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Elon Musk’s Saturday Night Live appearance was highly anticipated by the public. However, scammers may have been more excited about it than anyone else.
YouTube Livestreams
According to a report by TRM Labs, a platform designed to build trust and prevent fraud in digital assets, scammers set up a number of YouTube livestreams for Elon’s SNL appearance. Scammers used these livestreams to provide links to a site that allowed viewers to receive Dogecoins.
However, there was a catch - and a major red flag that many victims failed to discover until losing their money.
Lack of Regulation and Safeguards
Cryptocurrency is largely unregulated throughout the world, which presents a number of problems for users and investors. Since all eyes are on this industry right now, many scammers have invaded the space. One tactic that scammers often deploy is a type of giveaway transaction, where a victim would send the scammer a certain amount of coins in exchange for many more coins than the victim originally transferred to the scammer. For instance, scammers may ask victims to send them 1 BTC (Bitcoin) in exchange for 10 BTC in the future.
The websites that were set up for these Dogecoin scams instructed victims to send Dogecoins through their website, which looked legitimate to the average user. The sites also provided examples of how victims could double their money by sending Dogecoins. For instance, one site indicated that users could send 500,000 DOGE in exchange for 1,000,000 DOGE.
As the old adage goes, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Although it sounds ridiculous, many victims still fall for this type of scam. Imagine someone walking up to you and saying, “If you give me a dollar, I’ll give you ten dollars.” You’d probably be somewhat tempted, but not without a great deal of skepticism. Chances are that you wouldn’t believe the other person and opt to walk away, correct?
Well, many crypto scam victims failed to do this. How could that be the case?
“The eyes are useless when the mind is blind”
Since there is so much excitement in this area, especially for those looking to make quick profits, scammers can entice an incredible number of victims. Many popular social media accounts, also known as “influencers,” have shared their experiences in cryptocurrency. Some influencers have shown huge profits from buying and selling cryptocurrency, which leads a number of their followers to try it for themselves.
This is dangerous for a number of reasons. First, these influencers often fail to show their losses, leading to a lack of transparency with their followers. Second, if influencers are legitimately experiencing gains in trading crypto, they likely have much more knowledge and experience than their followers. Third, there is so much risk that influencers often fail to tell their followers.
This creates the perfect storm for scammers to exploit opportunities to steal money from victims. This is what happened with Elon Musk’s SNL appearance, where excitement flourished and victims were hopeful of life-changing opportunities. However, as we see on a daily basis, get-rich-quick schemes should be avoided at all costs. Thus, when you encounter such situations that seem too good to be true, run for your life.