In every world crisis, someone takes this as an opportunity to try and take advantage of the despair of others. Being selling goods with high demand in a ridiculous over-priced tag or take advantage of the most desperate and less educated.
Be sure that this COVID-19 pandemic and consequent economic crisis will bring, sooner or later, this type of behavior.
With this in mind, we are writing this blog post because we want to make you aware of some of the issues and help you to avoid the most common of the so-called scams.
As the FBI has already warned: the scammers’ focus has shifted to cryptocurrency holders, since this is one of the areas where they had accounted more scams during the Corona Virus pandemic.
This happens because as the outbreak continues to spread devastation across the world, there is expected to be an increase of people who turn to cryptocurrency, being for the investment opportunity or for curiosity.
Like at any time in cryptocurrency’s history, with a wave of new users in this industry, come the scammers with the Ponzi schemes and pump-and-dumps. You may think that this doesn’t matter to a savvy crypto-investor as yourself, but if you think about all of the masterminds beyond financial crimes and money laundering plans that normally plot in the traditional financial industry, that now can be focused in trying to replicate those schemes in the cryptocurrency world, maybe it’s important to be more aware than ever in these difficult times.
Social Media & E-mail Impersonators
A rather easy way for scammers to get to you and to make you trust them is to impersonate someone influential in the industry of cryptocurrency. And what better channel to do so as the various social media were you are more vulnerable and with your guard down.
On the opposite side of the coin, there are also scam attempts done via email. This is a channel where most of us trust the content we see there, and if the sender has a name that sounds familiar to you, such as an author of many texts you’ve read about cryptocurrency, you may be compelled to trust the information you are reading.
When you find yourself receiving this type of message or email, you want to be very skeptical and always take it with a grain of salt.
Coin Shillers’s & Bitcoin Mining
These coin shillers approach people who have some type of influence in the industry and they make an offer to pay them to support their coins. Be aware that the receiver of these offers can be even the small influencers of the crypto industry.
When you see anyone talking about a specific coin that you never heard about, keep in mind that it’s very likely that they’re being paid to advise it and that as so, you should keep that in mind when reading their words.
In addition to this, there are a lot of people who seem to be legit and maybe even feel like they are legitimate, that want to be your advisors and help you invest in the crypto sector.
The red flag should go off when they are requiring some kind of upfront payment from you. Every time that someone asks you for money frequently it is a sign that they are trying to take advantage of you.
Exchange Wallets
The best practice you can make, when owning your first investment in cryptocurrency, is to put it in your own wallet.
Be aware of the small cryptocurrency exchanges that are trying to get you to support their exchanges and ask you to put a lot of the money upfront.
If you want to buy crypto, you should buy it from big players who curates the crypto they offer, since the smaller the seller is and the most amount of crypto coins they offer, the bigger the risk.
Crypto Loans
Another common scam approach happens in this industry’s area: loans using your cryptocurrency as collateral.
Loans accepting cryptoassets like Bitcoin and Ethereum as collateral is a common practice and, most of the time, when dealing with companies that are established in the market and with renowned experience, is a very secure practice.
The risk arises when you are dealing with recent companies and when these ask you for an upfront payment before they grant you your loan. These scams often are made via Telegram groups, so you can discard any company that tries to provide you loans via these message apps since it’s a very fair red flag.
In conclusion
The crypto world is full of opportunities, but it’s also a territory very exposed to scams. So we at Nebeus want to encourage you to do as much research, vigilance and security best-practices as you can before you make a decision about your crypto wallet. We hope that this type of blog content will help you avoid being scammed out of your coins.
Here at Nebeus, we distinguish ourselves for privacy and security and also count with more than 5 years of experience in the cryptocurrency industry. We find that the most secure way to proceed is to all of the operations take place inside your own personal account and the loan is instantly available in your user wallet.
In addition to this attention and care for your safety, we also offer you one of the industry’s best loan-to-value.
So if you find yourself in need of a loan, you can be sure that your cryptocurrency is safe with us at Nebeus.
