Hi All.

Increase in the  popularity of crypto currencies attracted lot of investor but also lot of scammers too.

Below is the common  traps/scam in crypto currencies that should be avoided and safeguard your crypto investment.

1. Free Bitcoin generators:
 I came across the variety of sites that say that they have find security flaw in bitcoin code/or bugs in mining pools and they are able to generate the BTC for free. You put your bitcoin wallet address and they will generate from 1 to 3 BTC within minutes.The real scam starts now, when they say to send .2 BTC to them as miner fees to claim your generated BTC. I never tested them but it is clear scam when someone is asking you to send BTC to give you back the BTC. Why do not they send that generated BTC minus miners fees in BTC instead of asking  first to send miner fees?

2. Cloud Minings:
There will be variety of sites that promise you to provide hashpowers to generate/mine bitcoins,litecoins/ethereum and in return of some 30 to 40 Dollar packages. These sites will be newly created and offering promising returns.But they last for few weeks only(A quick cash grab and shutting down the business). Even the sites that were existing for years , not all investors are happy.So investing in Cloud mining as a newbie is a big no.


3. Fake Twitter/social Media accounts:
a.) These fake account impersonate a famous personality in crypto world (like John McAfee) and will ask you to donate some small amount of BTC to them and in return they will promise  greater amount of BTC(Like you send me .02 BTC and in return this impostor promise to send .2 BTC).
b.) Sometime it will be fake account of some popular website/exchange to scam the users.

4. Scam airdrops.
Although airdrop looks safe bet but in scam airdrops you will be requested to give some donation to receive the airdrops (like .01 Ethereum). Be careful in these airdrops and do not send your money to them.

5.) Scam coins and ICOs.
Although a full proof method cannot be guranteed to identify the scam coins and scam ICOs, but still following point can be taken into consideration before investing.

a.) Developers promise very high returns on investment, Giving too much referral bonus or whole setup look like a ponzi scheme.
b.) Coin/Token is ready without any whitepaper or poorly written whitepaper.
c.) Coin is not solving any problem or implementing any new idea.
d.) Website look poor, Hosted in free platform like "Wix" or there is no https for website.
e.) Dev reserved too much coins for them, or too much premined or any other scheme that is giving undue benefit to development.
f.) No source code available.
g.) Roadmap putting emphasis on listing coin in exchanges instead of doing some real development.
h.) Team members are not known at all

6.) Do not beleive others without DYOR .
It is quite possible that person advising about coin/token is associated with pump and dump, or getting some personal gain like referral bonus so it is better to do your own research.

7. Precautions while buying coin/token in Exchanges.
a.) If you have no intention to trade your coin in near future then it is best deal to transfer your coin to your own wallet.
b.) If coin is forked recently then also check that exchange is having coin from new fork.
c.) Do check if exchange wallet is available or in maintainence mode before buying coins.
d.) Check the exchange withdrawal fees beforehand the purchase of specific coin.
e.) Send small amount to your wallet to verify transaction instead of sending all coins in one transactions.

8. Password security.
Create strong passwords by using combination of letters (uppercase/smallcase) numbers and special characters.If possible then use 2FA authentication.

9. Phishing attacks.
Do not open the suspicious links. Bookmark the original links, instead of searching the internet for link of sites.

10. Wallet safety.
a.) Do not give your wallet private key to anybody.
b.) Always backup your wallet.dat in some external device.
c.) Private key of wallet should be safely stored in some other place or external device. Do not save private key in same device (In case of Trojan or virus attacks). Save your key in other device/place because if you forget your key then you will lose your investment forever.
d.) Keep your wallet locked if possible offline too.

11. While copy pasting your wallet address , recheck the address that is pasted is same what you copied. (you might be affected by Coin RPG malware)


Last but not the least, Never invest the money  that you can't afford to lose.

Hi Q.E.D /all

If you come across any copy/pasted post here, please report in below thread.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2855895.60

Hi Joel .
I have not heard back  from you regarding my mail.

Anyways , I believe more in "Report to Moderators"  instead of creating threads about it .(I think it help me to preserve my identity ,retaliation and effective as request directly goes to the Moderator's queue ) 
 Please find below the my stats for the "Report to Moderators".
https://i.imgur.com/5PngBFz.png

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=39.0;sort=first_post;desc;

Here board=39.0  is Beginners&Help Board. So you need to add "sort=first_post;desc;"  only , after you reached your desired board.

I am in steemit network for more than 2 months and they have lot of information but I think they are only horizontally diversified. (Jack of all trades,master of none).  If you want to further dive in a topic , I think it might not be an ideal platform. So Bitcoin talk can be your one stop for gathering/understanding for all your crypto currency curiosity but steemit will offer something of everything (like cryptocurrency, photography, story,nature ,funny, food etc. and list can go on.)
I think you can find original content because they have a "@cheetah" bot that is able to determine copy and pasted content and people can flag the content but real catch is that a member of higher reputation can destroy the reputation of member that is having reputation lower than him but reverse is not effective.

Now coming to question of fatal flaw, I did not understand the context.
If you are just login as a another social media site then just make sure never to lose your password.
If it is for earning from steemit, then you have to ready invest some steem of your own to succeed. (Either as a curator or Author) so I can say platform has flaw that you need to invest before succeeding in most cases. (Authors are using/paying bots for upvotes, so real audience is much less)



About any social media they work on same principle "Fire is a good servant but a bad master" so we have to filter the information.
I think information originate arise from steemit platform will be real  because no one like to put own reputation in stake.