Introduction: Top Cryptocurrency Scams of 2025

Cryptos have the potential to turn anyone’s life overnight, both for better and worse. The idea of becoming rich quickly is a perfect recipe for disasters.

Lack of patience to gain knowledge, trusting random people, and looking for easy ways to make money are some of the human tendencies scammers thrive on. 

This, along with inherent characteristics of cryptocurrencies-anonymity and irreversibility of transactions-create an environment perfect for illegal activities.

In this post, we cover Top Cryptocurrency Scams of 2025 with real-time examples and explore how one can stay safe from them. You will be shocked to find out how much people have lost to these scams. 

Social Media Influencers

Social Media scam is at the Very Top of Top Cryptocurrency Scams of 2025

So-called traders and influencers on social media platforms like X (Twitter), Youtube, Telegram, Instagram set unrealistic expectations for the Markets by sharing fake screenshots, videos and profit/loss posts.

While teaching is not wrong, lying and presenting an untrue picture is. They lure people by showing their lavish lifestyle, cars and jets.

They target new traders, show them morphed images of profits, promise them to teach investing and trading and ultimately end up selling worthless, overpriced mentorship courses.

There are many good traders out there who teach for free. Keep the following points in mind before trusting anyone on social media:

1. Check their track record. Traders post multiple times and keep reposting only the calls that were correct.
2. Are they showing you verified profit/loss or only occasional screenshots of trades that went in their favor?
3. Search online for free versions of what they’re selling. Pay only when you find value in the content. You can start your free journey here.
4. Look for reviews, talk to other people on multiple platforms.
5. Stay away from traders who predict and promise “guaranteed profits”, trust only those who talk about Risk Management.

Pig Butchering

These scams involve scammers building long-term trust with victims, often targeting seniors over months, before convincing them to invest in fake crypto opportunities.

They reach out via unsolicited messages on social media and dating apps, targeting emotional vulnerabilities over time.

Conversations shift to investment and victims are directed to fake trading terminals. Trust is won slowly by showing them profits in their account.

Victims are encouraged to deposit more money to earn bigger profits. Once they try to withdraw, they are prompted with hefty withdrawal fees and taxes.

This is a post from reddit where a redditor explains how his father lost a whopping $250k to Pig Butchering.

There is a dedicated community on crypto scams on reddit – r/CryptoScams

One can stay vigilant by adopting these precautionary measures and protect near ones:

1. Check on your family members regularly, especially seniors who are more vulnerable emotionally.
2. If possible, put limits on bank accounts and spam protectors on your parents’ mobile phones.
3. One must understand there is no easy money in this world, stop looking for shortcuts.

Ponzi Schemes

Ponzi Schemes promise high returns without any underlying investment generating the profits. In this, new investors are made to pay a joining fee and promised returns as they keep referring more investors under the scheme.

So, existing investors are paid using the joining fee on new investors. This pyramid stays intact as long as new people are coming in.

A peculiar feature of Ponzi Schemes is that they hide themselves behind other genuine activities – for instance, claiming to be an educational platform while primarily running a referral programme to its core.

Such scams can be found in every field and are also widespread in crypto space. Many governments have declared Ponzi as an illegal activity.

The biggest Ponzi Scheme in Crypto Space was ‘OneCoin’. They managed to bring in approximately $4 billion dollars worldwide. You can read more about the scam here.

These are some of the practical ways to stay safe from such schemes:

1. If a business is mainly dependent on referral programmes and doesn’t have any underlying money making activity.
2. Anyone promising consistent high returns every month (20-40%) is a lie. They always talk about a secret strategy they own for making unrealistic returns.
3. Google the name of founders and people associated with the project to know their past.
4. If you have large investments, keep your cryptos in cold storage rather than with exchanges.

Pump and Dump Schemes

Pump and Dump schemes are also one of the Top Cryptocurrency Scams of 2025

This involves artificially inflating prices of a cryptocurrency, with a low market capitalization and liquidity, and spreading fear of missing out on great returns via social media and news outlets with fake screenshots.

As FOMO drives more traders to enter, scammers offload their holdings, trapping smaller players, tanking the price, and leaving latecomers with worthless tokens.

One of the most famous examples is Squid Game Token (SQUID 2021), inspired by the web series Squid Games. The craze to own the coin was so that the price jumped from 1 cent to $2850. And when the dump started, it lost its 99.99% of its value, causing widespread distress to retain investors.

Fake Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are scam in which a coin lacks any fundamental value but is actively promoted actively on social media and by celebrities, luring innocent investors. This is typically followed by pump and dump.

Other signs include a copied and vague white paper and lack of transparency.

There is another scam linked to creators of the project, known as Rug Pulls. In “rug pull” the insiders of a project intentionally deceive investors, collect funds, and then abandon the project, leaving it worthless.

One can follow these easy steps to avoid Pump and Dump/ Rug Pulls scams:

1. If you are planning to invest, always assess the use case of the coin i.e, its fundamental utility rather than random “moon coins”.
2. Sudden spike in coins without real news along with social media hype for no apparent reason especially in low market cap coins trading with low volume. 
3. Don’t buy just because some random influencers are screaming 100x soon.
4. Avoid FOMO, if a coin is already 1-2x in a short period of time with no news, you are probably the target of an upcoming dump. 
5. Always have an exit plan, a Stoploss.

Impersonation Scams

These scams include creating fake mobile apps, websites, wallets, exchanges etc. which mimic the real ones. In the age of AI, creating copies is as easy as it gets. 

Deep fake videos of celebrities endorsing fake coins, websites and exchanges make it very difficult to distinguish real from fake.

Targets generally include the retired pensioners who easily get swayed away with messages like “Double your BTC now” and panic messages “Your account is compromised”.

Fake exchanges

Exchanges with messages like “Elon Musk backs this exchange” creating hype via social media, offering lower fees to try to attract vulnerable investors. Such exchanges let you login and deposit but withdrawals fail. 

In Turkey, a crypto exchange named Thodex scammed innocents by luring them with campaigns of giving away free cryptocurrencies which drew massive deposits.

In a Phishing attack, scammers duplicate the login page of an exchange which targets to steal your login credentials with subtle domain change like “www.benance.com” instead of real “www.binance.com”.

Sometimes scammers may impersonate Government Agencies and instill fear and urgency, threatening victims with imprisonment and demanding cryptos in return.  

Fake wallets

These fake wallets may be distributed through app stores or promoted via phishing emails. A common tactic involves prompting users to enter their private keys into the fake wallet interface, which then allows the scammers to gain access to and steal the user’s cryptocurrency holdings. 

To avoid falling victim to such schemes, one can follow these precautions:

1. It is always wise to choose trusted platforms even if they are charging a few bucks. Be alert if your exchange faces unexplained delays and charges exorbitant withdrawal fees. 
2. Legitimate companies never demand payment in cryptocurrency from their customers.
3. Do not visit websites via links from emails, inbox messages from randoms.
4. Always download apps/wallets from official sources only.
5. Always keep your 2FA turned on.

Giveaway Scams

Giveaway scams also find a spot in Top Cryptocurrency Scams of 2025 – a type of fraud where scammers promise cash and crypto to lure victims into providing money, personal information, or cryptocurrency. 

They circulate fake images of giveaways, fake endorsements creating FOMO. Scammers ask for “processing fee”, “wallet verification” which are nothing but phishing attacks.

It is important to understand that nothing is free in this world. Stay away from giveaway gimmicks. Legitimate giveaways will never require participants to send cryptocurrency.

Cloud Mining Scams

Scammers promise users the ability to mine coins without needing to own expensive hardware, only to disappear with the victims’ money. They pitch this as an opportunity to earn passive income.

They set up a website with fake mining terminals but in reality do not own any hardware. This is nothing more than a ponzi scheme where they pay the early investors with the joining fee of new investors.

HashOcean (2016) is an example of the scam where they suddenly disappeared with 700,000 victims’ money.

Now that we have covered Top Cryptocurrency Scams of 2025, let’s try to answer the question:

How do we recover the cryptocurrency lost to scams?

It is important to note that unlike bank transactions, which can be reversed and traced, crypto transactions are irreversible and tracing too can be difficult.

The anonymity of cryptos makes it extremely difficult, even for federal agencies to recover the lost funds.

In most cases, it is not possible to get back the scammed cryptos but one can still try the following steps to attempt recovery: 

1. Gather evidence – keep records of texts of scammers and wallet addresses.
2. Report to your local authorities and don’t trust anyone, especially on social media, claiming they can help recover. They will again scam you.
3. Your best bet is your Crypto exchange, alert them and if there is enough time, they might be able to freeze the account of scammers.

My sincere advice is to stay vigilant and avoid scams, as recovering lost funds is nearly impossible.