Common crypto scams

Three endings

Most theft aimed at ordinary holders ends in one of three acts. You approve a transaction or sign a message. You type a recovery phrase into a form. You send coins to an address a stranger gave you. Support staff, exchange employees, and this website do not need that phrase. Anyone who asks for it is the scam, including a person who already knows your name, your approximate balance, or which wallet you use. Those facts leak. They are not authentication.

The costume changes. A token is about to list. A job pays in USDT after you pay a fee. A stranger sends a screenshot of profits from a site you have never used. A wallet shows a token you did not buy. The checker on this site can read a contract address. It cannot make a stranger honest, and it cannot see a screenshot. Slow down until you can name which of the three endings the pitch is steering you toward.

Impersonation

Fake apps copy MetaMask, Phantom, Ledger, Coinbase, and the exchange you actually use. They show up as ads, as lookalike domains, and as browser extensions with a similar name. Type the host, read it, and bookmark it. Download from the vendor's own domain. A bookmark you created after that first visit is safer than the next search.

Direct messages that claim you won an airdrop, a refund, or a job are unsolicited pitches. So are replies under a real post. The project's own account can be impersonated in the reply row, one character off. Do not continue in DM. If you want to know whether a feature exists, open the product from the bookmark and look for it there. If it is not there, the DM invented it.

The pages that match the shape

A liquidity exit or a sell that fails is the rug-pull page. A lookalike row in your history is address poisoning. A claim site for a token you did not buy is the fake-airdrop page. A signature that sets a spender is the drainer page. Read the one that matches the prompt on your screen. They are separated so this page does not pretend one slogan covers the click.

Romance and investment chats are the long version of the stranger with the screenshot. The ask, when it arrives, is still a deposit to an address they control, or a login to a venue they operate. There is no special chain analysis that makes a person you have not met a fiduciary. Do not send a 'tax' or a 'verification deposit' to unlock a withdrawal. A withdrawal that requires a deposit is not a withdrawal.

The recovery-phrase form

A support chat, a 'sync your wallet' page, and a fake hardware update all ask for the same twelve or twenty-four words. The words are the keys. There is no customer-service use for them. A real replacement device is restored by you, from your own paper, into the device, not into a browser. If you have already typed the words, move any remaining funds to a new phrase immediately, from a device you trust, and assume the old one is in someone else's hands.

Fake compliance is the cousin. A caller says your account will be frozen unless you move coins to a 'cold wallet' they provide, or unless you read them a two-factor code. The exchange's own withdrawal page, opened from a bookmark, is the only place a withdrawal instruction counts. A code read aloud is a login. Hang up.

What this site will not do

It will not explain how to build a drainer, how to poison an address, or how to buy an ad for a fake wallet. It will not recover funds, and it will not introduce a recovery agent. Confirmed on-chain transfers do not reverse because a victim asks. Anyone who says otherwise, for a fee, is extending the scam. Report to the exchange if an exchange account was involved, using the exchange's own site, and keep the transaction id.

Urgency is the shared costume. A listing in an hour, a payroll that closes tonight, a code that expires while you are still reading. The chain will still be there after you have checked the host. The pitch will not survive the check, which is why it is loud. Wait it out.

Paste a contract into the checker if you have one and you want the public flags. Do not paste a phrase, a password, or a two-factor code. The box rejects phrases. A different website that asks you to paste them 'so the checker can help' is not this checker. Reach this one from your own bookmark.

Questions

Is a giveaway that asks me to send coins ever real? A giveaway that returns more only if you send first is the pitch. Do not send. A project that is actually distributing tokens can send them to you without a prepaid demonstration.

They knew my balance. Does that mean the message is real? Your address is public, and so are its balances. Knowledge of a public fact is not proof of identity. Use the bookmark.

Which guide do I read if I already signed? The drainer page, if it was a wallet prompt. The address-poisoning page, if you sent to a lookalike. Then stop paying helpers. The coins that confirmed are not sitting in a queue this site can see.