Warning signs of crypto scams
Most crypto scams want one of three things: your recovery phrase, a payment to their address, or your signature on something. If anyone asks for your 24 words, promises a guaranteed profit or rushes you, it is almost always a scam. Below are the most common tricks and how to check each one.
Fake support
Fake support is someone pretending to work for an exchange or wallet, usually reaching you by private message, comment or in a group. You mention a problem in a group, and minutes later a “support agent” messages you with a link to “fix the issue” or “sync your wallet”.
Real support doesn’t contact you first, answers only through official channels and never asks for your recovery phrase, private key or verification codes.
Recovery phrase phishing
Phishing is a site, app or form built to look like a real service so it can capture your recovery phrase or password. Fake wallet apps, sites with addresses that look like the real one and “wallet validation” forms are common examples.
The rule is simple: enter your 24 words only in your own wallet app, and only to restore it. No site, bot or person needs them for anything.
Address poisoning
Address poisoning is when a scammer sends a tiny transaction from an address whose first and last characters match one you know, so it appears in your history. The next time you copy an address from your history, you may pick theirs.
Always take addresses from the original source, not from your transaction history, and compare more than the first and last few characters.
Fake receipts in P2P trades
In peer-to-peer trades, a fake receipt is a made-up screenshot or text message showing a payment that never reached your account. A more complex version is the triangle scam, where money stolen from a third person is paid to you.
Trust only your own banking app, check that the sender’s name matches your counterparty and never continue a trade outside the platform’s protected process. An escrow smart contract locks the seller’s USDT before the buyer pays.
Pump groups and guaranteed returns
Pump or “signal” groups push many people to buy a thinly traded token at the same time so its price jumps and the organisers, who bought earlier, can sell to everyone else. The last buyers usually lose.
“Double your money” schemes, fixed daily returns and trading bots with certain profits work the same way. In crypto, no return is ever guaranteed.
Fake airdrops and tokens
A fake airdrop is a token or reward that asks you to connect your wallet to a site, sign something or enter your recovery phrase to claim it. Sometimes an unknown token with a website in its name simply appears in your wallet to lure you to that site.
Ignore tokens you don’t recognise and don’t visit their sites. Before signing anything, check exactly what you are approving.
How to check, and how Waletifi helps
- If anyone asks for your recovery phrase, end the conversation there.
- Open links and apps only from official sources, and check site addresses letter by letter.
- Treat urgency, strange discounts and guaranteed profits as red flags.
- Before you confirm, Waletifi’s review screen warns about look-alike addresses, fake tokens, new recipients and an @handle whose address has changed.
- Waletifi’s recovery phrase screens block screenshots, and the phrase is never put on the clipboard.
