Bitcoiner loses coins worth a million in ‘giveaway’ scam—what are these scams all about?

cnbctv18.com:

While bitcoin as a technology is safe, scamsters keep finding newer ways to defraud bitcoin holders. There many been many instances of people being tricked into transferring their digital coins to fake accounts.According to reports, a bitcoiner was recently defrauded of bitcoins (BTC) worth about $1.1 million in a fake giveaway scam.

This was one of the single largest transactions as far as fake giveaway schemes are concerned. The perpetrator reportedly identified himself as MicroStrategy’s chief Michael Saylor and promised to double the number of bitcoins received.

However, once the victim completed the payment, the perpetrator vanished into thin air with the loot.Saylor is one of the biggest crypto supporters owning most BTC and is often impersonated in such scams. The scams, Saylor, pointed out in a tweet, continue despite repeated alerts from his team to unsuspecting bitcoiners.

“489 of these scams were launched on YouTube last week. We report them every 15 minutes and they are taken down after a few hours, but the scammers just launch more…,” Saylor said in the tweet.Also Read | Crypto Scams: What the industry is doing to educate users, prevent fraudBut what exactly is a giveaway scam? Most crypto scamsters find their victims through social media platforms such as Twitter.

In giveaways, scamsters create fake Twitter handles impersonating famous personalities in the crypto market, such as Saylor, or other influential celebrities. They then post tweets about the industry and offer some interesting rewards such as a promise to match or sometimes even double any crypto sent to their account.Similarly, scamsters also launch unsuspecting YouTube channels that provide investment advisory on bitcoin and regular market