Most crypto scams fall into a handful of recognisable categories. Knowing the names and mechanics of the common ones makes it much easier to spot a new example, even dressed up differently.
Phishing sites and fake apps impersonate a real wallet, exchange, or project to trick you into entering your seed phrase or approving a malicious transaction. Fake giveaways promise to "double" any crypto sent to a given address, often impersonating a celebrity or official account. Rug pulls happen when a project's creators drain its liquidity or abandon it entirely, leaving holders with a worthless token.
Pig-butchering scams build a long-term relationship, often romantic or friendly, over weeks or months, before introducing a fake "investment platform" and encouraging increasingly large deposits. Fake exchanges and trading platforms show convincing but entirely fabricated balances and profits, right up until you try to withdraw. Impersonation scams pose as customer support, a well-known figure, or a project's official team member to extract funds or credentials directly.
Ponzi and high-yield investment schemes pay early participants using money from new participants, collapsing once recruitment slows — a structure that eventually fails by mathematical necessity, however convincing it looks in the early stages. Fake mining or staking platforms promise fixed daily returns from hardware or validators that typically don't exist. SIM-swap attacks hijack your phone number to intercept two-factor authentication codes and take over linked accounts. And pump-and-dump groups coordinate buying a low-value token to inflate its price, then sell into the resulting rally, leaving later buyers holding the loss.
None of these require sophisticated technical knowledge to avoid — they rely on urgency, trust, and emotion, not on you misunderstanding the technology. Recognising the pattern, and slowing down whenever you notice one, is most of the defence.