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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,
by jrockway 5y ago
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?
- bener 5y agoI 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 5y agoYeah, eth is bad enough, but BSC and Solana are where the truly depraved and desperate get-rich-quick victims are. Absolutely brutal.
- nope96 5y agoI 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 5y agoYou mean like Dogecoin?
- mrorbitman 5y agoMy 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.
- nope96 5y ago> 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 5y agoTrue. I only told them how to use CashApp which only sells bitcoin.
- alostpuppy 5y agoThat’s a good call. Any app that has a curated list of tokens really.
- JackFr 5y agoYou know, other than the Bitcoin itself.