any place that you can get a lot of eyeballs on an ad for a course. In this ad, you’ll see someone that will present this lavish and free lifestyle and how they got it by trading crypto a few hours a day and you can do the same if you buy their course.

How this works is they create a video ad that plays on Youtube or Instagram, really any social media platform would be perfect for this. They’ll portray themselves as someone credible when it comes to trading crypto. They will show you a lifestyle of travel and leisure and how they got this free living lifestyle by trading.

I know, I know, this sounds like a lot of things you see advertised on social media. But there are some slight differences so stick with me. They’ll talk about a bunch of advanced trading techniques like trading with leverage and selling shorts. Once they’ve convinced you that they are the expert they want you to believe. They’ll drop that they have a course that can teach you to do what they do. This could go a bunch of different ways from here; the first way it's not cheap; it would be $1500-$2000 maybe even $5000-$10000 they may have a combo course package or even a special that they’re running. Or they do a subscription model, and it charges you $99 monthly but you get an intro rate of $20 for the first month or even 3 days free. You’re convinced, so you bite and you go to the signup page and it seems legit, so you decide let's do it. You pay with your credit card; now from here, it could go a few ways also in the 3-day free trial and the $20 option you enter your credit card information in this scenario you get access to the site get access to the site after 3 days you're not quite satisfied with the product but there's no way to cancel there's an 800 number to call it's either always busy, you get put on hold forever or the number is no longer in service. But in the meantime, your card got charged $99 monthly fee and continues to get charged the $99 fee till you decide to report the charge as fraudulent. The same deal with the $20 option you're not satisfied with the content provided after a month and you can’t cancel. Last of this scenario is you enter your credit card information and you get an error saying something is wrong with your card and suggests you can try a different card. You then call your credit card company, and they tell you everything is good, so you try again and get the same error. So you try a different card and get the same thing at this point you think it must be broken, so you and you don’t really need that course anyway. But you notice on your credit card statement that you're getting charged a $99 service fee on both of your cards. Now what happens with the expensive version you pay the full amount and get to the other side of the paywall. Either there's nothing there or the course or the site is under construction or it doesn’t teach you anything. Like the other scenarios, you can’t get a refund because there's no one to get in touch with.

How to tell if this is legit or a scam one way is you can search for more information about the program they offer. Maybe even go to the website if they even have one. If they don’t have a website, that is a red flag. If you can’t find any information about this person also a red flag. If they are an influencer, they would have a community and should have all of those things all the socials a website and any kind of way you can verify they are who they say they are. Not just faked testimonials. Because that's how they make their living a scammer won’t have all those things. An influencer risks losing a lot if they are tied to a scam. But in crypto, be careful with who you put your trust in.

Crypto Scam #4: The Crypto Exchange Deposit Scam 💸💼

This one is not the official title for it, but after I explain it, it will make sense. In this one, you deposit money onto an exchange or send your crypto. Only to find out that you can’t withdraw any of your funds.

How this works this will start out similar to phishing either you get DM’d or you click on an offer link you see on social media for a new exchange. They maybe offering if you deposit $500 get an extra bonus $500 in Bitcoin for signing up. Even something like guaranteed one winning trade out of your first 10 trades or your money back withdraw at any time. So you bite; you sign up deposit $500 or send $500 in Crypto like Bitcoin. On the exchange, you see that you get the bonus added to your account. You make a couple of trades, and you're making some money. So you decide you want to withdraw your initial amount you deposited. Only to find out that your account doesn’t have the minimum amount needed to withdraw. Your accounts about $1000, so you proceed to deposit $500 more to up your balance. You try to withdraw again gives you the same error that your account balance does not meet the minimum to withdraw. This time you decide to deposit $1000 this time, but you get the same message. But the reality is it was a one-way ticket you were never meant to be able to withdraw funds. I’ve heard of people putting all their money in because they had so much in there to start.

How do you know if it's a scam? If the offer they give you is too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. Most exchanges will give a bonus for signing up but it won’t be something too lucrative maybe a $100 dollars or so, but nothing extravagant. You can do research on the exchange if you google the exchange and you can’t find anything about the exchange then it's probably a scam. Stick with well-known exchanges and don’t trust a stranger DMing you or take any ad at face value being paranoid helps.

Crypto Scam #5 & #6: The Pump and Dump and the Rug Pull 🚀🚿

These 2 are very similar in nature; they will be filled with hype a lot of chatter on social media. In a pump and dump, it may involve a few influencers to get their communities excited about a particular coin. The project may have even paid for them to talk about the coin. The coin is most likely not released yet, so they build up hype for the coin drop. When the coin is released everyone rushes in to buy the price spikes because of the speculation and everyone thinks it's going to the moon. Then the price crashes because everyone that had the coin prelaunch just dumped everything on the market. They make a killing while you're left holding the bag.

Now a Rug Pull is similar in the sense that they want people to buy the coin. So a lot like the Pump and Dump. They will create hype over their coin and how it's going to be better than anything that exists. The price could be pumping except the team changes the contract or locks the contract so no one can sell or it's 100% taxed is you do sell where the funds just get fed back into the contract. They withdraw all the funds and shut the project down pulling the rug out from under you hence the Rug Pull.

Ways to avoid this doing some research can go a long way. If they don’t have any footprint on the internet, then that's a red flag. Next thing is if you can’t put a face to the team that's also a red flag. If the team or the creator isn’t willing to identify themselves even their online avatar that is a major red flag. If they show an online avatar at least you can do some due diligence on them. Do they have a community, do they have an online presence that you can find to determine that this person or persons are somewhat trustworthy? Then that's a no because if they don’t exist the and disappear easily.

There you have it; there's a lot more than these. This is just a short list of some of the scams that you will come across in crypto land the most common being the Pump and Dump and Rug Pull those tend to happen daily. So you need to stay vigilant. But it's not to say that any of these couldn’t happen in the traditional world. Seeing as Phishing scams are rampant in your email boxes daily and people are trying to sell you things all the time. Here’s a few Twitter threads that cover a few more scams that you should be aware of and they already do a great job of explaining so you can check them out below. The extended thread is the one that my friend got caught in you can find that in the thread by Stacy Muur. 🌐👀

Now The Markets:

A lot of green for the week in the Crypto bubbles

The current global cryptocurrency market cap stands at an impressive $2.04 Trillion, reflecting a 0.3% change in the last 24 hours. 💹 Total cryptocurrency trading volume in the past day has reached a substantial $72.8 Billion. 🌐 Bitcoin dominance maintains a strong position at 49.7%, while Ethereum dominance is at %.

The leading gainers in the crypto industry at this moment are Analytics and Account Abstraction cryptocurrencies, showcasing positive momentum and potential growth. 🚀💰

Bitcoin 🌐

BTC 💰

Ticker Update:

$51,593 ⬇️

Bitcoin recently rallied above $52,000 this week, and the upward momentum seems relentless. 🚀 This suggests a sustained demand for Bitcoin at increasingly higher levels. According to a report by on-chain data analytics firm CryptoQuant, they estimate that over "75% of new investment into Bitcoin" is coming from spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

However, as the saying goes, nothing goes up forever. 📈 Several analysts are raising concerns that the rally might be getting overheated in the near term. It's always challenging to predict the top in a strong momentum, but history tells us that every euphoric moment eventually reaches a peak, often followed by a sharp correction.

Check out the daily cryptocurrency market performance below. 👇 Source: Coin360

Macroeconomic factors might pose a challenge to the ongoing market rally. On January 16, CME Group’s FedWatch Tool indicated a 63% probability of a 25 basis points rate cut by the Federal Reserve in their March meeting. 📆 However, this expectation has now dwindled to 10.5% after the Consumer Price Index and the Producer Price Index numbers for January remained above market forecasts. 📉 Other factors, such as Japan unexpectedly slipping into recession, along with the UK and German economy being on shaky footing, add to the concerns. 🌍 And it doesn't help that China continues its downward spiral with no end in sight. 🇨🇳 We'll keep a close eye on these global developments.

As for the home front, it's a mixed bag of data at best. 🏡 We're seeing hot inflation prints, but declining retail sales and plummeting tax return receipts don't bode well for a surging market. 📉📈 

The big question: Could Bitcoin initiate a correction in the near term, and would that impact the altcoins? 📉 📊

The News:

Blockchain and Cryptocurrency:

1. Aussie Cop Allegedly Steals 81 BTC During Raid: Shocking Report! 🚨

2. STORJ Token Balances and Flows Revealed in Q4 2023 Report 📊

3. Bitcoin ETFs Experience $2.2B Net Inflows Over the Week 💸

4. Bitcoin Price Unlikely to Hit All-Time High Before Halving — Here’s Why 📉

5. FTX Creditors Sue Bankruptcy Law Firm S&C Alleging Fraud Involvement ⚖️

6. Mercure DAO Raises $1.5M to Lead the Revolution in Web3 Incubation 🚀

7. 'Think of It as Bitcoin’s IPO': Bitwise Predicts New Price Discovery Post ETFs 📈

8. Ronin Effect: 'Pixels' Ditches Polygon Ahead of Ethereum Token Launch 🔄

9. NFT Lender Arcade Announces Airdrop for Ethereum, Solana, and Bitcoin Collectors 🎁

10. Crypto Projects Distribute 115 Billion Points, Some Still Keep Numbers Secret 🤐

11. Mountain Bridge: Revolutionizing Crypto Trading with Global Connectivity and Real-Time Intelligence 🌐

12. This Week in Coins: Bitcoin Closes Week Strong, Simmering Above $51K 💪

13. Pudgy Penguins Briefly Flip Bored Ape Yacht Club in Floor Price 🐧

Technology and AI:

1. OpenAI’s Valuation Reportedly Soars to $80 Billion in Latest Deal 💰

2. FTX Creditors File Class Action Against Bankruptcy Lawyers Over Ties to FTX Prior to Its Collapse ⚖️

3. Tech Giants Pledge to Curb AI Election Influence Amid Concerns 🤖

4. What Is a Blockchain Validator? ❓

5. Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Surpasses 80 Trillion Amid Halving Anticipation ⛏️

6. Embark on the Extraordinary: AfterLife’s ICO Unveils Exclusive Limited Edition Bundles 🚀

7. Jupiter's Compliance Division Revokes Investment in Ripple XRP ETP: Report 📉

8. Galxe New Year Festival 2024: A Case Study 🎉

9. Celsius Distributes $2B of Crypto to 172K Creditors 💳

10. Information on Starknet Airdrop Support for Members With Ethereum Staking Amount Prior to Merging Ethereum 🌐

11. Render Network Contract Address, Resources, and Official Channels 🔗

12. Claude AI Chatbot Declared Off Limits to Political Candidates 🤐

13. Crypto Could Learn One Thing From the SEC 🤔

Finance and Investments:

1. NFT Insider Trading? Moonbirds Sales Spiked Before Yuga Deal Was Official 📈🕵️‍♂️

2. Honduras Regulator Bans Banks from Holding, Transacting with Crypto 🚫💳

3. Enabling Zero Auth Downloads for Node Operators at a Tenth of the Cost 💻💸

4. $1.6 Billion Grayscale Sell-Off Ahead—What Does That Mean for Bitcoin? 💰📉

5. How Arbitrum Won Over ApeCoin DAO—And Why Yuga Labs Is All for the ‘ApeChain’ 🤝🦍

6. Coinbase Donates $3.6M to Bitcoin Developers Through Brink 🤝💻

7. Illuvium DAO Governance Newsletter - January 2024 📰📆

8. Celsius Distributed $2 Billion of Crypto to Creditors, Court Document Shows 💳💼

9. JPMorgan Analyst Criticizes Coinbase's Lack of Insights Into Its ETF Business 🏦📉

10. Bored Ape Creator Yuga Labs Acquires Moonbirds NFT Startup Proof 🦍🚀

11. Bored Apes' Creator Yuga Labs Acquires Proof, Takes Over Moonbirds NFT Brand 🦍🚀

12. Arkham Intelligence Identifies MicroStrategy Bitcoin Holdings Pooled with Fidelity 🔍💼

13. 3 Key Bitcoin Price Metrics Point to New BTC All-Time Highs in 2024 📈💹

Regulation and Compliance:

1. Craig Wright Liked Karate So He Must Have Invented Bitcoin, Sister Testifies 🥋🔍

2. **BitMEX’s Arthur Hayes Leads $14M Investment in

USDe** 💼💰

3. Render Network Dashboard is Live [BTN: February 16th, 2024] 🚀📅

4. Your Right to Bear AI Could Soon Be Infringed Upon 🤖🔒

5. Why Is Binance Tempting Bitcoin Futures Investors With Free Teslas? 🚗💰

6. VC Crypto Funding Just Increased for the First Time Since Early 2022, Report Shows 💹📈

7. JPMorgan Highlights OFAC Control Over Tether’s USDT 🏦💼

There you have it! That concludes this action-packed edition of Re:crypto. We've delved into the latet developments across blockchain, cryptocurrency, technology, and finance. Stay tuned for more insightful updates and analysis in the ever-evolving world of crypto. Until next time, keep on moving forward, exploring the trends, and embracing the exciting journey of the digital frontier!