Crypto Scam: How to Spot Fake Coins, Fake Exchanges, and Avoid Losing Your Money

When you hear crypto scam, a deceptive scheme designed to trick people into giving up their cryptocurrency. Also known as crypto fraud, it’s not just about phishing links—it’s about fake tokens, ghost exchanges, and airdrops that don’t exist. Every year, billions vanish because people trust something that looks real but has no foundation. You might think you’re joining a new DeFi project, but you’re actually sending your ETH to a wallet owned by someone who’s already vanished.

One common type is the fake crypto coin, a token with no code, no team, and no purpose, created just to lure buyers. Take STAKE—there’s no such token. The word just means locking crypto to earn rewards. Scammers sell "STAKE" coins on fake websites, and people lose money thinking they’re staking. Same with MoMo KEY (KEY). No airdrop. No team. Just a website and a promise. Then silence. Another is the scam exchange, a platform that looks like Binance or Uniswap but has zero trading volume, no liquidity, and no user reviews. Amaterasu Finance and 4E exchange? Dead. No trades. No support. Just a landing page and a wallet address to send funds to.

And then there’s the crypto airdrop scam, a fake free token offer that asks you to connect your wallet or pay a "gas fee" to claim it. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Legit airdrops don’t ask for your private key. They don’t ask you to send crypto first. They don’t use Instagram influencers with blurry screenshots. You’ll see examples of these in the posts below—like the ONUS x CoinMarketCap airdrop that actually happened, and the Brokoli Network airdrop that’s real but often faked by copycats.

What ties all these together? Lack of transparency. No public team. No GitHub. No audits. No community. If you can’t find a real person behind the project, walk away. The crypto scam doesn’t need to be fancy. It just needs to move fast before you check the facts.

Below, you’ll find real reviews of platforms that turned out to be scams, explanations of tokens that don’t exist, and breakdowns of how scammers trick people into handing over their keys. No theory. No fluff. Just what’s happened, what to watch for, and how to protect yourself in 2025.