Bitcoin attracts a huge number of scammers offering guaranteed returns, fake accounts, Bitcoin machines, AI based investments etc. As with many scams, they try to tap into people’s greed.
Common Bitcoin Scams
- Social Media
Scammers create fake social media accounts and use them to entice people to fall for various scams or sometimes they buy stolen social media accounts and invite everyone on the real owners contact list to click a link to something supposedly wonderful or funny etc. but it links to a scam site.
This is most commonly on Twitter but also occurs on the other social media networks.
2. Fake Currency Exchanges
The scammers offer membership of a supposed cybercurrency exchange where you can buy and sell Bitcoins and other cyber currencies at low margins.
Never sign up for an account without being sure it is real. Some of these scammers setup what appears to be an exchange but it’s not.
3. Fake Currency Wallets
You can store your cyber currency in digital wallets and some scammers have created fake wallets. Some have even created USB keys branded to look like a digital wallet but loaded with malware to steal yaccess top your cyber currency which the criminals can then steal.
4. Fake APPS
Scammers have created all sorts of fake APPS related to cyber currencies and some even managed to get them available on the Google and APPLE stores.
5. Celebrity Giveaways
The scammers impersonate a celebrity and announce that they’re giving away a lot of cryptocurrency for free, as long as you send them some cryptocurrency first.
The scammers will often promise to send back double what you send them. Although especially prominent on Twitter, this scam has also appeared on platforms including YouTube, where scammers will impersonate a celebrity in a video or livestream.
6. Fake Initial Coin Offerings (ICO)
These are the cyber currency equivalent of new company offerings of shares. What better than convince people there is a new cyber currency coming to market and they must get a share of the no doubt enormous gains to be made as happened in the early days of Bitcoin. Many of these fake offerings are made to sound very similar to Bitcoin.
7. Bitcoin Mining
The process of creating new Bitcoins is called Bitcoin mining and it’s a process that requires vast amounts of computing power. Some scammers offer to let you on a deal with Bitcoin mining setups. These are always a bad idea as most mining nowadays is carried out by criminals.
If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.