The Ledger: Crypto Scams Proliferate

It was a fraught week for ordinary investors – one filled with quite a few negative events. While such make great headlines, they hardly feel good if you are on the receiving end.

The most prominent of all was the rug pull involving a token named after the popular Netflix Show, Squid Games. Squid seemed to soar to $3.3m in total value before the developers pulled out the money and disappeared into thin air.

This prompted Binance to launch an investigation, as the token uses the Binance Smart Chain. While the results of that investigation are still pending, the rug pull linking itself to the Netflix series should serve as a reminder of the dangers of investing on a whim in crypto space.

Another project of similar nature was AnubisDAO which managed to spirit away a gut-wrenching $57m worth of investor funds. Hong Kong police were alerted and took action. However, no progress has been made on recovering the funds.

Brian Nguyen was among those burnt by the scam and in his case he lost $470,000, admitting that he had not done his due diligence. And while this has been happening, an attempt to impersonate Elon Musk on Facebook – now called Meta – has been foiled.

A Facebook community posing as an “Elon Musk fan group” that allegedly shared statements by the Tesla boss offered to double any amount of Bitcoin (BTC) sent to a crypto wallet. Of course, the announcement was fake and Musk had never made any such promises.

Perhaps most disappointing of all was the scam that targeted a Coinbase user and made them lose $11m in 10 minutes through fake SMS notifications.

The phishing attack had been surprisingly successful, compelling the account holder to follow through a number of remote instructions made by the purported Coinbase support team. In doing so, they disabled all two-factor authentication and left their account defenseless.

On a positive note, crypto adoption has been going strong, at least on a regulatory level. Singapore vowed to introduce more regulation as a guide to investors and businesses, and “not get left behind” as a jurisdiction embracing blockchain and crypto.

Similarly in Australia, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) is pilot testing a crypto investment program that will pave the way for the wider adoption of digital assets and help the private sector familiarize itself with the product.

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Written by Barney

Co-founder

Barney is co-founder of CryptoGamblingNews.com. When not at work he can usually be found behind a Nikon. He's won numerous international competitions for his photography and volunteers as a content creator for aid organisations in Africa.

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