4 Social Media Crypto Scams to Avoid

1. Classic Giveaway Scam

Widespread social media cryptocurrency scams follow a formula. Scammers copy big brands and/or impersonate celebrities to promote giveaways that promise to double your money if you deposit bitcoin or other crypto assets into a designated wallet address. Of course, it's not what you expect or hope for - as soon as you send your cryptocurrency, it's gone forever.

It's worth noting that legitimate giveaways sometimes circulate on Twitter, but be sure to do thorough research before interacting with a giveaway in any way.

2. Fake verified accounts

Another common trick that scammers use to steal crypto is to take advantage of trust marks used by social media platforms, such as blue checkmarks on Twitter. The problem is that scammers will create profile pictures with a blue checkmark or cleverly use wallpaper to add a blue checkmark in the right place to look authentic.

If the blue checkmark is real, it will show this box when you hover over it:


Facebook verified accounts display a similar message when you hover over the checkmark: "Facebook has confirmed that this recognized person has a real profile."

Real accounts on Instagram have similar signs, although without the pop-up. However, you can check the number of followers and other signs that an account is the real deal. The real Mark Cuban has 1.7 million followers on Instagram, while this fake account has only 31 followers.

However, this should not be completely trusted as there have been cases where hackers have managed to breach Twitter's security and spread crypto gifting scams through official Twitter accounts belonging to high-profile individuals and companies. Fake accounts used in this latest scam included Kayne West, Barack Obama, Apple and Uber.

Another thing to watch out for is people using Ethereum domains as part of their handle, as many legitimate (but not officially verified) people do. For those who don't know, an Ethereum domain is a way to create a shortcut to share your identity on the Ethereum blockchain. Many well-known names use the .ETH domain, including Vitalik Buterin, Andreeson Horowitz investment partner Chris Dixon, non-fungible token (NFT) phenom Farokh Sarmad, and even socialite Paris Hilton.

3.Twitter Reply Scam

As noted above, hackers have a history of successfully breaking into Twitter accounts to increase the impact of their scams. While the large-scale nature of the 2020 breach is an extremely rare example, hackers often break into smaller, verified Twitter accounts and modify them to look like other legitimate accounts.

For example, a fraudster hacked the official verified account of Detroit Red Wings hockey player Troy Stecher, altered it to look like a "Saturday Night Live" Twitter feed, and used it for fraud.

Hackers will also use these verified accounts to respond to other high-profile accounts or viral tweets to gain more visibility. Mahbod Moghadam, who founded Rap Genius and Helladoge, aptly summarizes the "reply technique" on social media as "nobody reads your tweets, but they read your replies to famous people's tweets".

Therefore, if you read the replies and see a giveaway or other get rich quick crypto promotion, it is 99.9 percent certain that it is a scam.

4. Crypto Catfishing

Be wary of the new wave of Catfishers and fake accounts trying to separate you from your cryptocurrency by hacking into your direct messages (DMs). While sometimes legitimate opportunities can come from DMs, like when Busta Rhymes found the NFT designer through Twitter DMs, DMs often lead to scams. If someone sends you a link in a DM and you don't recognize them, don't click on it unless you've done a thorough background check.

We asked Eric Charles from NFT platform Origin Protocol how to distinguish legitimate DMs about crypto from fake ones on social media. His advice was this: "I tend to assume that most DMs are scams, but I will look at the person's profile on Twitter. Based on their activity, verification status, and when their account was created, I can determine if it looks legitimate or not."

You should be particularly careful with crypto. Unlike a credit card scam, where you can dispute transactions and get your money back, in crypto, whatever amount you send to someone cannot be disputed to a higher authority. So it's very important to do your due diligence and be careful.