Famous Crypto Scams 2021

Even though cryptocurrency is an amazing achievement, and a lot of people are happy to adapt it for everyday life, there are always some scammers who are ready to take advantage of honest crypto users. Each year crypto community is facing new ideas produced by scammers. 2021 has also brought some artful inventions to this area. We decided to review some of the most high-profile cases in this article. So we could remind you once again to be extremely attentive when you deal with cryptocurrency.

Musk or not Musk

Many of us are very well familiar with the situation when someone is asking to send them some amount of crypto. We see this on Twitter rather often. This year in March scammers took the next step and possessed the account of the most discussed person, Elon Musk. To be honest, they did not take over his real account, they created a similar one, posted the address of a Bitcoin wallet, and promised to double any amount of BTC sent to this wallet. All together scammers were able to accumulate more than $2 million. People realized it was a scam only when the countdown stopped and nothing happened.

Unfortunately, it is not the first time Elon Musk was impersonated in order to steal crypto, and probably not the last one. This is what we all should keep in mind every time we see someone famous offering us to become rich on social media.

DeFi boom

DeFi became popular in 2020 and is still attracting a lot of attention in 2021. It seemed inevitable that scammers would be interested in participating in this rush. DeFi platforms allow people to stake their crypto assets and get small payments from time to time. The regular scam offers to stake cryptocurrency promising a very nice return. Of course, after collecting a certain amount these fraudulent services disappear.

One of the most significant crimes happened in April, 2021. DeFi protocol EasyFi reported a hack. This protocol is powered by the Polygon network. Bad actors were able to steal away over $80 million. According to the posts of the CEO 2.98 million EASY tokens were transferred to an unknown wallet address. To commit this crime hackers compromised the private keys of the network admin MetaMask account.

NFT scams

NFT’s popularity is at its peak. A lot of people are involved in creating and trading non-fungible tokens. Undoubtedly, there are some con artists who would like to take advantage of the situation. Scams connected with NFT are very simple, since NFT is a rather new subject hackers are only getting started. However, we can already talk about several types of fraud.
First of all, scammers can hack an account and transfer NFTs outside the owner’s account. In this case, it is very difficult if not impossible to get it back or to receive any compensation. 
The other way to steal NFTs is to create a fake store that copies an original one. To avoid this type of fraud it is very important to pay attention to all the information that is required on the website.
Finally, one of the things that works in all the crypto spheres is impersonation. When you think you are supporting an artist, in fact, you may be backing a scammer. For example, in March 2021 Derek Laufman, an artist, woke up to find out that he had started selling NFTs. Someone had created an account on his behalf, went through the verification process, and successfully started to trade.

Derek Laufman is not the only artist who has faced this problem. As NFT is getting more popular, it is only logical that we will see more different scams.

The development of the Crypto World produces more space for scammers. Unfortunately, it is impossible to absolutely avoid meeting them. However, we should remember that our safety depends on us, and be careful when making a transaction or receiving a very tempting crypto offer.