The DeFi craze may finally be getting out of control. The crypto community has been in support of the thriving trend, even welcoming to experimentation and accepting of outright worthless tokens. But now that the trend is turning toward scams, it may be time to more closely consider the potential pitfalls of DeFi.
A new scam popped up recently, and within one hour pulled the rug on investors and made off with funds. The situation highlights exactly why this pause in crypto market profits was needed and put an end to so many crypto investors being blinded into potential scams by greed.
DeFi Crypto Trends Turns Dangerous, Scam Pulls The Rug On Project One Hour Later
Greed is a nasty emotion, and one of the “seven deadly sins” and “capital vices.” This vice can even cost you capital if left unchecked, as several crypto investors learned the hard way.
The cryptocurrency market recently hit a level of extreme greed, according to an index designed to monitor market sentiment. The greed comes on the back of substantial gains from assets like Chainlink, a slew of decentralized finance-focused altcoins, Ethereum, and Bitcoin.
Related Reading | Economist On DeFi: Crypto Insiders Aware Tokens Are Worthless, Speculate Anyway
Few categories in crypto have been as hot as DeFi, to the point where new projects were being created out of thin air – much like the ICO boom – with no real use case or merit. It didn’t matter. Crypto insiders were willing to inject liquidity and experiment with worthless tokens. And they were rewarded handsomely for doing so.
It’s led to a whole new wave of tokens being made, and in the midst of it all, scams are appearing.
https://twitter.com/sniko_/status/1296233154836127746?s=21
According to one crypto community member who witnessed the hour-long event unfold live, a new scam popped up, and less than 60 minutes later pulled the project and website, running off with investors funds.
The liquidity pool Uniswap has been one of the biggest benefactors of the DeFi craze. It prompted Tron founder Justin Sun to hop on the bandwagon with a JustSwap pool of his own.
Related Reading | Be Wary Searching For The Next DeFi Star Warns Crypto Advisor
But over in the Ethereum-based waters, the liquidy pool was used to launch a project dubbed Unimoon. Investors rushed to swap Ethereum and other ERC20 tokens for UMF coins.
An hour later, a website created for the project was pulled, and so was the rug. A potential 37 addresses were created and possibly burned in the hour-long scam.
Unfortunately, this is just one of many scams crypto investors must be aware of and avoid. Here is NewsBTC’s list of the top crypto-based scams and how to protect yourself from them.