scammers want your crypto it’s a scam it’s a scam and I refuse to be scammed and they’ll do almost anything to get it they spend day and night plotting new ways to take candy from a baby and their methods are Shameless and sadly all too often highly effective in crypto nothing is more important than keeping what you have to do that you need to understand the traps that scammers have laid for you so in this video we’re going to learn the top five scams to watch out for in 2025 how they work and how you can avoid them my name is guy and if you don’t want to lose your crypto this is a video you can’t afford to miss now most scams pray on your emotions particularly greed your feelings of fomo under normal circumstances many of us will be wary of investment opportunities that seem too good to be true but if you catch a bad case of fomo this SK skepticism can unravel with devastating consequences crypto is an extremely powerful fomo generator at the best of times and this makes it fertile ground for scammers to thrive in this is because investment returns that sound too good to be true are in fact regular occurrences in the crypto market and nowhere is this more true than in the world of crypto airdrops the saying there’s no such thing as a free lunch rang true for centuries until the these things came along airdrops are basically free crypto to qualify for one you’ll normally have to perform some action on a blockchain at least once and perhaps many times this will incur transaction fees and you may have to move funds around on chain two but crucially you’re not buying or investing in anything per se if you qualify you’ll be able to claim an allocation of crypto for free and it may even be worth a life-changing amount of money now this is obviously an extremely attractive proposition and scammers have made an absolute field day of it by advertising fake airdrops now the problem is most acute over on X the site formerly known as Twitter is the Town Square of crypto and it is infested with scumbags promoting airdrop scams you can see them both in paid ads and in the replies to virtually any post about crypto on the site now the situation has improved recently as X now Flags many of these nuisance posts as either spam or offensive content and hides them from view however if you follow or interact with any crypto related content on X you will most likely be tagged directly in scam posts at some point and possibly every day unlike on the public timeline X does not filter out this kind of junk from your mentions here’s a post one of our team members was tagged in recently it’s a classic airdrop scam the post appears to share a link to a new airdrop from coinbase’s ethereum layer 2 blockchain base apparently there’s $100 million worth of a new token being aird dropped to base chain users who click through this link and connect their wallets to the airdrop claim page of course all of this is completely fake there is no base airdrop there is no token associated with Bas and the official base account on x clearly states in its bio quote we have no plans to issue a new network token and we’re inclined to take their word for it however if you’re not paying attention then you might think Bas looks like an ideal candidate for a lucrative Future air drop this is simply because it’s a RedHot crypto project that does not have any Associated token and this is how every airdrop begins if a base airdrop were ever to happen many people would leap at the opportunity to participate and this creates the perfect conditions for a scam now the account that randomly tagged us is following zero people and has zero followers not very convincing but the only purpose of this account is to show us this fake airdrop post from another account the airdrop post itself appears quite well composed with no careless English mistakes nor any Telltale hurry up act now calls to action most sneaky of all though is how the scammers have disguised a link to their scam under what appears to be an authentic bass hyperlink the link reads b.org airdrop now I happen to know that b.org is the official domain of bass that’s the first domain that appears in Google search results not a paid ad placement by the way and it’s also in the bio of the official X account however this airdrop link is just underlined text the text does contain an embedded hyperlink but it’s not b.org airdrop if we look on our desktop browser hovering over this link shows us the real address which is entirely different I’m not going to click on this link because I’m completely sure it’s a scam and you truly cannot be too careful about clicking on scam links if you’re not sure about a link wherever it may be then don’t click on it it’s not worth it instead of clicking then let’s try typing this official URL into our browser this can help make sure you don’t click on deceptive links that redirect you to heaven knows where so if we go to b.org then yep as expected it’s the official site for base now what if we add for/ airdrop to the URL let’s see 404 this page could not be found well surprise surprise there is no Bas airdrop now let’s just suppose you had thought this airdrop was real and you clicked on the link and followed through what might have happened well we’re not going to test it out but the most likely outcome is that your wallet would be drained this happens when you connect your wallet to a web3 app that prompts you to sign some transaction if you’ve interacted with dii protocols before you’ll be used to Smart contracts prompting you to grant them some permissions related to your token balances nothing unusual about that so you connect your wallet to the claim airdrop page sign a transaction and think nothing of it except this time it’s a malicious smart contract and you just granted it permission to transfer the entire contents of your wallet to the scammer rats in this case it was a fake airdrop that lured you into a wallet drainer but it didn’t have to be scammers will use whatever trick they can to get you to interact with malicious smart contracts and in defi the possibilities are endless this is why you should be very careful about which daps you connect your wallet to and especially which permissions you’re signing away to Smart contracts now being careful begins with good wallet hygiene for this a tool like ether scans token approvals is your best friend because it allows you to review and revoke permissions given to any dap as a general rule it’s a good idea to revoke permissions to any dap that you’re not actively using I’ll leave a link to this tool in the description I’ll also point out that the very best wallet hygiene means keeping your crypto in a hardware wallet whenever you aren’t actively using it and if you don’t have one yet you’re in luck the coin Bureau deals page has exclusive discounts and offers on the best hardware wallets these deals won’t be around forever though so do check them out while you still can using the link in the description now another element common to many different crypto scams including but not limited to fake airdrops is impersonation of course deceiving others into thinking you’re some other reputable person is a trick As Old As Time Technologies from the printing press to the telephone and internet have been making this easier for centuries but in recent years the emergence of deep fakes has blown the lid of Pandora’s Box scammers can now create convincing videos of anyone saying anything and distribute them to an unlimited number of people near instantly combine this with an urgent call to action involving crypto and you have a very power ful fomo generator now adding to the power of these videos is the way they’re distributed if you see Elon Musk appearing to promote a new crypto investment opportunity in a video posted to some Anonymous X account it’s likely to arouse suspicion however if you’re watching Youtube and the same video starts playing as an advertisement you’re more likely to be caught with your guard down it wasn’t so long ago that ads on YouTube were comparable to TV ads mostly paid for by well-known companies who you wouldn’t expect to rob you outright but those days are long gone and the site is now a wash with junk ads unfortunately including Brazen deep fake crypto scams these videos are sometimes released to coincide with Market or Project Specific events for maximum effect for example during Ripple’s legal battle with the SEC any ruling favorable to Ripple would be followed by videos of CEO Brad garlinghouse appearing to thank the community with some generous xrp giveaway this would sometimes involve him telling you that all you need to do is send him some xrp and he’ll double or triple it and send it back to you this is an absurd proposition on the face of it but it works who doesn’t want Brad garlinghouse to multiply their money such is the persuasive power of deep fakes similarly Apple’s Tim Cook was also subject of a deep fake crypto scam released to coincide with Apple’s presentation of its new iPhone last year the use of public figures like cook who have nothing to do with crypto might stretch credulity for you and I but perhaps not so much for others who don’t know much about crypto on the contrary it might feel like they discovered a pot of gold before anybody else Apple doing crypto well that’s definitely going to the Moon I’d better get in early the Deep fake videos themselves vary in quality significantly if you know you’re looking at a deep fake it can be easy to spot the signs mouths look unreal and speech has an unhuman quality however if you’re not expecting to see a deep fake then it’s quite easy to be fooled and more importantly the Deep fakes of today are the worst and most unconvincing that they will ever be the telltale signs of deep fakery are probably going to be ironed out sooner rather than later after this happens you’ll have to rely on cues other than the audio and picture as is the case with all scams skepticism and patience are your greatest defense you should ask yourself why would this person be urging you to rush into a crypto investment opportunity via an advert on social media is this not strange and out of character why would they do such a thing and does it not all sound too good to be true in many if not all cases you’ll find the entire premise of the video falls apart under the slightest scrutiny moving on there’s another more low tech form of impersonation based crypto scam that is leaving victims shattered financially and emotionally it’s the so-called Pig butchering scam and it is the height of Cruelty Pig butchering scams are so called because the scammers will spend weeks or even months fattening up victims only to slaughter them mercilessly these scams often begin with the victim receiving a text or email out of the blue the message may even be something as abrupt as text stop to unsubscribe from marketing Communications the moment you respond the scammers will have confirmation that your phone number or email address are in active use by a real person from then on you will be their target you’ll be contacted Again by somebody on social media typically using a profile picture of an attractive person they’ll show interest in you and if you bite you’re cooked fattening you up entails spending weeks or even months building a relationship of trust often with an elements of romance involved at some point they’ll start talking about crypto persuade you to buy some and allow them to invest it on your behalf now you’ll probably initially see a significant gain on the investment over a period of time this is an essential part of the scheme to persuade you that it works and you should invest more money into It ultimately though you will never be able to cash out and you may be charged fees just for trying to do so what’s really evil though is when the scammers set up fraudulent crypto recovery sites so they can scam their victims who’ve been bled dry all over again these companies demand upfront crypto payments to recover crypto that they themselves stole from the same victims these scammers really know how to destroy people’s lives as a rule of thumb then it’s best to ignore or block any stranger who contacts you completely out of the blue if you never give one of these people an opportunity to win your trust then you will never never be a victim of pig butchering and if someone you’ve known for say less than a year and never met in real life asks you to buy or send them crypto it is a huge red flag and you should run for the hills okay our next scam is a completely different approach instead of manipulating people via impersonation or the promise of some giveaway the scammers simply manipulate asset prices instead friendly enough the result is the same they generate fomo in this case I’m talking about pump and dump schemes now pump and dump schemes come in different shapes and sizes the classic formula involves telegram groups where organizers openly orchestrate price manipulation on centralized exchanges they’ll say something like we’re going to pump a crypto at 700 p.m. UTC on this exchange will drop the ticket at 655 as promised some IL liquid micro cap on an obscure exchange will start rallying like crazy out of nowhere the people in the groups are all part parties to this fraud some may profit from it most will get dumped on you don’t have to be a member of the pump and dump group to spot this kind of Market manipulation whether you’re looking at a sex or a DEX a violent and abrupt rally coupled with an odd spike in volume should make you very suspicious pumps attract a lot of attention and as fomo sets in more Market participants will typically start piling on at the worst possible moment the people behind the pump will then Sell aggressively nuking the chart and causing a lot of unsuspecting pump Chasers to lose money the good news is that these schemes are mostly confined to the lower rungs of the crypto Market small cap cryptos with low liquidity and trading volume are subject to high slippage meaning that it does not take a great deal of buying or selling to move the price up and down a lot the opposite is true of large caps and Majors I’ll caveat that though by saying that all corners of the crypto Market are manipulated but in different ways and by different actors your local pump and dump telegram group is not going to be manipulating the prices of large cap cryptos anytime soon however market makers and other institutional players absolutely will and come to think of it the outcome is exactly the same for you regardless of who’s doing it now large cap cryptos tend to pump and dump around big events for that particular crypto and there’s a case to be made that the news merely provides plausible deniability for one quum price manipulation by institutions for these cryptos your best defense against scammy price action is to avoid trading during events that predictably provide this kind of narrative cover such as fomc meetings and last but not least we couldn’t end this video without discussing good old-fashioned rug pools rugs are the staple of any DG’s diet because nowadays the question facing traders of small cap cryptos on chain is not will this crypto rug but but how long until this crypto rugs this is just the price of doing business in the mcoin casino and it’s why you should never ever go all in on any shitcoin if you want to trade cryptos on chain you are all but guaranteed to get rugged at some point and you should manage your risk based on this assumption if you’re not sure what a rug is it’s when the developer or team behind a crypto traded on decentralized exchanges drains the liquidity from the smart contract that makes onchain Trading possible known as the liquidity pool this is akin to taking all of the money in the pot and running with it or in other words pulling the rug from under the feet of everyone who bought that crypto in practice there are many different catalysts that can send small cap cryptos to zero in a hurry not all of them entail the developer withdrawing liquidity but it’s common to say that the crypto rugged in any case so if you really don’t want to get rugged maybe it’s best to stay on Central exchanges where at least the developer can’t Rob You by pulling the liquidity if you do trade on chain you should use a tool like Dex screener or Dex tools to inspect your cryptos of Interest I’ll link to both in the description in particular you want to check if the tokens creator has renounced their ownership of it and whether the liquidity pool or LP has been locked generally speaking if the answer to one or both of these questions is no you’re at risk of being rugged now there are many more scams out there in the cryptoverse waiting for us to let our guard down but as we’ve seen most scams have some elements in common namely they seek to generate fomo and a sense of urgency and they prey on your susceptibility to these emotions if you stay wary of these telltale signs you’ll develop a trained eye and be able to spot most scams a mile off just remember it’s the job of the scammer to innovate and stay one step ahead of everyone who thinks they’re too smart to fall victim to a scam so good luck and stay vigilant and if you got something out of this video go ahead and smash the like button if you haven’t already make sure you’re subscribed and have your bell notifications switched on so you never miss another upload and why not check out our latest video over here thanks for watching and I’ll see you again soon [Music]
