Security
Seven scam patterns, and the structural tell in each
Naming specific scams is useless — they rename themselves weekly. The underlying structures are few and stable, and each has a giveaway that does not depend on knowing the brand.
Lists of scam names age out within a month. The structures beneath them have barely changed in a decade, because they exploit properties of the system rather than particular products. Learn the seven shapes and the names stop mattering.
1 — The withdrawal that needs a payment first
You have a profit on a platform. Withdrawing requires paying tax, a fee, a bond, or a verification deposit first. Every payment reveals another requirement.
The tell: no legitimate system requires an incoming payment to release an outgoing one. Fees come out of the balance. If money must travel toward the platform before money travels away from it, the balance does not exist.
2 — Support that contacts you
A helpful person reaches out after you post a problem publicly, or appears in your messages as staff of a service you use.
The tell: direction of contact. Real support responds to tickets you opened through the official interface; it does not find you. Anyone who messages you first about a wallet problem is running an attack, with no exceptions worth the risk of looking for one.
3 — The seed phrase with a reason
Validation, migration, a synchronisation error, an airdrop claim, a security check. The request always comes with an explanation that makes it sound procedural.
The tell: there is no legitimate reason, ever, under any circumstances, for anyone to need your seed phrase. Not support, not a developer, not a wallet vendor, not a recovery service. The sophistication of the justification is itself the warning sign — a real process would not need one.
4 — Guaranteed return
A fixed percentage, often modest enough to sound credible. Paid reliably, until the day it is not.
The tell: the word guaranteed. In an asset class that moves double digits in a day, a guaranteed return means someone else is absorbing the volatility. Ask who, and with what capital. There is never an answer that survives the follow-up question.
5 — The relationship that arrives at an investment
Weeks or months of genuine-feeling conversation — a wrong number, a dating app, a professional connection — that eventually mentions a platform they use.
The tell: the sequence. Trust built first, opportunity introduced second, and the opportunity always sits on a platform you had not heard of. The emotional investment is the product; the crypto is just the settlement layer.
6 — Urgency with a deadline
A limited window, a closing allocation, an account that will be frozen, a claim that expires.
The tell: artificial time pressure exists to prevent the pause in which you would check. Any real opportunity survives you sleeping on it. Treat a countdown as the signal itself, independent of what is being offered.
7 — The approval you did not read
A site asks you to sign something to connect, claim, verify or enable. The signature grants a standing permission over your tokens.
The tell: you cannot read the request in plain language. If the interface cannot tell you what you are authorising, and in what amount, decline. Unlimited allowances should be treated as a red flag rather than a convenience.
The common thread: six of the seven require you to take an action — pay, reveal, approve, send. The system itself is rarely broken. This is good news: the defence is a habit rather than a technology. Slow down at exactly the moment something feels urgent.
If it already happened
Move any remaining assets to a wallet generated from a fresh seed on a device you trust — not a new address from the same seed, which is still controlled by the same compromised secret. Revoke outstanding approvals. Report it to your national police and your bank if fiat was involved.
Then, the hardest part: recovery services that contact you afterwards are the same scam a second time, targeting a list of known victims. There is no private company that reverses blockchain transactions.
Last reviewed: 11 September 2026