Most Common Crypto Scams in 2026 and How to Avoid Them

Key Takeaways

• The advent of decentralized finance (DeFi) has opened numerous possibilities for yield farming, staking, and lending.
• There is no such thing as a guaranteed return in crypto markets. As soon as you see a claim for a “risk-free” or “sure shot” investment, you should immediately think of it as a red flag.
• Before you use any platform or airdrop, be sure about the website URLs, token contract addresses, and blockchain explorers.
• Scammers won’t provide any information about the investment and the company. It is mandatory to ask for proper documents about the project.

If we discuss developments in the crypto industry, the journey is fascinating. However, alongside innovation and progress, there are many scams and other issues. As we move through 2025, cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated, utilizing artificial intelligence, deepfake technology, and psychological manipulation to exploit investors, which is tarnishing the industry’s reputation.

Investors have faced significant losses due to these scams perpetrated by cybercriminals. According to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center’s 2024 Internet Crime Report, cryptocurrency investment fraud caused more than $5.8 billion in reported losses in 2024 alone. However, this report has data related to US citizens only, but it will give us an idea about the seriousness and destruction these scams can cause worldwide. In this blog, we will discuss different types of crypto scams that are causing trouble to crypto enthusiasts and ways to avoid them.

Types of Crypto Scams

Here are the various types of crypto scams:

AI-generated Deep Fake Scams

Artificial Intelligence is changing the way many industries work, but in the meantime, it is also allowing scammers to do more harm. By the year 2025, there will be an increase in the situations where people will be misled by AI-generated videos, voices, and conversations impersonating influencers, project founders, or even friends and family.

One of the scenarios that might happen is that you open YouTube, and you see a livestream where Elon Musk “announces” the creation of a new cryptocurrency project. His voice, his mask, and even the interaction with the audience show that he is there. Well, it is the deepfake, and for without the proper verification, the video can be taken as reality. Earlier this year just by a single fake live stream, the scammers were able to make off with hundreds of millions of dollars in just a few hours.

Pig-butchering Scams

This terminology may sound weird, but pig-butchering scams are heartbreaking. They are the combination of emotional manipulation over a long period of time and financial fraud. Usually, the scam will be initiated in the form of a friendly message on an app for dating, a social media platform, or a messaging app. The scammer spends more than one week and even several months to build a relationship of trust before finally introducing a “lucrative investment opportunity.” Victims often get “profits” from totally fake dashboards that encourage them to pump more funds into the scam.

By the time they realize that the platform is a complete fraud, the exit door has already been taken. In 2024, losses from such frauds went beyond $5.5 billion in Ethereum and the figures are still staggeringly high in 2025.

Rug Pulls and DeFi Scams

The advent of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has opened up numerous possibilities for yield farming, staking, and lending. On the downside, it has become the place where the phenomenon of rug pulls is prevalent, that is, where the project creators pull out the liquidity and vanish. Beginning of year 2025, among the high-profile rug pulls that led to disappearances of $69 million and $80 million, respectively, were the cases of Meteora and SecureYield. Most of these projects had aggressive marketing campaigns and kept the community alive with regular interactions, but they ended up being mere shells without real products or lacking in transparency.

Phishing and Fake Airdrops

Phishing has been around since long ago but still managed to undergo a transformation that kept it alive to this day. Scammers develop a mirror version of a website, which looks exactly like a real one of an exchange or wallet that they then send to users via email, social media, or messaging app links. If you, as the victim, connect your wallet or type in your seed phrase on that counterfeit site, your funds can be gone in an instant.

Moreover, the prevalence of counterfeit airdrops has been on a steady rise in 2025. The perpetrators can be sending you tokens which if you interact with them, it will deploy a malicious smart contract that is intended for your wallet to be emptied.

Crypto ATM Scams

Crypto ATMs are good and handy if you are planning to do some legitimate work, but the bad guys find a way to use them to their advantage to get quick and untraceable payments. The story goes that the victims get phone calls from a person posing as a government official or a utility company who informs them that they are under a heavy fine or that they have overdue bills and then gives instructions that the payment should be done via a crypto ATM.

Pump and Dump Scams

Pump-and-dump strategies are not something new to us, however, in 2025, the fraudsters have come up with newer ways of doing it. What the scammers are doing now is employing AI to fabricate social media sentiments in which a certain token is all of a sudden going to be the talk of the town, thus attracting the attention of buyers. After the prices have hit the sky, the insiders will get rid of their holdings thus, making the whole thing a trap for the rest who will be left holding worthless ‍‌tokens.

Crypto Scam Alerts: Know What to Watch For

Here are some ways to detect these scams:

Lucrative Promises

Scammers often make promises that are too lucrative, such as providing a guarantee of profits in the crypto industry. As we are aware, the crypto market is highly volatile, so it is not possible to provide any kind of guarantee related to that.

No Documentation

Scammers won’t provide any information about the investment and the company. It is mandatory to ask for proper documents about the project.

Inspect Token Activity and Smart Contracts

Use tools to review contract code and transactions, watch out for high token concentration in a few wallets (a sign of possible price manipulation), and see whether the trading is locked or has unusual restrictions.

Fake Websites

Cybercriminals may use fake news articles and testimonials to seem legitimate, or they might create fake websites and social media accounts to impersonate real projects or individuals.

Non-utility Token

If the promoted token does not have any ecosystem of its own, then it may be created solely for cheating. Scammers use marketing strategies to promote such pump-and-dump tokens to lure investors. Once they invest in these tokens, either withdrawals are blocked or the tokens vanish.

Tips to Avoid Crypto Scams

Even if the scamming methods have been modified over time, these best practices will keep you safe from crypto fraud to most extents:

• Identify people on your own: You should never taken at face value the statements of a CEO, an influencer, or a company.
• Do not give your private keys or seed phrases: It is out of a project, exchange, or support team’s character to request for your private keys or recovery phrases.
• Say no to proposals that promise profits: There is no such thing as a guaranteed return in crypto markets. As soon as you see a claim for a “risk-free” or “sure shot” investment, you should immediately think of it as a red flag.
• Keep your money in a good wallet and an exchange that you trust: Do not hop from one platform to another. Choose those that have a good security track record and are well-known
• URLs and smart contracts should be verified twice: Before you use any platform or airdrop, be sure about the website URLs, token contract addresses, and blockchain explorers.
• Do not invest in a hurry: Scammers usually use tactics like limited time offers or fear to create a sense of urgency. Take time to investigate the project, team, whitepaper, and what the community says about ‍ ‍‍‌‍‌‌it.

How Delta6Labs is combatting these scams?

Delta6Labs is working towards a more secure and trustworthy crypto environment, by implementing advanced security mechanisms, such as KYC and AML protocols. Delta6Labs ‍fights against crypto scams through the introduction of state-of-the-art security protocols, encryption, fraud detection, secure wallet/exchange creation, and smart contract security at each level of the digital asset ecosystem, thus protecting users and platforms from the numerous threats that the industry is exposed to ‍nowadays.

Conclusion

As the crypto industry continues to evolve and attract more investors, the presence of scams is an ever-growing concern. The complexity of these scams, particularly with the use of AI and emotional manipulation, requires investors to remain vigilant and informed. Understanding the different types of scams, from deepfakes to rug pulls, can significantly enhance your ability to protect your investments. Always approach opportunities with skepticism, verify information through reliable sources, and prioritize security measures.

By staying educated and cautious, you can navigate the crypto landscape more safely and help safeguard yourself against the malicious tactics employed by cybercriminals. The promise of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency should not be overshadowed by the threats that come with it.