How To Stay Vigilant Against Social Media Scams - Weekly Flip Thru

May 27, 2021

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Social Media Scams Are On The Rise: Here's How To Stay Vigilant

Lately, it seems as though every social media platform is riddled with scammers taking advantage of crypto's decentralized nature. I even recently came across a TikTok account using my face and affiliations to entice people into sending over their crypto. As a friendly reminder, neither I nor anyone from CoinFlip will ever reach out with deals that sound too good to be true or ask you for personal information on social media.

With scammers getting more creative by the day, I'm sharing some tips to help keep you and your crypto safe. But first, what's going on with Bitcoin?

Bitcoin's Bumpy Week

It's been a rough week for crypto enthusiasts. After suffering the largest monthly price drop in Bitcoin history, the cryptocurrency is showing some signs of recovery, bouncing between $37,000 and $40,000 at the time of writing.

Is the worst behind us? It's hard to tell. There are significant changes in store for bitcoin mining that could impact its price, potentially for the better.

Over the last week, China has intensified its crackdown on bitcoin mining and trading. A ban on mining in the Inner Mongolia region is being strictly enforced. As I have written about before, Inner Mongolia is one of the most coal-dependent regions in China and accounts for around 9% of the world's mining. This ban could help overall bitcoin mining drastically decrease its dependence on coal.

North American miners are ramping up efforts to make mining more energy efficient. Earlier this week, the Bitcoin Mining Council was established after a meeting between industry leaders, Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor and Elon Musk. According to Saylor, all parties have agreed to "promote energy usage transparency and accelerate sustainability initiatives worldwide."

Recently, everyone's biggest complaint with Bitcoin has been its environmental impact. I believe that accelerating efforts to innovate Bitcoin's energy use and promote clean energy should eliminate many negative sentiments circulating about bitcoin and ultimately help the price recover to new highs.

How To Stay Vigilant Against Social Media Scams

If you interact with any crypto-related accounts on social media, you've probably witnessed an influx of followers, messages, and comments promising crypto riches. Beware, social media scams are on the rise, and with it an influx of misleading information.

Recently, the crypto platform Paxful analyzed 1,212 financial advice videos on TikTok to find 14% of these types of videos are misleading. This misleading content had more than 28.4 million views, and the accounts had around 10 million follows. That's a huge impact.

TikTok is not the only platform with phonies giving bad crypto advice. Scammers and bad actors can be found on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit.

Here's some advice on how to stay vigilant against social media scammers:

Research the qualifications of anyone sharing financial advice. Just because someone has a lot of followers does not mean they are credible.
Avoid content creators that make specific investment or financial recommendations, such as which stocks or cryptocurrencies to buy. Always do research on the investments that best suit your needs.
Stick to reputable services and businesses for cryptocurrency investing and trading.
Be wary of anyone with a get-rich-quick scheme. If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Avoid celebrity impersonations and giveaway schemes where you have to send crypto to "win" crypto.
Don't fall for dupes or fakes of legitimate accounts. See below for tips on how to identify authentic social media accounts.