Blockchain technology represents one of the safest ways of transferring money, especially when we compare it with a standard bank account, where we can often see a lot of news about various scams from all around the world. Thieves are always looking for new ways, and there are some cases where some of them even managed to create a scam with cryptocurrencies.
Investing in cryptocurrencies became a very popular option in recent years, and you can earn from them in many ways. You can check Finanzkun to read more about how you can earn from Bitcoin. On the other side, even if scams with crypto is hardly possible, there were some cases of scams and arrests. Here are some of the biggest cryptocurrency scams and arrests.
1. Hackers Stole from Binance
Binance represents one of the biggest digital currency exchanges in the world, and the hacker managed to steal around 40 million dollars’ worth of cryptocurrencies last year. The most unusual about this case is that they even successfully broke the two-factor authentication and stole API tokens. However, this theft did not disrupt the company, since that was only around 2 percent of their deposited crypto.
2. 6 People Arrested in UK and Netherland
There was another case last year, where a group of six people from the United Kingdom and Netherland created a scam where they stole over 27 million dollars’ worth of Bitcoin. The investigation lasted for more than a year, and the police finally managed to arrest this group. They stole Bitcoins from more than 4,000 people in 12 countries.
3. Hackers Attack on GateHub
Another victim of a scam is GateHub, a blockchain wallet company. In this case, hackers stole over 10 million dollars’ worth of XRP. This company is still trying to find out how they performed the theft and avoided all of the safety measures. Also, they are working on the recovery of wallets, and more than half a million XRPs are already retrieved.
4. $28 Million Stolen from BITPoint
BITPoint is one of the biggest crypto exchanges in Japan, and hackers stole 28 million in cryptocurrencies last year. Also, they stole most of the money from clients, around 20 million, while the rest was stolen from the platform. Types of crypto that they stole were XRP, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash. This company is still struggling to recover, but they are trying to compensate for the loss to their clients.
5. Phishing Scam in Israel
Two brothers from Israel created a fishing scam that was successful for more than three years before they were arrested. Their names are Assaf and Eli, and according to some rumors, they stole more than 100 million dollars’ worth of cryptocurrencies. They were scamming big investors to store their crypto in the fake exchange that they made.
6. Kraken Crash
Kraken is a big trading platform, and they had a situation where only for a few minutes, the price of Bitcoin fell from around 8,500$ to only 75$. The main reason why the scam was not recognized immediately is that it only lasted for a couple of minutes, and during that time, someone stole over 1200 Bitcoins, while the value of that in time was more than 10 million dollars. The suspect is still not found.
7. Hackers Attack on Bitrue
Bitrue is an exchange from Singapore, and in their case, the hackers stole the value of more than $4 million. Cryptocurrencies that were stolen are XRP and ADA. Also, they are returning the money stolen from the client, while there is still no one accused of this scam. They are still trying to find out how someone managed to break through their security system.
Scams That We Should Be Aware Of
Besides the biggest scams and arrests that we mentioned, there were also other cases, and we should pay attention and understand how to avoid them.
The most common scams are:
– Fake Exchanges;
– Fake Bitcoin Scam;
– Bitcoin Gold Scam;
– Malware Scams;
– Ponzi Scheme;
– ICO Scam;
– Pump and Dump Scam;
The fake exchange represents one of the easiest ways for thieves to lure people into storing their crypto in unlicensed exchange and e-wallets. You should always look for official and known exchanges. Also, there was a case with fake Bitcoins on the My Big Coin platform, and the owner of it stole more than 6 million dollars with this scam.
The owner of My BTG Wallet created a scheme and lured people to invest in Bitcoin over his e-wallet, by promising them to get Bitcoin Gold. However, he stole their private keys and took over $3 million in Bitcoin.
Malware scams have existed since the existence of the Internet, and we can see that some of them are linked to thefts of e-wallets as well. However, it is not hard to avoid this scam, you only need to use proper protection on your PC, and avoid unknown sites and software.
Ponzi Scheme is one of the worst scams because it tricks people to connect others and convince them how they could earn some great amounts of money this way. Ponzi, or Multi-Level marketing, is not legal in many countries, but people always find a way to create some new strategy for this kind of scam. The method of a Ponzi scheme is that clients need to bring new people all the time, and get a small compensation for that. The process is similar to Affiliate marketing.
ICO scam is linked with fake coins and wallets. In this method, they are providing you with coins that have no value. The main problem is that ICO has no blockchain support, and it is completely virtual and vulnerable. Another very dangerous type of a scam is a Pump and Dump method, where people are creating fake coins, and pumping their value over time by luring people to buy them.
Furthermore, there were also some rare types of scams, but if you are using well-known exchanges and e-wallets, along with the cryptocurrencies with the blockchain background, you should be able to avoid all of them.
