The continuous growth and rise of cryptocurrency space has also seen the massive increase in the rate of scams. One of the main characteristics of cryptocurrency is anonymity and because of this, a lot of scammers have taken advantage of it to carry out scam actions. Cryptocurrency runs on the blockchain and any transaction that is done on the blockchain cannot be traced to the person who carried out the transaction, and in the case of privacy coins, transactions cannot be traced. One of the main aims of blockchain and cryptocurrency is to disrupt the current centralized financial system and bring about decentralization to the financial system and also serve as payment solution to send and receive funds anywhere at any time fast. Crypto scammers are taking advantage of the benefits of cryptocurrency to scam gullible individuals and steal user funds. Some of the common crypto scams are;
Scam projects - This has become very common ever since crypto became very popular and has gotten a lot of attention. Scammers are creating scam projects and portray as legit. When users invest in these scam projects, they scammers either rugpull or exit with the invested user funds.
Phishing - Phishing is one of the common scams in the cryptocurrency space. A lot of scammers create fake lookalike version of the original website or platform in an attempt to attract gullible users so steal user funds. For instance, according to a publication by the source bleepingcomputer which was published way back in Oct 25, 2017, there was a phishing attempt, a fake version of myetherwallet was created to scam myetherwallet and steal their funds in their wallets.
Fake/scam wallet apps - This is another type of scam that is common in the crypto space. Scammers are creating fake wallet applications to try to scam users into believing they are real and legitimate wallet. When the gullible users download these fake/scam wallets and transfer funds into them, the funds are stolen by the scammers.
Social media scam comments - This is another very common scam we see a lot in the crypto space. Social media has become a key part of the cryptocurrency world, a lot of users, projects and top institutions are making use of social media to reach out to their communities. Scammers are using these social platforms to scam gullible users who believe in the scam comments and fall into the trap. We also see a lot of scammers use the names and profiles of popular persons or famous individuals to try to scam gullible users through scam comments on social media.
Email scams - This is also one of the common scams in the crypto space. Scammers blast out scam emails to a large number of email addresses of users with the hope of capturing the gullible ones who will fall for the trap. When the gullible users click on the scam links in the email and perform any of the actions, they end of losing their funds to the scammers.