How fraudsters trick cryptocurrency users, and how to protect digital assets: 3 practical tips

The volume of the cryptocurrency market grew from $ 27 billion in April 2017 to the level of $ 270 billion as of April 3, 2018. Such growth is associated with an increase in the value of Bitcoin against the dollar, as well as the spread of ICO, through which start-ups raise funds for the development of their business. For example, in 2017, companies received in this way $ 5.6 billion.

The ability to quickly make money on the resale of project tokens has attracted many inexperienced investors, as well as cybercriminals interested in easy money.
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As a result of hacker attacks and theft of funds from cryptographic walks from 2011 to 2018, users of cryptocurrency lost $ 1.7 billion from the market. Of these, $ 670 million, or about 40% of the total, the attackers stole in the first three months of 2018. The largest losses in 2018 were theft of $ 400 million from the Coincheck cryptocurrency exchange and a loss of $ 140 million after the attack of the BitGrail exchange in February.

About how fraudsters earn on the greed of investors and how to deal with them, told the publication Business Insider, and we have prepared an adapted version of this material.

With the growth of the market need to be more vigilant

According to experts, the number of cryptocurrency fraudulent schemes and hacker attacks increases whenever cryptocurrencies show a tendency to increase. Therefore, investors should be more cautious when there is a bullish trend in the market. Also, they should not invest more than they can afford to lose in case of failure.

Cybercriminals often try to attract their unsuspecting victims with the prospect of unrealistically high returns from investing in dubious ICOs, so experts urge investors not to be greedy and approach investing more deliberately.

Do not keep crypto-trading assets not involved in trading

Users of cryptobirth are much less protected than investors in fiat sites (on asset protection on conventional reader exchanges here ). Many investors keep their digital assets, which are not intended for trading, on exchanges, and not in cryptographic walks, which makes them attractive to hackers interested in stealing large sums of money.

So cybercriminals got millions from unsuspecting investors using the Ponzi scheme, creating an “Asian-European cryptocurrency”, later liquidated by the Chinese police.

Trust can not be anyone

Due to the fact that phishing is still one of the most popular types of fraudulent schemes, investors should be more vigilant: check whether the exact URL in the message sent leads not to a fraudulent website, do not download attachments from letters from unknown recipients, etc. .

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