Crypto Scams From ADA to Z

By Dominic Alvieri

12-31-2021

Cryptocurrency price records were challenged by volume records of crypto scams this year. Broad Wall Street adoption brought out fraudsters from all corners of the world. Coinbase and Robinhood went public this year and zero-day exploits broke records. Elon Musk became the ultimate crypto spokesman.

Crypto exchanges, DeFi platforms and personal accounts were hacked. Verified social media accounts were breached to further expand crypto fraud this year. Several instances of leveraging smart contract exploitation begins with (redacted)

This is a hacked Twitter account below that attempted a Binance giveaway scam.

January roared in this year with the events at the Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021. Financial and criminal litigators sharpened their pencils and went to work. Besides the slew of criminal prosecutions cryptocurrency regulation framework was hashed. Crypto regulation is coming sooner rather than later.

Stable coins are under reporting assets and deficits abound. Stable coins require serious attention from regulators in my professional view.

Elon Musk became the spokesman for cryptocurrencies this year even making an appearance on Saturday Night live sparking a selling frenzy. Crypto traders hang on to every tweet and make split second decisions in the middle of the night based on Elon's words.

Scammers took note.

One of the many Musk memes

Endless cryptocurrency frauds

Hurry up and take part in all of the fake giveaways using any name and company to gain your trust and get your digital assets.

MicroStrategy

Cardano

Giveaways, Events and AirDrops are all ways to say good bye to your crypto.

Twitter

Social platforms and anything that could make a buck was used. Twittertoken.[live] is still active. Several variations were attempted this year. BEP20 tokens made it easy for anyone to issue just about anything.

Winklevoss twins

Boss Baby themed crypto scam

Baby Coin Mania

UFC-Fantoken. Not a fair fight just fraud.

Account credential phishing skyrocketed

Ponzi-type crypto scams came back

These scams are not new but have come back with a vendetta this year. Send me one coin or token and I'll send you one back is a scam that has been around since Bitcoin began. Social media accounts have been big promoters of this old hoodwink.

Promoters or just outright crypto scammers?

Spider-Man token again timed with new movie launch

Bonus

Crypto miner coming with bootleg torrent download of new Spider-Man movie.

MetaMask fake support(s)

Year end holiday scam rush

Over 600 crypto scams have been personally reported and I can't list all the crypto scams this year but this gives you an idea into the year of zero-days and crypto scams this 2021 has been. Log4J critical logging exploit exploded on the scene late this year and will no doubt have a lingering impact.

Happy New Year

Crypto scams continue even on New Year's Eve and I'm sure I'll catch at least one on New Year's Day.

Crypto scams are not going away anytime soon.

How do the scammers get away with it?

In many cases they just don't give anything away at all. One new Twitter account allegedly gave away over $81,000 in under one month. Other instances have the scammers just recycle the crypto giving a token amount to a controlled account.

No one is auditing these giveaways.

A so called "Crypto Professor" with 120,000+ followers even set up a trading firm and site which have been closed. The site alleged an unsustainable 4-6% daily return, ie scam. Coming in January.

Meta New Year

Not from Facebook or Meta.

Do your due diligence

If it sounds like a duck...

The Cyber Show

by Dominic Alvieri

Twitter @AlvieriD