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Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

practicalsecurity.substack.com

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Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#21

Post by irusensei »

wslh wrote: post #3

I suggest you the following exercise to see it with your own eyes: enter a Telegram channel on a top 100 cryptocurrency, say that you are trying to recover your wallet and... Suddenly a lot of scammer will contact you in less than 5' with techniques that you cannot imagine are real. For example, telegram handles with the same name as the channel admin but using unicode characters to make tou think it is the same acco…

Reminds me of an elaborate reverse scam where the person asking for help have some USDT or other tokens on that ethereum address and a script to immediately swipe the funds the scammer will use for gas.

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#22

Post by georgeecollins »

One thing I feel like I have learned from Reddit/ TikTok is the average person is terrible with money. Some VCs argue we should lower the bar to investing to democrative it. I am all for democracy, but maybe we would be better served if the average person didn't try to be a tycoon.

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#23

Post by smeej »

This is...not realistic on any level. I've been professionally investigating cryptocurrency scams/thefts/fraud since 2017.

This is at least twice as convoluted a process as is necessary to separate people from millions and millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies if the site stays up for a week. People don't bother spinning up stuff like this when the easy stuff works just fine.

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#24

Post by SkipperCat »

georgeecollins wrote: post #22

One thing I feel like I have learned from Reddit/ TikTok is the average person is terrible with money. Some VCs argue we should lower the bar to investing to democrative it. I am all for democracy, but maybe we would be better served if the average person didn't try to be a tycoon.

One of workplace tragedy in America is how we moved from professionally managed pensions to individual 401k retirement plans. Most folks have no business deciding asset allocation, managing risk, etc.

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#25

Post by virtue3 »

SkipperCat wrote: post #24
georgeecollins wrote: post #22

One thing I feel like I have learned from Reddit/ TikTok is the average person is terrible with money. Some VCs argue we should lower the bar to investing to democrative it. I am all for democracy, but maybe we would be better served if the average person didn't try to be a tycoon.

One of workplace tragedy in America is how we moved from professionally managed pensions to individual 401k retirement plans. Most folks have no business deciding asset allocation, managing risk, etc.

good thing the investment firms kept the fees the same tho :)

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#26

Post by paulpauper »

smeej wrote: post #23

This is...not realistic on any level. I've been professionally investigating cryptocurrency scams/thefts/fraud since 2017. This is at least twice as convoluted a process as is necessary to separate people from millions and millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies if the site stays up for a week. People don't bother spinning up stuff like this when the easy stuff works just fine.

Yeah a fake livestream of Elon Musk or Mike Saylor still makes hundreds of thousands of dollars/day undetected and untraced, no FBI involvement or arrests at all, still going strong to this day. Why waste time with this crap.

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#27

Post by paulpauper »

georgeecollins wrote: post #22

One thing I feel like I have learned from Reddit/ TikTok is the average person is terrible with money. Some VCs argue we should lower the bar to investing to democrative it. I am all for democracy, but maybe we would be better served if the average person didn't try to be a tycoon.

Two types of people: those who have money and those who have yet to be separated from it.

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#28

Post by Calavar »

Algemarin wrote: post #17
nradov wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the obfuscation? Most lotteries post the odds right on the main game page. What more do you want? https://www.calottery.com/draw-games/superlotto-plus#section...

> What more do you want? For it to be clear how unrealistic the odds are. They're not exactly broadcasting "you're 40 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to win the jackpot", instead their site screams "Millions Could Be Yours!". That is the dishonesty and obfuscation. Millions _could_ be yours, but they are very unlikely to be yours, in fact realistically approaching zero. While advance fee scams say "m…

At a certain point it falls to personal accountability. A would be lottery ticket buyer can get all that info in 30 seconds by googling "How likely am I win to win the lottery?" If they don't do that, that's on them.

Advance fee scams are different because 1) they are telling outright falsehoods and 2) they come cloaked in a broad variety of disguises, which means that a naive web search is not guaranteed to unveil the deception

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#29

Post by Terr_ »

georgeecollins wrote: post #22

One thing I feel like I have learned from Reddit/ TikTok is the average person is terrible with money. Some VCs argue we should lower the bar to investing to democrative it. I am all for democracy, but maybe we would be better served if the average person didn't try to be a tycoon.

I think the tricky thing is the distinction between:

(A) Democratization: Let everyone participate as individuals on a freshly equalized playing field that was previously so slanted they couldn't even try.

(B) Democratization: Encourage lots of small disorganized weaker players into the market as unwitting prey for existing interests that have already established themselves with regulatory or competitive edges that they retain/maintain indefinitely.

Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam

#30

Post by jfengel »

grotorea wrote: post #19
isawczuk wrote: post #9

If it was not a scam, you are ok to steal someone's savings. Maybe those type of scams are instant karma?

"You can't cheat an honest man" But there are plenty of cryptocurrency scams that don't require that. Just some place that looks like an exchange but is actually a money hole.

Yeah, that expression is how people protect themselves. "Of course you got hurt. You were dishonest. It therefore cannot happen to me."

Honest people get cheated every day.

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