The Collapse of FTX — How to Spot Fake Cryptocurrency Exchange Website
Cryptocurrency Exchanges provide a crucial place for buying and selling digital assets. However, many of these exchanges are still unregulated and prone to fraud. Let’s dwell on what are possible methods to spot fake cryptocurrency exchange platforms!!!
In order to entice potential investors and defraud them of their money, scammers have in fact turned to building fictitious cryptocurrency exchanges and manipulating trading volumes on exchanges that appear to be trustworthy. These exchangers could bully consumers, refuse cryptocurrency withdrawals, impose steep fees, or even disappear with your money. Only using trustworthy exchanges is advised by specialists in order to protect against these frauds. Before creating an account, you should get familiar with the telltale characteristics of phony websites.
How can you distinguish the wheat from the chaff, though? To make sure you don’t happen to deposit your cash to an exchange that’s only going to get away with the money and to assist you to separate the wheat from the chaff, we’ve elaborated on the main aspects to pay attention to and be safe from the shady websites.
#1 Trading Volume and Liquidity — Numbers to look for
Prices can fluctuate in the realm of digital assets in a fraction of a second. If you’re a trader, you might want to act quickly during these price swings and acquire coins that have the potential to soar or sell coins that are more likely to tank.
The exchange you have put your money into should swiftly fill your buy and sell orders at a price as near to the one you previously established, without charging you a significant markup, so that you can make the most of every minute in cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency exchanges must be liquid for this reason, and those that often have a consistently large daily trading volume. Cryptocurrency exchanges are probably more or less liquid depending on how many users they have.
It also goes without saying that fraudulent cryptocurrency exchanges have small user bases, occasional asset trading, and a limited volume of orders. When no one is willing to purchase or sell bitcoins, you have no other choice but to sell at a substantially lower price or acquire at an absurdly high price.
#2 Excessive Marketing by An Exchange
All companies market themselves. But one method that crypto fraudsters recruit individuals is by investing in significant marketing — online advertising, paid influencers, offline promotion, and so on. This is intended to reach as many people as possible in the quickest amount of time and to quickly raise money. Consider stopping and doing more study if you think a crypto offering’s marketing is pushy or makes grandiose claims without any evidence.
#3 Giveaway Scams
In what is known as a giveaway scam, the con artists here claim to equal or multiply the cryptocurrency handed to them. Clever messaging from what frequently appears to be a legitimate social media account can engender a sense of legitimacy and urgency. People may send money rapidly in the hopes of receiving an immediate return because this opportunity is supposedly a “once in a lifetime” chance.
#4 Fake Celebrity Endorsements
To entice potential targets, cryptocurrency scammers occasionally adopt celebrity, corporate, or influencer personas or make claims about endorsements from these individuals. This occasionally entails marketing fake cryptocurrency to unsophisticated investors. Sophisticated websites and pamphlets that purport to have celebrity endorsements from well-known figures like Elon Musk are sometimes used in these scams.
#5 Do the Background Check
Before putting your trust in a specific internet business, there is nothing wrong with examining online reviews. Google is your buddy, so make sure to check out customer reviews of a few of the swaps you’re considering. Additionally, try learning more about the group who created the platform. Do they have a dox? Are their profiles accessible on LinkedIn and other social media platforms? Do they seem like actual people? Exchanges that are fraudulent give very little to no information about the teams involved.
Check to see if they have a significant media and digital presence as well. Have you ever seen them attend events or conferences or give speeches there? Do they create partnerships? When attempting to determine which exchanges are reliable and trustworthy, all of these aspects are important.
The Collapse of FTX Exchange: What Went Wrong
After a quick fall from glory, cryptocurrency exchange FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on November 11, 2022. In a couple of days, the company’s value plummeted from $32 billion to bankruptcy, bringing founder and CEO Sam Bankman-$16 Fried’s billion net worth to almost nothing.
In an interview with New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin on Nov. 30 at the DealBook Summit, Bankman-Fried claimed to have roughly $100,000 in his bank account.
The unstable cryptocurrency market was shaken by the demise of FTX; it lost billions in value and fell below $1 trillion. The fallout from FTX’s abrupt slide and collapse will probably have an effect on cryptocurrencies for a very long time to come and may even cause wider market declines. Sam Bankman-Fried is accused in a class-action lawsuit filed on November 16 in a federal court in Florida of developing a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme intended to take advantage of uneducated investors from all over the nation. Other famous people who allegedly assisted Bankman-Fried in carrying out the scheme are listed in the case, including Steph Curry, Shaquille O’Neal, Shohei Ohtani, Naomi Osaka, Larry David, and Kevin O’Leary.
Bankman-Fried has hired white-collar criminal attorney Mark S. Cohen, a partner at Cohen & Gresser, a former federal prosecutor, and a member of the legal team for convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, as their counsel. This hiring was made on December 6. Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of the FTX-affiliated Alameda Research, has retained the legal services of Washington-based Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.
Source: Investopedia
Summary
Not every cryptocurrency exchange that charges higher fees or lists dubious coins is definitely a scam, but you should avoid any exchange that checks all of the (negative) boxes we’ve listed. As a result, you can never be certain that your money is 100% safe because there is currently no regulation for the entire cryptocurrency industry. However, you can at least avoid platforms that scream “give us your money and go lost” by avoiding them. So do your own research and choose the best crypto exchange platform for your next investment.
The Collapse of FTX — How to Spot Fake Cryptocurrency Exchange Website was originally published in BuyUcoin Talks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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