Scam in cryptocurrency: schemes of scammers and how to protect yourself from them. According to statistics from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), from October 2020 to March 31, 2021, Americans lost more than $80 million in fraudulent schemes with cryptocurrencies. Compared to the same period of 2019-2020, the amount of damage increased tenfold. Such a surge can be explained by the unprecedented growth in the popularity of cryptocurrencies in recent months. In addition, the record rise in the bitcoin exchange rate, which in April 2021 rose to $ 63 thousand, also spurred criminals. On average, according to the FTC, one person lost $1.9 thousand due to attacks by so-called scammers. The FTC lists several types of scams in cryptocurrency that were especially popular with scammers during the period specified in the commission document. In this article, we will understand what a scam in cryptocurrency is and what you need to pay attention to in order not to become a victim of fraudsters. Scheme No. 1: Fraudulent sites Those who complained to the FTC talked about the sites where they got on someone's advice. They offered to make money on investments in cryptocurrency. According to the victims, often such sites even create the illusion that your investments bring income, but at the moment when you are trying to take your profit, for example, you are asked to transfer more tokens to the account. As a result, you are left with nothing. This type of scam can include fraudulent emails, phishing sites and fake mobile applications. With the help of such schemes, criminals impersonate someone else (for example, a crypto exchange), gain access to the client's information or force him to transfer money to his account. Scheme No. 2: Advertising with "celebrities" Another variant of the fraudulent scheme is to use the image of a famous person who advertises, say, a free distribution of cryptocurrency. Extortionists often pretend to be Elon Musk, Bill Gates or Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Of the $80 million mentioned in the FTC statistics, $2 million is money stolen through the illegal use of the image of Elon Musk. By the way, Steve Wozniak recently lost a lawsuit against YouTube, which he filed because of a video on the service. In a video made with the help of deepfake technology, Wozniak "announced" the distribution of cryptocurrency, which eventually turned out to be fraud. However, the judge sided with YouTube. Scheme No. 3: Dating sites and apps Another way to get your coins is through dating sites and apps. Scammers use them to get acquainted with the user, and then advertise to him some "promising" cryptocurrency. The fake soulmate asks to transfer to him/her a certain amount of money (usually in digital assets), which he promises to invest in a promising project. Naturally, these funds do not go to any deposits. Scheme No. 4: Financial pyramids Sometimes scammers act big and launch large crypto projects, which eventually turn out to be a pyramid scheme. New customers are lured there, I promise fabulous benefits. That's just not now, but after some time. As an example, the OneCoin project that appeared in the mid-2010s, launched by a native of Bulgaria, Ruzha Ignatova. OneCoin was announced as an educational service for trading with its own cryptocurrency. To get OneCoin cryptocurrency, it was necessary to buy an educational course, which cost from € 100 to € 118 thousand. The more expensive the lessons were purchased, the more tokens the client allegedly had to get. It was possible to exchange tokens for euros only through OneCoin's own exchange. As a result, it turned out that OneCoin did not have a blockchain, that is, the tokens were just a fiction. In 2017, the exchange stopped working without warning, and Ignatova is still hiding from law enforcement agencies. The damage from OneCoin's activities is estimated at $4 billion. Scheme №5: Fraudulent ICOs Another "high-budget" type of scam in cryptocurrency is fraud during the ICO. ICO is the attraction of money from investors by selling them cryptocurrency tokens. There are several types of ICO-related scam, but their essence is the same. Scammers attract investors' money, and then disappear - naturally, without fulfilling their part of the obligations. In 2018, investors lost about $100 million on fraudulent ICOs. Scheme No. 6: Shitcoins Unlike the creators of financial pyramids and ICO scammers, the creators of shitcoins are not formally engaged in fraud. A shitcoin (from the English shit coin) is a cryptocurrency that does not represent and will never represent any value. Roughly speaking, this is a Doge meme currency, but without the support of Elon Musk. In order for people to find out about shitcoin, they give it the loudest possible name like ASS, Pussy, Poo and so on. There is even a SCAM coin, the capitalization of which for a short time soared to $ 70 million. Often, the main task of shitcoins is to cash in on inexperienced investors who have heard about cryptocurrency somewhere, but have not conducted any market research. As a result, such people invest money in virtual currency, which was initially "dead", but is cheap compared to BTC and ETH. Experienced investors "help" them in this. By collusion, they artificially inflate the cost of a certain shitcoin, attracting the attention of newcomers to it. Then they collect all the dividends before the value of the cryptocurrency drops to almost zero. This scheme is called Pump and Dump. How not to become a victim of a scam. According to statistics provided by the FTC, users aged 20 to 49 years usually fall into fraudulent schemes. This happens less often with the older generation. But if they are still "bred", then the amount with which the victim leaves is usually higher - $ 3.2 thousand against $ 1.9 thousand. Therefore, I advise you to carefully study each cryptocurrency before investing in it, and tell your relatives about the ways of fraud with digital money. After all, it is obvious that the more popular bitcoin is, the more speculators will appear who want to cash in on this topic.