The BitTorrent ICO has been adjudged the most successful ICO in 2019. Not surprisingly, scammers have taken advantage of the buzz to distribute fake Binance wallet promising BTT airdrop.
15 Minute Sellout
The BTT token sale was a 15 minute sell-out. The sale which was held on the Binance launchpad was so successful that the network congestion on the platform resulted in error messages for many would-be investors causing disenchantment.
Aware that many investors could not buy the BTT token, the Tron CEP Justin Sun announced that the Tron network would compensate those that couldn’t make the purchase with free BTT tokens.
BitTorrent which was acquired by the Tron Network for $120 million last July is a file-sharing site. Tron immediately after the acquisition launched the project Atlas project to tokenize the BitTorrent platform. The BTT token is the internal currency of that platform.
A Scammer’s Delight
Like any remarkable project with high publicity, scammers are leveraging the BitTorrent ICO in their quest to steal from investors.
One email circulated by some scammers is promising investors free airdrop of the BTT token to take some action such as downloading a fake Binance wallet.
One of such emails obtained by Cryptoinfowatch was titled, “Binance: get 500.000 (BTT) with the help of our client “Binance Wallet”!” apparently posing as the BTT team of Tron Network. The email linked to the authentic Binance website and social media accounts.
Marginally rendered, the scammers wrote in the email,
“Our team launched the distribution of BitTorrent tokens (BTT) from 01.28.2019 at 18:00 to 03.02.2019. Distribution will take place simultaneously with the sale of BNB and TRX. Each participant who completed our simple tasks receives up to 500.000 (BTT). How to get BTT tokens from our team: Each member must use our program “Binance Desktop Wallet”
The email recipients were directed to a Google doc page to download the said Binance PC client wallet which the Cryptoinfowatch team believes this is a phishing wallet or even a malware that targets machine user.
Other Binance Scams
Interestingly, Binance seems to have gotten wind of the scams around the project. A pinned tweet on Binance handle does not specifically refer to this scam but another. The tweet handler wrote:
“Alert! Scammers are impersonating official Binance accounts and tweeting to ask for deposits to specific addresses in return for gifts. You will lose your tokens if you do this! Binance will never ask you to send coins directly to any address for any reason.”
Alert!
Scammers are impersonating official Binance accounts and tweeting to ask for deposits to specific addresses in return for gifts.
You will lose your tokens if you do this!
Binance will never ask you to send coins directly to any address for any reason.
— Binance (@binance) February 12, 2018
Binance Client for PC in Use Since 2017
A Google research shows that Binance launched its current PC client since 2017. The exchange has not made any recent announcement that it was launching a new client for PC. Moreover, examination of the email sender address reveals that it does not originate from the exchange but just an attempt by scammers trying to take advantage of the BTT token sale.
The Tron foundation announced that holders of TRX would receive BTT tokens in airdrops that would span 6 years. There are plans to distribute BTT through some offline and online events.
Projects like this are ideal scenario for scammers as seen with the Telegram Open Network that was so popular that fake sites sprang up all over the internet to steal funds from investors even before Telegram officially announced its ICO last year.
In any case, there still are good ways investors can make money without falling for scams. You can check our recommendation.
