Avoiding Crypto Scams

I was going through my web 3.0 wallets and examining their contents on the various blockchain explorers. In the process, I was able to see and remember some scam project tokens that I had been unfortunate to have invested in at one time or the other. I am posting this article based on those experiences.

The crypto space is filled with multiple frauds and scams and there is usually news of one crypto-related embezzlement or the other just about every week. Many hopeful investors have been left in tears with their investments stolen because they invested in a scam project.

A lot has already been said about how to identify and avoid scams but I still want to share my thoughts on the issue. Based on my own observations, the following are the red flags and things that could indicate that a particular new crypto project could be a potential scam.

1. The project is named based on popular or trending events/projects/news. For instance, following the recent Ethereum merge, a number of scam projects have emerged claiming to be forks of Ethereum and trying to lure unsuspecting persons. Another famous example was the Squid game project.

2. The project has no clear road map. Each project is supposed to define their purpose, including how and when they plan to achieve it. If a project does not have a clearly defined road map, its probably because they only plan to run away with your money.

3. The project says that they plan to list on all the "Big name" exchanges immediately after they launch. If a new project is well funded with strong backers, that may be possible. But for most new projects, listing on big exchanges such as Coinbase or Binance on launch is not possible due to the high requirements. So if a new project casually claims big listings when they launch, it could be a possible scam using the hope of a big exchange listing as a ploy to lure people.

4. The project claims huge listing prices. The project claims they will be listing their tokens at very huge prices that are not realistic. The reason behind this is to entice you into thinking that you will make big profits if you buy their token at an early stage.

5. The project has a poor or low quality website which is sometimes a copy of another website. These websites typically have no useful information.Most times, the only information promoted on such websites is tokens sales.

6. The project devs/owners are unknown and hidden. The people behind a scam project usually avoid giving out their data or identifying themselves. They normally claim that Satoshi, the bitcoin founder is anonymous so they don't need to be known. The truth is that any serious project wouldn't mind revealing the brains behind the project.

7.No social media engagement. Scam projects shy away from engaging the community members via social media or other means. Even when they have social media, they usually turn off commenting and user messages. This is because they don't want people to raise alarms and warn unsuspecting members.

There are numerous other warning signs but these are some of the warning signs that may point out a potential scam. When we come across a project, it is normal for us to get excited by the promises and forget to watch out for signals that this may be a scam.

For any project you like, before investing, calm down, relax, do your research and if you decide to invest, don't invest more than you can afford to lose.

However, it is good to note that even when we do our best, we might still fall victim to a well executed scam. However, with these pointers, we should be able to reduce the number of scams we fall for.

Thanks for reading.