[HN Gopher] Beware of a New Amazon Token Crypto Scam
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Beware of a New Amazon Token Crypto Scam
Author : saturn5k
Score : 36 points
Date : 2021-12-23 19:51 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.avast.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.avast.com)
| Wronnay wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20211220051443/https://blog.avas...
| jrockway wrote:
| What does the conversion rate end up looking like for these
| scams? Pretending to be major media outlets and stealing Amazon's
| branding is a compelling scheme, but the "just transfer some ETH
| to us" seems like a brick wall that would really stop the average
| person. People seem wary of typing their credit card number into
| a website, and with a credit card you can call your bank and say
| "meh I didn't really want the thing I bought" and get your money
| back. But people have credit cards and know that; with ETH, they
| probably don't have any laying around. So that seems like it
| would kill these scams dead.
|
| Maybe the flow for buying ETH is really simple, and these sellers
| aren't clear that every transaction is irrevocable? So people
| think they can reverse the transaction later, and are left
| holding the bag when they get scammed? Or, maybe these scams have
| such wide appeal that they rope in enough victims that a 99.9%
| bounce rate on the payment page is still worthwhile?
| nope96 wrote:
| I would have thought the REAL scam would be to have an actual
| token - and get crypto holders to buy that token, fully knowing
| it is a scam - but thinking they can buy in low early & dump it
| in a week on the victims.
| Beltiras wrote:
| You mean like Dogecoin?
| mrorbitman wrote:
| My parents reached out asking me to help them figure out how to
| buy this Amazon crypto. They've recently become interested in
| crypto and so I've been teaching them how it works and how to
| use it.
|
| Luckily I hadn't taught them anything about eth except how to
| buy it and how to self-custody it yet.
|
| After seeing how easily they were scammed into believing this
| was real, I am recommending they steer clear of eth entirely
| and just stick to learning about bitcoin. Too many (believable)
| scams on smart contract chains.
|
| The only btc scams I've seen are along the lines of "Send me
| your btc and I'll double it back for you!" which is obvious
| even for them.
| JackFr wrote:
| You know, other than the Bitcoin itself.
| nope96 wrote:
| > steer clear of eth entirely and just stick to learning
| about bitcoin
|
| Although even that isn't so clear cut - you have to
| educate/warn about Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV,
| and so on.
| mrorbitman wrote:
| True. I only told them how to use CashApp which only sells
| bitcoin.
| alostpuppy wrote:
| That's a good call. Any app that has a curated list of
| tokens really.
| bener wrote:
| I feel like they would do rather well - there are so many new
| crypto "projects" and so many people "investing" in them.
| Investing in new coins using Eth for purchasing is very
| normalised in those circles, and people are super hungry for
| opportunities to enter an ICO.
|
| Most of the people (or people with bots) making any sort of
| money with these new coins are getting in on the ICO and
| dumping their coins during the initial peak after public
| release. The whole thing is like a high frequency pump and
| dump, and there are large profits to be had for the few who can
| pull it off, which makes buyers particularly rushed.
|
| The Binance Smart Chain has even more of this going on, it's
| madness. It's like the wild west of defi.
| mrorbitman wrote:
| Yeah, eth is bad enough, but BSC and Solana are where the
| truly depraved and desperate get-rich-quick victims are.
| Absolutely brutal.
| mdoms wrote:
| I have a special immunity to crypto scams. I simply never have
| and never will purchase any kind of crypto "currency" until
| someone can articulate, at a bare minimum, one advantage it
| confers to me over and above "normal" currency in day to day
| usage. Bonus points if that benefit even comes close to
| offsetting the environmental carnage the ecosystem wreaks.
| [deleted]
| cmckn wrote:
| I think crypto folks generally consider the (possibly) getting
| rich part to be the killer feature.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Could just buy lotto tickets or put $10k on 00. At least
| those are regulated.
| masterof0 wrote:
| ^^ this, I'm not a crypto maxi, but for what I have seen so
| far, the main point of all of those coins, is to get earlier,
| and hope that someone *cough* Elon *cough* pump it , so we
| can finally escape the rat race.
| N00bN00b wrote:
| I've been using it for well over 10 years now.
|
| Sometimes I want to spend money on things that I think are
| morally right, but the credit card companies/paypal won't let
| me buy.
|
| You can search for lists. I'm doing things that aren't even on
| most lists (things like buying medication - not drugs - at a
| discount). A good consumer will never be in that situation,
| they'll stick to the paths well traveled and stick to whatever
| laws they happen to think exist and apply to them (often
| without actually checking those laws or applying civil
| disobedience to laws they don't agree with).
|
| An independent mind will sooner or later get into situations of
| wanting to do things that the established corporations don't
| want you to do and then you'll find out how little you can
| actually do with your corporate approved currency.
| psychlops wrote:
| That immunity will protect you from using all sorts of
| investment losses from electric cars to typewriters. Until they
| become mainstream or fail.
| knicholes wrote:
| Lower fees than wiring money internationally.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Wise handily beats BTC/ETH fees
| chewyland wrote:
| Cost me 28 cents to wire my BMW dealer the full cost of my
| brand new BMW GS. I used Wise.
|
| I'm in BG.
| notch656a wrote:
| More or less a wash with litecoin or monero then, both of
| which have transaction fees in the single digit of
| pennies.
|
| BTW, you have my jealousy on the bike. Congrats :)
| vmception wrote:
| wait till you read their terms of service of prohibited
| kinds of business, and that's just at the corporate level
| that has nothing to do with countries of operation.
| vmception wrote:
| I got one even better! Converting transactions that _would
| be_ international wires, into domestic wires which definitely
| will occur same day, circumventing multiple levels of
| potential scrutiny and operator error.
|
| There is no way to quantify how much this has happened using
| crypto assets.
| notch656a wrote:
| But Wise is almost free for int'l transfer and the unbanked
| can go fuck themselves! /s
| notch656a wrote:
| It needn't provide an advantage in day-to-day usage, just some
| niche advantage that works at least once.
|
| For instance, buying metal bullion from a major online vendor
| such as APMEX, you can avoid credit card fees or long wait for
| a check/ACH/wire(faster than previous two but still takes
| hours) to clear by paying in crypto. It's basically <30min
| clearing for any arbitrary large amount. The closest you can
| get to that without crypto through most major bullion vendors
| is a wire, which depending on your bank is anywhere from free
| (rare) to $25+. Sometimes the crypto fees are waived, other
| times they're merely much closer to check price than credit
| price.
| dehrmann wrote:
| If you're buying physical metal and can wait a few days for
| it to ship, you can wait a day for the ACH payment to clear.
| Bitcoin is also very volatile, so you can end up losing out
| on the spread, but not notice it.
| notch656a wrote:
| > you can wait a day for the ACH payment to clear.
|
| It adds an additional 1-2 days at least to shipping. Do you
| enjoy having your money gone additional time without any
| underlying asset in hand, adding to your counterparty risk?
| This is one of the reasons why Amazon delivery logistics
| has succeeded, consumers LIKE to have their goods faster.
| You don't think it's valid that some people use crypto to
| get their goods a day or two sooner for in many cases
| essentially the same price (or if they already had crypto,
| cheaper because they didn't have to convert back to fiat
| themselves).
|
| >Bitcoin is also very volatile, so you can end up losing
| out on the spread, but not notice it.
|
| The price in BTC(or LTC, BCH, etc) is locked for 15 minutes
| when you check out. If BTC or whatever you're using gains
| value you could merely choose not to execute the trade;
| when I missed the window there was no penalty it just
| cancelled the invoice. There's no way you can possibly have
| an unexpected loss. If you have fiat on an exchange and you
| needed crypto, you can choose to buy it right then in that
| 15 minute window to make sure your price is locked in.
| rabite wrote:
| the US effectively doubled the supply of normal currency in the
| past year, other currencies have followed suit. the only thing
| that has ever doubled in a year about bitcoin is the difficulty
| of finding new bitcoin.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > These malicious advertisements rely on people's trust in the
| Amazon brand and desire to get in early on cryptocurrency initial
| coin offerings (ICOs).
|
| Gosh. I'm doubly-lucky: I don't trust the Amazon brand further
| than the end of my nose, and I haven't the slightest interest in
| ICOs. I don't trust Avast either, but I can't remember why.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post low-information, high-indignation comments to
| HN. They're flamebait, and inevitably point discussions in less
| interesting, predictable, and nasty directions.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| akiselev wrote:
| _> I don 't trust Avast either, but I can't remember why. _
|
| Something about the cure being worse than the disease
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Avast is famous for bundling spyware into their antivirus
| products
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(page generated 2021-12-23 23:01 UTC)