There were are A LOT of dodgy people who tried to take advantage of me when I was new to crypto, and I assume they do it regularly to other beginners too.

Tough luck for them because I don't have any money to get scammed out of hahaha...

Here are a few scams I've witnessed on Reddit that specifically targeted newcomers like me. Please beware.

1. This is official Binance/Kraken/Crypto.com helpdesk representative. You need help?

When I was new, I asked your usual questions like how to trade, what are the recommended wallets, and how do I stake.

Immediately after, I had these assholes send me grammatically painful private messages, giving generic advice and pretending to be from Binance or whatever.

Since I don't have a wallet yet, they pushed me to open one on their website. It actually doesn't look like a scam site, but of course they're fake copies of legitimate wallets.

Once you transfer money to this wallet, they'll rob you blind.

2. "You need to connect your wallet to the dapps token interface"

That's an actual message my friend received after asking a question on a reputable and rising 3-letter blockchain's subreddit.

They tried to confuse her with big words like that, then gave instructions to "help" her sort everything out. Eventually, it just led to them asking for her seed phrase to "troubleshoot".

Don't.

3. ???? $SafeBabyRocketDoge ????| Potential x1000!! ???? / Doxxed team???? / CMC listing incoming ???? | Get in before moon ????????

Aka: the Rugpull.

I got invited to so many of these moonshot posts with titles very similar to the one above. The scammers emphasize the "hype" generated by their post ("It got 4000+ upvotes and 300+ comments!!") to convince me to buy in.

Surprise, I found out that all those upvotes and comments are from a network of shill accounts you can hire to boost your visibility on Reddit.

This fake hype is used to artificially drive the price upward. When it does, the founders dump all their coins which tanks the price.

Anyone who wasn't in on the scam from the beginning would be left with a worthless dead coin.

4. Limited time event! Send our company 1 ETH and we'll send you 2 ETH back.

I saw this first on Twitter, but they've expanded to Reddit DMs now.

Spoiler alert: they won't send you ETH back.

5. My investments had an amazing month and want to share my blessings. Here's some free random coins!

This is either a dusting attack or they just wanted to steal my coins straight.

How it works is, if you try to transfer, sell, or convert them you'll find that you need to visit a specific swap site and give permission for them to access your wallet.

By access I mean steal the contents. Don't touch them.

Vitalik is the only selfless angel in crypto and he's not in your DMs.

6. Search for [Wallet Name/Website Name] on Google

These asshats start by giving good and accurate info about crypto. I actually learned a lot from them.

However, they tell me to Google the name of a real wallet or exchange to use instead of giving the actual site.

This is because they bought an ad so that their copycat site shows up at the top of search results, above the actual legitimate wallet or website. If I downloaded the app or wallet on their site, then they would've gotten access to my coins.

Only download apps and wallets from official websites.

TLDR

There are multiple scams that thrive in Reddit. They specifically target newcomers who ask for crypto help or advice in comments/posts.

DON'T REPLY TO ANY PRIVATE MESSAGES ON REDDIT, unless you want to drag them along for a ride.

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Edit - Here are other scams you should watch out for here on Reddit:

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The Gas Scam from SuccumbedToReddit

Someone shares his seedphrase and reveals a wallet with several ERC20 tokens in it. You, being a bastard, try to move them to your own wallet but you need some gas. So you transfer some ETH to the wallet but the scammer set up a bot to snatch the ETH as soon as it lands.

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The Try My Strategy Scam from Optimal_Store

I get lots of DMs about these people who claim they’ve made thousands trading on [insert random unknown exchange] and that they’d like me to try their strategy lol

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The Fake Youtube Livestream Scam from NorbeeNorbee

Scammers downloaded an ama stream with ADA creator, made a new legitimate thumbnail and started new stream right after the original ended, stating ADA event "send atleast 1000ADA and well send you 2x back, only during the stream for a first xy people" They add bots to the stream so it looks legitimate, so it has like 2k viewers.