Everyday as the new exchanges, farms, and pools proliferate, scams and conspiracies too are also oftenly found along side. What had happened to this world? Where is a standard of behavior or judgement of what is and is not acceptable for them to do? Flash loan, rug pull, fraud, one after another. When will it be stopped?
As a fair rule has never been able to catch up with the fast moving crypto conspiracy, so it's important for the community of Crypto investors, either plankton or whale, to socialize, share experience and warn each other of scam, fraud, or possiblility of undesired behavior.
EARN CRYPTO
Currently there are a lot of Earn Crypto sites that we can earn coins by spinning wheel, watching ads, doing survey, downloading games, etc. Most of these sites are for real, in the meaning that you really can earn coins from there. However inside these earning activities might redirect or lead you to a scam!!!
Mysterious Exchange
Recently I had seen an ad from a well-known Earn Crypto site (viewing ad could earn coin, so I gave it a trial) but the ad redirected me to a Crypto exchange platform boasting that we can swap from BTC to ETH at the rate of 1 BTC = 69 ETH (as of Jun 27, 1 BTC is only about 17 ETH). Initially I thought the rate was time lapsed because it was just after another great falling price last week, but what I felt it wasn’t right was the process of exchange.
Usually the exchange after connecting with your wallet will pull the specified amount of coin in your wallet and convert that into your choice of coin in a moment. But this exchange will ask you to send the coin to their address first, and will send back your choice of coin after a processing time which is claimed to be a few hours. And guess what? The expected coin has never been returned. The fraudulent site uses Bitcoin and Etherium exchange pair to make it look usual for a longer than usual time to process during traffic, but in anyway, please be reminded that exchange will never have to be done by sending coin out of your wallet.
After that I had tried to check up in google to find out that there were a lot of people being cheated. These people had sent the coin out for weeks before knowing that they were fooled.
Scam Detector
I have also checked it with scam-detector.com which is the website validator showing the fraud site with score of 3.7/100 (too suspicious, too young, warning). So this is a useful tool to check if a site is too suspicious to be true. However, when we check again on the main Earn Crypto site that shows ad and redirect viewers to the fraud site, I was surprised of the score 100/100. The explanation is
"You can rest assured, xxxxxxxxx.com is not a fraudulent website. However, it's your obligation to read the potential signs every time you are about to engage in an online business. Last but not least, remember that even the best businesses in the world have occasional complaints and unhappy consumers."
Which I agreed xxxxxxxxx.com is reliable, but the point is showing ads that lead to fraudulent website should also be a factor to consider lower score, or we say they just sell ads and you just earn coins, they do not have to be responsible with the ad content.
In my opinion, this kind of ecosystem cannot last long. The ad maker expects more customer by shooting ads. Why would ad maker pay for ads to pay viewer and platform without having attention from viewer. Do you want a viewer that expects only coin after viewing ad?
On viewer's point, is this the price to pay when showing attention on ad? Is it their own obligation to judge by themselves if the site they visited is harmless. Or middleman will always be a middleman without any responsibility on the ad or content associated to their website.
Final Thought
The development of Cryptocurrency ecosystem has been too fast for rules and obligations to catch up. But when we find something that is not right. It should be the responsibility of everyone in the ecosystem:
- Viewers and users need to double check the site before performing any action with their coin
- Earn platform should verify the ads and their partners before releasing ads
- Cheater should be remorseful for what they had done (hopefully)
- Social media is powerful to inform everyone of potential harm. A strong community will protect ourselves from being scammed.
Do not let greed blind you.
Stay safe, folks!!!
