The complete crypto scam catalogue
Scams in crypto are not creative. There are about a dozen, they recur endlessly, and each has a tell. Learn the tells once.
The giveaway
"Send 1 ETH, receive 2 ETH back." Often on a hijacked or lookalike account, sometimes a livestream using old footage of a well known figure.
The tell: nobody has ever given away money for money. Not once. The entire category is fake.
Fake support
You post a problem publicly, and within minutes someone helpful appears in your replies or direct messages. They send you to a "validation" or "sync" page that asks for your seed phrase.
The tell: they contacted you, and the process involves your seed phrase. Real support never does either.
Pig butchering, or the long romance scam
A stranger builds a relationship over weeks or months. Nothing is asked for early. Eventually they mention an investment platform, often showing you real looking gains on it. Small withdrawals work. Large ones require a "tax" or "unlock fee", which is also stolen.
The tell: the relationship arrived unsolicited, and the platform was introduced by them. Working small withdrawals are the hook, not proof.
The wallet drainer
A site promises an airdrop, a mint or a claim. You connect and are asked to sign. The signature grants permission to move your tokens, and a bot empties the wallet within seconds.
The tell: connecting to a site never requires a signature. If a claim page asks you to approve a transaction before you have received anything, close it.
The fake token
A token using the same name, ticker and logo as a real project. Bought from a link in a reply, a Telegram message or a search advert.
The tell: the contract address did not come from the project's own website. It never should come from anywhere else.
The fake app or extension
A wallet in an app store or extension store that is not the real one. It generates a seed the attacker already has, or captures the one you import.
The tell: you found it by searching rather than by going to the official domain and following its download link.
The recovery scam
After you have been scammed, someone offers to recover the funds for an upfront fee. Sometimes they claim to be a firm, a hacker, or law enforcement.
The tell: they contacted you, and there is a fee. Victims of one scam are put on lists and targeted again deliberately.
The exit scam or soft rug
A real looking project with a website, a roadmap and a community. Development slows, the team goes quiet, liquidity is withdrawn and the token goes to zero.
The tell: covered in full in the next module, because spotting it before you buy is a skill worth having.
The address poisoning attack
You receive a tiny transaction from an address whose first and last characters match one you use. Later you copy an address from your history and get theirs.
The tell: never copy an address from transaction history. Copy it from the source every time, and check the middle characters, not just the ends.
The seed phrase "found wallet"
Someone publicly shares a seed phrase to a wallet holding tokens, seemingly by accident. The wallet has tokens but no gas. When you send gas to move them, a bot takes it instantly.
The tell: free money that requires you to send money first. Always.
BEFORE YOU MOVE ON
Common questions
What is pig butchering?
A long term scam where someone builds a personal or romantic relationship over weeks before introducing a fake investment platform. It is the highest value crypto scam category and it targets careful people over months.
Someone is offering to recover my stolen crypto. Is it real?
No. Recovery services that contact you are a second scam aimed at the same victim. Legitimate recovery is essentially never possible and would never be sold by cold outreach.
Risk warning: crypto is highly volatile and largely unregulated. You can lose everything you put in. Nothing here is financial, investment or tax advice.