How I got Scammed Thrice of my Crypto and Still Survived!!

Let me give a disclaimer right at the start that this is not going to be a feel good topic but it is something important and something that needs to be shared with everyone.

Many people think that only careless and newbies get scammed as they don’t know the basics about using cold wallets and avoiding suspicious links.

I have been scammed multiple times despite being a veteran in the crypto space and regularly reading about what are the common tactics being used by scammers and hackers.

Before you start thinking that I am exceptionally dumb let me share with you a recent hack where Marc Cuban despite being a grand daddy in crypto got scammed of close to a million dollar. His wallet got drained of the tokens, NFTs, ENS, you name it they hacked it.

The bottom line is anyone can get hacked!

In fact looking at recent hacks it seems scammers scout for big wallets as scamming newbies and small fishes does not seem very profitable to them.

The First Scam was a Blessing in Disguise!

The first scam I got caught up was quite early in my crypto journey. It was the heydays of yield farming and suddenly projects started propping up promising 1,000% APYs and everyone seemed to be doubling their money in a matter of days.

People who missed out on early boom of SushiSwap were willing to try out smaller and riskier project.

I did the same mistake and added liquidity to a farm called Viking Swap that disappeared the next day. In fact I wrote a post on how it made me suspicious of all small projects that offer incredible returns.

It also made me more disciplined in managing risks by never putting more than 5% of my funds in a single project and always split out my funds across multiple wallets and keep the bulk in cold wallets like Trezor and Ledger.

Golden rule of Crypto is Never put all your eggs in one basket or wallet.

Always avoid a single point of failure in your crypto portfolio, Be prepared that despite your best efforts you might still get hacked, the trick is to be prepared that you will still be able to recover from it and not be completely wiped out.

Second Scam was a Lesson to Control Greed!

The second scam was with an algorithmic stablecoin project way before Luna/Terra debacle.

This project doubled my money in the first week so I got greedy and put close to 10% of my portfolio in it which vanished the week after.

This lesson probably helped me in avoiding getting burnt by Luna as I was already cautious of such projects.

If it Looks Too Good to be True, it Most Probably is Not True!

If you see people around you chasing a project doubling their money you should be even more cautious and either avoid it completely or put something which is an insignificant part of your portfolio.

Third Scam was the Scariest!

The Third scam happened very recently and they blinded me by massaging my ego. Someone contacted me on Twitter saying they liked my content and would like me to review their NFT based games. I thought it was a genuine request as I had been writing extensively on NFT based games.

He gave the website which looked legit. The twitter and discord also had 3,000 off subscribers so I took my guard down. When I tried to access the game it gave an error screen on my laptop which I closed.

I thought it was some technical issue and contacted the support in their discord.

When I came back a few hours later I saw they had drained my Metamask took all the coins they found in all the chains they found and took any valuable NFTs they saw.

I usually don’t keep much funds on Metamask but lately I have been a bit careless as I left some funds to grind for the airdrops and I did the mistake of leaving my Lazy Lion NFT in there which they stole.

It felt like a burglar ransacked each and every room in my house.

I am not so worried about the funds as it was not huge but I was shocked that how advanced the hackers have got. I will also miss my Lazy Lion as I had got emotionally attached to it keeping it as my PFP in all my accounts.

I will be even more paranoid going forward but I know I can still get scammed so as always I will never keep more than what I can afford to lose in hot wallets like Metamask.

If you have never been scammed or hacked do not consider yourself invincible but continue to be careful and avoid leaving large funds on Metamask or other hot wallets.

Stay Safe Everyone!!

Cheers,

Sam