Welcome back,
The crypto market is full of opportunities when it comes to ways of earning, but while this is the good side of the market, there is a bad side of the market as well as there are a lot of ways in which a newcomer as well as even an expert user can get scammed by scammers.
So there is a boy who recently started dealing in crypto, specifically in USDT and two months back he came to me and asked me about how he can start his journey. I told him to educate himself on the basics, what are blockchain networks or what are crypto wallets etc and only then do what he wants to do.
He started learning few things but then one day he called me and said that there is an opportunity in dealing in USDT by making P2P trades and buying dollar at lower cost and selling it at higher cost. Now it sounds exciting but I told him that how the government will charge tax on the profit he will earn by buying and selling USDT and also how he will face consequences for having so much flow of money into his bank account.
But you know, when someone is new and joins the market, they think that they are being stopped from earning profit. That's what he thought as well. Today, he messaged me and said that there was a person from whom he bought his USDT and he sent the INR, the Indian National Rupees, to him already. Now, he checked his BEP20 wallet and saw that the token was not USDT, but it was USDT.Z which means it is probably a copy of original USDT token.
Then he asked me what can he do. I asked him for the contract address of the token and then I searched on the block explorer and told him that the volume for this token is quite low. So, Even if he go and try to trade this token, he might not get equal amount of USDT. I asked him to tell the P2P dealer to refund his money as this is not what he asked for.
But obviously, this was a scam and he is already trapped in it. Most probably, the scammer will run away soon. Later, I asked him about how he met that person and he told me that he found that on Telegram. I was like, why are people trusting random people from Telegram? I mean, there are many P2P platforms, many P2P options available on exchanges like BINGEX, BITGET, etc. Why not go there and buy dollars? Or why not simply buy using your debit card? There are options by which you can buy using debit card itself.
Anyways, I have asked that boy to remember two things in life. First thing, never believe on random people, that too from Telegram, because they are probably scammers. Second, never do a bigger trade in single transaction. Maybe if someone is new to you and you are dealing with him, go for a test transaction, so that you will receive some funds in your wallet from that person and you can check his wallet and confirm if that person is genuine or not.
Only proceed for the rest of the trade after confirmations. These are few lessons I gave him and to everyone who is reading here, it's not necessary that a newcomer is scammed. Even experts are scammed sometimes. So please make sure to stay safe and don't end up falling in such scams.
Thank you and happy trading everyone.