Scammer: You Should Only Fall For My Scam(s)
As the Market is down, times are bad, and even scammers face stiff competition. So what do you think they would do?
Call out other scammers!
Why? So that they are perceived as the good guys and get rid of the competition - Killing two birds with one stone.
How To Protect Yourself From Web3 Scams?
The more we are aware and the more we know how scams work, the more we can protect ourselves. One of the ways is to follow the detectives who fight crypto crimes. Those who don't understand history are bound to repeat them. - "Old Mistakes, New People".
Detective No.1: Coffeezilla, started out as a YouTuber that calls out fake gurus. Well, i wouldn't call them fakes due to legal issues as all they need is one "success" client to vouch for them and they can sue for defamation. So to me, they are not fakes, just overpriced.
In the past videos, he called out Dan Lok, Kevin David, Kevin Zhang, Faze Clan, and many more. Do check his channel if you intend to buy any money-making opportunity online. Recently he also called out Logan Paul in a 3 part video for his CryptoZoo, and most likely thanks to him, Logan Paul is finally doing "something" about CryptoZoo.
He was also chasing Sam Bankman-Fried relentlessly on multiple Twitter Spaces regarding FTX, to the point of SBF getting frustrated at his hard questions, calling him "grandstanding", robbing others of opportunities to ask him questions.
Sometimes, Coffeezilla takes things to a deeper level like what he did in the video below to scam a scammer.
Con-ception of Dillon Dannis
He even got the influencer, Dillon Dannis, to acknowledge a contract that he created with the whole plan in the fine print to show the level of "due diligence" done by Dillon.
And all the shillings they discovered about him are on the website mint page at https://sourznft.com/dillondanis/ which goes to show the influencer didn't even visit the website at all.
This brings us to detective No.2, the one who started looking at Dillion Danis.
Detective No.2
ZachXBT, his Twitter profile pretty much sums up his story: "On-chain sleuth. Rug pull survivor turned 2D detective."
As the saying "The Blockchain Doesn't Lie", crypto transactions are visible to anyone online to see. And to track how the money flows from accounts to accounts, so far ZachXBT does the best job at it.
P.S. These days there are influencers who would promote anything for money. Always Do Your Own Research (DYOR).
What Can We Do More To Protect Ourselves
Knowing how to identify a real website is what has kept me safe. And a dot in the web address or without it can meant a world of difference.
Never store our wallet seed phrases in our computer, especially password managers after what happened to the LastPass Data Breach. Anyone that has our seed phrases will have access to our account.
Talking about seed phrases, under no situations or scenario, whatsoever, will any software, apps, websites, or MetaMask be asking for the phrases. The only time we'll need them is when you, yes YOU, are trying to set up or import our wallet.
"Not Your Keys, Not Your Cryptos"
And only store what we can afford to lose on Centralized Exchanges (CEX) - Coming Soon Video: My FTX Losses. While some people may question why do we put money on Centralized Exchanges, there are advantages to it.
If we want to trade the up and downs of cryptocurrencies, it's easier to do so on a CEX. And every time we need to transfer or use our cryptocurrencies, it will cost us a gas fee. Good thing is that transferring $1000 or $1 costs us the same gas fee.
Sidetrack a bit here: Gas fee depends on how congested the blockchain is - The more users using it, the more expensive it gets. So one site that all Ethereum users need to know: https://etherscan.io/gastracker
To avoid high fees, use it during the time when most of the world's users are sleeping. Or check the price before any intended transaction and see if we are willing to pay the price at that time.
With the recent rising trend of wallet drainers, whereby we signed a transaction thinking that it was for a new NFT mint, but it turns out to be an all-approval for the assets in our wallet to be transferred. Always use a burner wallet aka disposable wallet to mint any NFT.
Some might even be afraid that approving a staking transaction might put our assets at risk unless we know how to read the programming codes of the smart contract. Thus Google Chrome Extension Tools like MintDefense, Pocket Universe are gaining popularity.
