$500,000 worth of Bitcoin gone in an instance. If you don't control your

private keys, you don't truly own your Bitcoin. The Bitfinex

hack. The Mt. Gox Bitcoin loss. Ponzi schemes.

The giveaway scam. Scammers are being smarter, bolder, and

more creative. Scams going on to do with your crappy fiat

dollars. A scam that's hidden in plain sight. Governments

and central banks. So imagine you're just scrolling one evening, you're

lying in bed and you come across an Instagram post

and you think, yeah, I really like that t-shirt. So

you go and click through and you put all your details in, you

buy the t-shirt and you think none the wiser. About

five minutes later though, you get a phone call. It's

someone claiming to be from the exchange where you have some of your

Bitcoin. So you talk to the person on the other end and

they convince you to open up your account and do some checks

to make sure everything's okay. Of which you oblige and you go and do that.

You hang up, you think everything's fine. You then get a phone call

from your hardware wallet provider. In this case,

Trezor. So Trezor's on the phone telling you, hey, the

other part of your Bitcoin is also under threat. It

could be stolen from you. We better take action now. And

the person on the phone says, just open up your Trezor, press

these buttons, and we'll take care of everything for you. Now, You

go to bed then thinking everything's fine. You've saved the day and

luckily that these really, really great companies called

you to protect your Bitcoin. Of course, you wake up in the morning, you

open up your account and find everything is

gone. every last bit of Bitcoin from

your hardware wallet and also your exchange. Absolutely

devastating. And I'm talking to the tune of

$500,000 worth of Bitcoin gone in an instance. And this

is exactly what happened to a friend of mine. this

exact scenario. And I'm talking only in the past month,

but this is happening recently. And it's not just happening to

my friend, it's happening to a lot of other people. Now, if this is ringing true

to you and you think I've seen this somewhere before, yeah, a lot of people have seen the

beekeeper movie. And in that exact instance, there was a company that

called the lady in one of the beginning scenes to say,

hey, your money is under threat. And so she logged

into her account and essentially everything was stolen

from her over the internet in a matter of seconds and it

didn't turn out too well for her. So the reason why I wanted to put this video

in particular together for you is obviously highlight my friend's story

and use this as an example so that this doesn't happen to you. But

go through what are some of the scammer tactics that

you should be looking out for and how you can protect your Bitcoin into the future. So

we're going to dive deep into a topic, this topic, of scams that's

crucial for everyone interested in digital assets. It's going to be the

risks of cryptocurrency scams, the stories behind some

of those biggest Bitcoin losses, how scammers actually

operate, and how you can safeguard your hard-earned coins.

Plus, we're going to tackle less obvious but equally

important risk, how actions by governments and central banks

might be quietly eroding the value of your money. So

whether you're a seasoned crypto investor or just curious about

what all the fuss is about, stick around. This episode could save you

a fortune. So the question is, why does crypto space

attract so many scammers? Well, cryptocurrency is

still a relatively new frontier. It's decentralized, borderless,

and transactions are often irreversible. And

if you do lose your Bitcoin somewhere by transferring it,

you can't just call up the Bitcoin hotline, right? Because it's decentralized.

And once it's gone, it's gone. So that makes it a

prime target for fraudsters. So unlike traditional

banking, there's no undo button if something goes

wrong. Now in 2024 alone, Aussies lost

millions of dollars to crypto scams. And globally,

the numbers are even more staggering. With so much money flowing into

digital assets, scammers are being smarter, bolder,

and more creative. Now that's not to say that I want to

deter you away from investing in digital assets like

Bitcoin. Because before Bitcoin, there were, and

there still are, scams going on to do with your crappy fiat

dollars. People are still trying to steal your money from your banks as well,

right? So this is not unique to Bitcoin, but for

people who are listening now who are invested in Bitcoin and other digital assets, it's

good to know what's going on. Let's talk about one of the top cases out there.

This was the Mt. Gox disaster. Now, Mt.

Gox was once the world's largest Bitcoin

exchange, handling around 70% of all Bitcoin

transactions back in its heyday. So in 2014, the

company suddenly suspended trading, shut down

its website, and filed for bankruptcy. Now, why

would they do this? Because it had lost a mind-blowing

850,000 bitcoins, worth over $450 million at the time. And now that went straight

to the hackers. Now

the breach went undetected for years. And how that

happened, I have no idea. But when the news finally broke, it

sent shockwaves through the entire crypto ecosystem. Thousands

of users lost their life savings. So the Mt.

Gox collapse taught us a hard lesson. Even

big, trusted platforms can be vulnerable. And

if you don't control your private keys, you don't truly own

your Bitcoin. Now let's fast track forward to

2016 and talk about another infamous incident, the

Bitfinex hack. Now Bitfinex was and still is a

major cryptocurrency exchange. One day, hackers

exploited a security flaw and stole nearly 120,000 Bitcoins, worth

about $72 million at the time. Now the aftermath, The

value of Bitcoin plummeted. Bitfinex users had

their accounts marked down by 36%, and the exchange

issued tokens as IOUs to compensate

customers, a bit like the banks that we deal

with today. So while some funds were eventually recovered, the

incident highlighted how even sophisticated security

systems can fail, and how the ripple effects of

a hack can impact not just individuals, but

the entire market. The next one I want to talk about is FTX.

Now, this was only in recent years. And in fact,

when I say recent years, probably the last three years, under Sam

Bankman-Fried, the FTX crypto exchange

completely collapsed. Investors

and customers lost over $8 billion.

Imagine that, $8 billion. It was one of the largest exchange

collapses in the world at the time. Now,

some people might say that it was a scam. In my opinion, it

wasn't necessarily a direct scam. I don't think Sam

Bankman Freed was intentionally trying to steal people's money.

But was there negligence and fraud? Absolutely.

And the point is that even some of these big

crypto exchanges that we see that advertise on Formula One

race team cars, and they were advertising on Mercedes-Benz Formula

One team cars, even those guys can

be susceptible to collapse. So we just have to be really,

really careful all around, whether it's a direct scam or

it's someone who's just being fraudulent in the crypto space.

In my opinion, don't hold your crypto on

an exchange. So the question is, how do

these scammers actually get their hands on your crypto? So let's

run through some of the most common and dangerous methods.

The first one is phishing. These are fake emails or websites

designed to steal your login details or private keys.

Now this would be very similar into my friend's case and what had

happened in her situation was she pressed on

an ad on Instagram which then took her

through to a fake website. She thought she was buying

t-shirts but in fact what she was doing was entering in

all of her private information including her credit card details, her

phone number, her email, name, etc. And now the

scammers have that. They then use that information to call

her up and pretend to be the exact companies

that she had crypto with. The next type of thing would be

Ponzi schemes. Too good to be true investments that

pay early adopters with money from new investors until

it all collapses. A lot of people who are not in the Bitcoin space,

who hate the Bitcoin space, quite often call Bitcoin itself

a Ponzi scheme. But based on Bitcoin and how it operates, it doesn't meet

the definition of a Ponzi scheme. Now, the other one would be Fake exchanges,

now this would be horrible. Now this is where websites look legitimate,

but are actually set up solely to steal your deposits, right?

That's why it's so important that you must use reputable and

known exchanges, and if you must, make

sure you've got the right software to make sure it identifies these

fake websites. The other thing would be malware. Dodgy software

or apps that can spy on or steal your passwords.

That means if you accidentally upload a dodgy app

to your phone, that could be devastation. Hey guys, just quickly,

this episode is brought to you by CoinStash, the Australian exchange

I personally use to invest my SMSF into Bitcoin

and crypto. Now, CoinStash is Australia's leading SMSF crypto

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if you're ready to take control of your crypto super and make your SMSF

crypto journey smooth sailing, hit the link in the show notes and

book a free call with the CoinStash team today. Now, back

to the episode. Social engineering. Scammers impersonate trusted

contacts or use psychological tricks to get you to

reveal sensitive information. There was one of these social

engineering hacks that went on recently where they actually used

one of the most famous people in the Bitcoin space. It was Michael Saylor. And

so what happened was you'd be scrolling through your social media, you'd

see Michael Saylor talking about a particular deal. And

this particular deal, Michael Saylor using AI, right, so

it wasn't actually him saying it, it looked like he was saying, send

us any amount of Bitcoin and we'll send you double

back, right. Classic too good to be true type

of scam, right? So imagine you sent one Bitcoin, you

thought you were gonna get two Bitcoin back, right? Why? No

reason. Just because Michael Saylor apparently was feeling good that day,

right? So obviously that is a complete scam, but

guess what? So many people fell for it. So

that's an example of the social engineering scam. So one

thing to think about in this social engineering type of scam is that as

AI just gets better and better and better, these types of

scams are going to be everywhere. There could be the days where even you

have an AI version of me on social media talking

to you about something that is amazing. And why don't you send me

some Bitcoin and I'll send you double back. And you think, yeah, I know that

guy. Matt, he's from Australia. He seems good. We trust

him. Unfortunately, that could end up being a scam. So you've got to

be so careful with these things. At this stage, we don't even know what we

don't know. How about rug pulls? Developers raise

funds for a project, then disappear with all

your money. You've got to watch that one. Really prevalent within the altcoins. Now,

how about another one that's in the altcoins, the pump and dump? coordinated

hype to inflate a coin's price, followed by a massive

sell-off that leaves latecomers with worthless tokens.

So let me give you a classic example of a combination of a rug pull and

a pump and dump. And that was the Hoctua coin, right?

This is just a meme coin that came out. And the Hoctua girl, who

was famous all over social media for becoming famous

on social media, Developers behind the scenes, this

is my opinion and my super sleuth, they convinced

her to put her face and her short-lived fame

onto this meme coin. And what they did is they pumped the crap out

of it. $490 million was pumped

into this coin. And then, boom! it was dumped by

a rug pull and went dropped all the way

down to 41 million dollars. Now this is

something that luckily for me I didn't invest in and I hope

you didn't too but it's certainly something that you need to watch out for because these rug

pulls and pump and dumps are everywhere in

the altcoins. Some people say that one of the biggest pump

and dumps of recent months was the Trump coin.

Now, I'm not saying whether it was a pump or a dump. I don't know

if it was right. I don't even know if that was really a pump

and a dump by the Trump, but... Let me

know what you think. Was the Trump a pump and a dump? Alright,

so forgetting about the Trump and the dumps and the pumps, let's get

practical. How can you protect your Bitcoin to avoid

becoming a scam statistic? Here are

my top 10 tips. Number one, use hardware

wallets. Store your Bitcoin offline in a secure device,

not an exchange. You could even take things further than that using

a hardware wallet that is air-gapped. Number two would be

enable two-factor authentication, quite often called

2FA. It's adding an extra layer of security on your accounts.

And what's shocking to me is I recently talked to my friends

at CoinStash, and they told me that so many people

don't even activate one of the simplest security measures of

a 2FA, which I found quite shocking. And it's one of those things that's

so simple, but yet could save your Bitcoin. So make sure

you get your 2FA turned on when you're using the CoinStash crypto

exchange. Three, verify URLs.

Now I know this is a tough one because who really goes

and verifies all URLs? But always double check

web addresses and avoid clicking on suspicious links. And

hopefully you've got some software that can identify these things for you quite easily.

Number four, don't share private keys. This

is like a no-brainer, right? This is like, don't share your passwords

to your bank account, okay? You would never share your

passwords to your bank account. The same thing is for Bitcoin. Do

not share your private keys, passwords, ever.

at any circumstances. And unfortunately, that's

one of the things that my friend did when the

exchange and the device company called

her to get her information, right? She gave away the

keys thinking it was the safe thing to do, but of course it wasn't. Number

five, be wary of unsolicited offers. So

ignore emails or messages promising big returns or

urgent investment opportunities. In fact, just from a personal note,

I pretend that every phone call I get from anyone claiming

to be an exchange or claiming to be from a bank or the post office

is a good one. I treat them as scams, all of

them. And I also treat every single

email that comes through as a scam as well, right? That's

what I do. So I think you should take that from your

first approach to avoid losing all your life savings. And then

number six. research, exchanges, and

wallets. Use only reputable platforms with

a track record of security and transparency. When

we're talking about exchanges, one of the exchanges that I use

to take all the guesswork out of it is CoinStash, the

number one crypto exchange in Australia. It's the exchange that

I use for my SMSF, my company, and my

personal accounts. Number seven, update your software. Keep

your devices, wallets and apps up to date to

patch vulnerabilities. Number eight, this

seems like a no-brainer, but educate yourself. Stay informed

about new scams and how they work. Number

nine, set strong passwords. Avoid simple or

reused passwords. So for example, don't use 123456. Yeah,

that's not a good one. Or 11111, do not use those passwords.

Use a password manager if you need one. Number 10, start

small. When trying new services, test with a small amount

before committing to large sums. Now this is one that I even practice myself,

particularly when I'm sending to a new exchange or

to a new wallet of some description. I'm talking small as

in no more than $100. You could even start with $50, right?

Because if I'm about to send $100,000 worth of

Bitcoin somewhere, I sure as hell want to make sure it gets there. So

guys, I've just talked about all of the scams in

the world that are labelled scams, and they are scams, no doubt.

But what about the debasement of our

currency? Yeah, is that a scam?

Because some would argue that it is a scam. Now, here's something

that is a bit controversial. A scam that's

hidden in plain sight. It doesn't involve shadowy

hackers or dodgy websites, but institutions we're

taught to trust. Yeah, we are taught to trust these

institutions. Are you ready? Governments and

central banks. Now, when central banks

print massive amounts of money, the value of

each dollar, pound, or Aussie dollar in our situation

drops. This is called

inflation, or more dramatically, currency debasement.

And over time, your purchasing power quietly erodes

away, not because of cyber criminals, but

because of official monetary policy. While

it's not a scam in the legal sense, many in the crypto community

see it as a stealthy way your wealth is

taken away. And this is one of the reasons why Bitcoin

was created, to offer an alternative to money that

can be devalued at will. So while you're watching out

for the obvious scams, keep an eye on the bigger

picture too, because diversifying assets, staying educated

and understanding how money works are all part of protecting your

wealth. crypto, or otherwise. So

guys, to wrap up, the world of cryptocurrency is

full of promise, but also pitfalls. We've covered

the Mt. Gox and Bitfinex disasters, looked

at common scam methods, shared the top 10 ways to

protect your Bitcoin, and even questioned whether government

money printing is a kind of hidden scam. What's

the key takeaway? Stay vigilant, educate yourself,

question everything, and remember, If something sounds

too good to be true, it probably is. If

you found this episode helpful, share it with a mate. Don't forget to

subscribe for more straight-talking crypto insights. Until

next time, stay safe, stay smart, and

happy Bitcoin stacking. Hey, thanks for

tuning into Crypto Collective. If you enjoyed this video, the best

way to show your support is to subscribe to the channel, or

if you're listening on Spotify, leave a five-star review. It really helps

me to create more content just for you. Also,

if you're ready to level up your crypto journey, make sure to check

out CoinStash. It's the platform that I trust to buy,

sell, and hold crypto with ease. You can also find more

of me at I'm Matthew Fraser on all social