Cryptocurrency investment is almost like a trend now. Unfortunately, this leads to people investing with hopes of high profit without knowing anything about cryptocurrency. This leads to people taking advantage of those clueless and desperate people by scamming. Let’s find out How To Report Cryptocurrency Scams?
If you are a victim of cryptocurrency scams, there’s little possibility of getting your cryptos back as cryptocurrency payments cannot be reversed. Although, you can try reporting the scam to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Are you wondering how to avoid being a victim of crypto scams and how to report them? This article is for you!
Cryptocurrency Scams
According to a recent FTC report, more than 40 thousand people have lost over one billion dollars from crypto scams since 2021. The top cryptocurrency fraud reported was investment scams with losses of 575 million dollars. The losses in 2021 were almost 60 times the loss in 2018. Bitcoin, Tether, and Ether were the top crypto people who used to pay scammers. To avoid getting scammed, here are the ways to detect scammers.
- Promises of free money or big profits
Anything that’s too good to be true? Please stay away from it, especially free money. No investments, whether it be stocks or crypto, can guarantee big profits and returns because, as most of us know, investments go up and down, and it’s uncertain.
- Demand payment in cryptocurrency
According to the FTC, no legitimate business will demand their customers to use cryptocurrency, whether to pay for something or protect your money. It’s almost always a scam.
- Unlicensed apps or sellers
As everyone’s interested in investing in cryptocurrency, more people are making their own applications for crypto and sometimes mixed with stock investments. Don’t fall for marketing tricks; only download and invest in apps licensed by the government. Also, be careful when investing through brokers. It’s best to invest in crypto through approved applications.
- Squid Game scam
Meme coins are trendy, like Dogecoin and the Shiba Inu coin. Everyone talked about and invested in it when the Squid Game coin was released. Remember that scam? Just about two weeks after the coin launched, someone did a rug-pull, bringing down the coin value to 0 dollars, and the coin turned out to be a major scam. Another thing to note is that investors couldn’t sell their Squid Game coins during the surge. Be careful of coins where “you can buy but not sell.”
- Grammatical errors and typos
Unprofessional at its finest. Scams usually contain plenty of grammatical errors and typos on site. For example, the SquidGame.cash site that people noticed had plenty of typos (which then turned out to be a scam).
- Fake celebrity or influencer endorsements
Scammers will fake celebrity and/or influencer endorsements to look credible and popular. It’s easy to fake those! Even if it’s not fake, don’t blatantly believe in reviews or recommendations from anyone.
- Crypto romance
This is a very interesting type of scam. You might meet scammers on online dating sites, expecting to meet the love of your life. But sadly, slowly, the scammers will try bringing up cryptocurrency and offer you investment advice or even ask you to invest through them. Don’t fall for it. Once you send them the money or crypto, you won’t get them back.
- Unsure founders and team
With most businesses, including crypto investments, it should be easy to find out who’s behind the business and have a social media presence. Scams will not have any information about the team members.
- Little to no explanation on the project
Most cryptocurrencies will explain the coin’s purpose, how it’s designed, and what the coin will do. If there are little to no or weird undetailed explanations, stay away.
How To Report Crypto Scams?
- Contact your bank if you have made payments using debit or credit cards.
- Report to the FTC, which you can visit through this link.
- Report to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) through this link.
- Report to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through this link.
- Report to the FBI if the scam involves blackmail or extortion through this link.
Tips Before Investing In Cryptocurrency
- Stay from suspicious content.
- Stay away from “too good to be true.”
- Have strong online security. Create strong passwords, and don’t share your codes with anyone.
- Stay away from unusual payments.
- Conduct research on the crypto, investing site, etc, before investing. Find out if there are scam reviews or suspicions.
- Don’t type crypto sites through google. For example, don’t type “Pancake Swap” on Google; instead, either bookmark Pancake Swap’s real site or keep their URL somewhere. Scammers tend to impersonate established sites.
- Avoid cryptocurrency giveaways.
- Don’t invest in something that you don’t understand.
- Don’t invest just because it’s trendy or your friends told you to.
- No legit business will contact you anywhere (social media or email) for money.
- Don’t just click any link you receive.
- Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose.
Conclusion
With everyone getting interested in cryptocurrency investments, there will also be plenty of scammers who want to take advantage of this situation. If you are a victim of a scam, you could report it to your bank, the FTC, CFTC, SEC, or the FBI. To prevent the worst from happening, it’s essential for everyone to be aware of scams, conduct intense research before investing, and don’t fall for false promises.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Are cryptocurrency scams on the rise?
Yes. There has been plenty of news about cryptocurrency scams globally.
- What are the most common cryptocurrency scams?
The most common crypto scams are phishing scams and fake investing platforms.
