It is weekend and I am finally having a bit more of time to sneak around on my phone. I opened Discord app and was greeted by three mentions. One of those was a direct message to me so it first captured my attention.
The message was saying I won 0.69 BTC! Seriously? That's an easy money if it is true. But as they say, if it sounds too good to be true, it maybe is. I switched browser tab and searched for "slibit." Voila! The very first result is a scam warning from Reddit.
The Reddit post says "you need to deposit 0.05BTC in order to withdraw" but the Discord message did not say so. In fact, the Discord message stated as if claiming the prize is so easy so I was curious to try. And I did.
I followed the instruction on Discord. First, I activated the "code."
Then my wallet has content of 0.69 BTC. Hurray!
And then of course, I tried to withdraw it. Guess what? The system was saying there is not enough fund on the balance sheet. If I have 0.69 BTC and the transaction fee is 0.0005BTC then why don't I have enough fund to withdraw 0.6895 BTC?
I kept pestering the system by kept trying to withdraw and I got the same error. After several attempts, I got a different one. Now I have to deposit 0.05 BTC! That's it. This is a scam.
Here are the reasons why I think this is a scam.
- If any exchange platform would airdrop for their marketing efforts, they will just deposit to your wallet without requiring any deposit. This one is requiring deposit. My suspicion is that when someone makes a deposit, the alleged airdrop may never be withdrawn and the deposit can be gone forever.
- At the bottom of sliBIT web page, there are logos of App Store and Google Play. I clicked Google Play since I am using Android and nothing happened. It did not redirect me to Google Play. The logo is not a hyperlink but just a static image. I clicked the App Store logo and it was the same. Nothing happened.
- I searched for slibit on Google Play and these were the results. No slibit.
- I replied to the message on Discord but was not able to. It looks like the sender blocked replies to his message.
If the message was legit, I should be able to reply and not blocked.
This 0.69 BTC is not a small amount if converted to fiat specially in our country. Even if I deduct transaction fees, I could have around PhP 250,000 to donate to charity if this is true.
The required deposit is not cheap either. That is around 18K in our fiat. I am not willing to gamble that amount just to prove if I can withdraw or not that 0.69 BTC.
If anyone is not yet convinced that this is a scam, please try depositing, withdraw your airdropped "prize" and let me know how it goes.
In any case, beware and be careful for anything the sounds too good to be true like this one.
Stay safe everyone!