Airdrop Scams, Minereum (MNEB) and VeloChain (VELO), Land on Binance Smart Chain
Airdrop Scams, Minereum (MNEB) and VeloChain (VELO), Land on Binance Smart Chain
Scammers intensify efforts on the BSC, now sending millions of fake tokens to users with false promises for big rewards.
Fake Airdropped Tokens
Over the last two weeks, two major airdrop scams, including the phising token MNEB and fake replica tokens of VELO, were sent to millions of user wallet addresses.
Airdrop scams have become widespread across Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Scammers are able to lure victims into paying a fee to unlock the airdropped tokens. What’s troubling is the fake tokens will appear in one’s wallet valued at thousands up to millions of dollars, so the expensive fee seems worthwhile.
“People are getting scammed in growing numbers. So far this year, over $2.6 billion has been grabbed, according to Chainalysis, a New York-based blockchain researcher,” stated Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou and Charlie Wells in a recent Bloomberg article published July 7th, 2021.
At the current moment, a minimum of 5 million wallet addresses have been sent the fake MNEB and VELO tokens. The insidious airdrop scamming practice could result in millions or even billions of more USD being stolen.
How These Scammers Steal Your Money
The fake airdropped tokens in one’s wallet can not be traded or exchanged. Instead, users are instructed to go to a fake replica website of the real project. Once there, users are instructed to “unlock” the tokens by paying the protocol anywhere from 0.3 - 0.9 BNB. This may also grant spending access to your wallet.
Unfortunately, those who unlock the tokens will never receive real compensation for the fake airdropped tokens. What is even more concerning is there are rumors of users that have connected to these fake sites, only to have the entire crypto holdings in their wallet stolen.
Spotting Airdrop Scams
Luckily, there are multiple effective ways to help users spot and identify crypto airdrop scams and scams in general. The first and perhaps best way to spot an airdrop scam is to try and exchange out of the airdropped token. If this proves impossible or unable, you may be a potential victim of an airdrop scam.
When attempting to exchange tokens don't interact with any untrusted contracts. Stick to trusted exchanges such as PancakeSwap, ApeSwap, DoDo etc.
The second way to spot an airdrop scam is to check the market cap and liquidity of the suspected project in question. To do this, users should go to PooCoin or another token tracking website. For this example, we will examine MNEB on PooCoin.
If a user was airdropped 150,000 MNEB reflecting MNE’s price, which is .10 according to CoinMarketCap, the user thinks they have $15,000 worth of MNEB tokens. A fee of .3 BNB to claim $15,000 sounds great. The only issue is the user will never get that $15,000.
The market cap of MNEB on PooCoin is shown to be just above $24 billion (found in green on the left). A $24 billion dollar market cap is a major red flag, as that would mean that this project is one of the top ten projects in Decentralized Finance (DeFi).
However, if one examines the MNEB/BNB LP holdings shown right below in green, it would show a liquidity of just over $12,000. This means it is legitimately impossible to exchange $15,000 worth of airdropped MNEB tokens.
Fake Website's
The same is shown below for the fake VELO and the real VELO website. VELO’s fake website is currently down. To avoid interacting with fake websites it is crucial to due diligence on projects media channel's.
When searching for your projects media channels be sure to search for all results. Don't just click the Twitter from the website and assume it is the real source. Double check directly on Twitter and ensure there isnt a larger media channel that is the real one.
Further, users can utilize CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko to receive official links to socials. Following key influencers can also help identify real social channels. If nobody large is following the project it poses a much higher risk of being fake or experiencing malicious intent.
VELO’s fake website (on the left) and VELO’s real website (on the right)
General Safety
As efforts intensify to develop the next world changing protocol, so to do the efforts of scammers looking to take advantage of naive crypto investors. The most important thing above all is to learn how to avoid such scams. It is unlikely that scammers will go away on their own.
Understanding and learning their tricks and tactics is the best way to stay in front of them. Be sure to also share information with friends and family so they too can avoid falling victim to scam artists.
BSC News implores its readers to Do Your Own Research (DYOR) before investing in or trading any unfamiliar tokens.