Cryptocurrencies have been the talk of town since past couple of years with its share of both good and bad. Crypto market has recently been introduced in the global financial markets, and with its immense risk factor, it has proved to make many people a lot of money. But the risk and the good always comes with a price, crypto market has since beginning faced a lot of scams.

Many huge crypto investors have also been fooled by these scams which shows the expertise of the scammers and how difficult it is avoid it in financial market.

What are crypto investment scams?

There are many scams and frauds associated with cryptocurrency that have been highlighted a lot recently. The cryptocurrency scams are basically when scammers trick the individuals to provide them with the cryptocurrency transactions and in return they steal their personal information as well as crypto account information stealing both money and personal information from the user.

Let’s look at 8 of the most common crypto currency scam so that you can avoid them if you ever cross by it:

1. Cryptocurrency apps which are not real: There are many cryptocurrency apps which are in actual not the real ones but the fake apps designed to take your personal information. These apps usually show themselves to be associated with any famous coin so as to gain people’s trust.

In order to avoid such apps, one must download only the authentic and renowned apps for dealing in cryptocurrency and not give in to schemes like double coins or other similar rewards.

1. Social Media Scams: Similar to other frauds in the financial markets, the crypto currency also faces these frauds like hacking of account, misuse of personal information etc. This can be done by sending fake emails or making fake calls where the user is asked to provide their login credential for either updating password, or for any other fake reward.

This situation can be avoided by ensuring you do not give your password to anyone on social media no matter how lucrative their scheme is. Also, you can download call recording app on your iPhone to ensure that all of your calls are recorded which you can later use in case of any crypto related cybercrime as evidence. There are many call recording apps available, the best phone call recorder iPhone offers is iCall. The app iCall offers free trial and later you can use it for nominal subscription fee over the year. The call recorder app will help you in keeping track of any scam calls, as you can later review your calls to find out if anyone has made fake calls to you.

1. Pump-and-Dump: This scheme is quite common among stock market users as well but is not widely used on crypto to scam people. What really happens in this scheme is that, some big names purchase a large amount of a certain currency making its price go up and create fake hype about it on media. This is the pump. Later, once people have invested in that currency, they take out all its money and sell it, bringing the price down to almost zero, which is basically the dump part of the scheme.

The scheme can be avoided only by making informed and wise crypto investment decisions. It is essential to do complete homework before investing in any currency.

1. ICO Scams: ICO scams are pretty common whereby the investors are asked to pinch in money for a fake coin.

Ensure you do through research before investing in any coin especially if it’s a new one.

1. Using YouTube videos to fraud potential investors: YouTube has been increasingly used to lure people into fake schemes. An id is created by using fake personal details on YouTube and then they start live session for people to join in and win giveaways at that particular point only. This does not give user time to think through and they fall into the scams to send cryptocurrency to the fake user in order to participate in the giveaway.

Like other social media scams, one must do proper research before trusting any online entity. On YouTube, only the verified accounts with grey badge should be trusted. One must also check the content posted by that particular channel and if that channel is recent or is there since a long time. Any sort of hasty decision in crypto can cause you a lot of money.

1. Rug Pulls: There are many digital games available which are used widely for crypto scams. The people in the game convince you to send money in form of crypto to the scammers, these games are generally made popular through various renowned social media websites. A squid game scam has been quite popular these days, also known as rug pull, whereby the scammers stole around 3million dollars through this scheme.

This can be avoided by researching on every investment transaction and by ensuring that you do not fall into any trap of getting large sums of money.

1. Ponzi Schemes: The business opportunity scams also known as Ponzi schemes whereby the investors are promised high rate of return which is obviously a scam.

This can be avoided by looking at the worth of that particular crypto coin in which you are investing and also read reviews regarding the individual or company offering such scheme.

1. Dating Websites and Apps: The dating apps have recently become hub for scammers where they look for individuals who are looking for a relationship and are asked to pay gifts etc. in form of crypto. Many people were reported to have lost great sums due to this romance scam.

Avoid such scams by not trusting anyone online easily and make sure to do background check before providing anyone with your personal details as well as crypto rewards.

Final Thoughts

There are many crypto scams available online which can be avoided with the help of thorough research online. You should also report such cybercrimes to authorities to ensure that scammers are captured, and phone recording through iCall, and email evidences can of great help in such cases.