NFT chat rooms are ground zero for hot new NFT projects … and pumps, scams, and time-wasters.
How can you get the good out of NFT chat rooms and Discord servers without the bad? That’s what we’ll cover here today.
Traders already know the wily tricks that most trading chat rooms play. Keep your skepticism on high and read on for how to stay safe in NFT chat rooms.
Table of Contents
Follow Basic Chat Room Wisdom
© StocksToTrade
You probably know that NFTs have the potential for huge gains. Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs have jumped about 100,000% in their first year…
And the percent increase of CryptoPunks NFTs? In 2017, they were free. Now some sell in the millions.
Like penny stocks, these success stories keep the dumb money flowing. It helps to keep this in mind…
Like penny stocks, most NFTs fail.
The University of London researched the sale of NFTs in 2021 … They found that 75% sell for $15 or less, and only 1% sell for more than $1,500. The majority of NFTs don’t even sell, so they aren’t included in this total.
Most NFT chat rooms specialize in hype and FOMO. That’s their real product — getting their members to buy in.
The way to stay safe in any trading chat room is to ignore the hype. How?
Do your research on the chat room admins. It’s a good sign if they share personal details and successful past projects.
Have a plan. Chat pumps thrive on optimism. Have a reasonable goal and risk before you trade … and stick to your plan no matter what!
Discord Hacks Are Getting Sophisticated
Assume that everyone is a scammer until proven otherwise. But even doing your research isn’t enough.
Discord hacks use chat room hype to perpetrate their cons. Here’s the way it’s worked in two recent cases — the Monkey Kingdom collection and Fractal marketplace…
First, the announcement bots were hacked on two popular Discord servers. Then both announced surprise drops of limited-edition NFTs.
Primed by FOMO, many chat members responded to these announcements. When they connected their crypto wallets, the thieves struck.
I understand why this scam worked. But careful traders didn’t just react to the news…
If they had done a little research first, they would have seen tweets that warned about the hacks.
Follow Basic Safety Practices
If you’ve been on the internet for more than 10 minutes, you already know most of this. In NFT land, you actually need to put it into practice.
That means having unique passwords and never sharing your private keys. Many scams are carried out through social engineering, not hacking…
Never trusting anyone is a good place to start. Scammers impersonate everyone — Discord admins, technical support, your grandmother … And they’re getting better these days.
They’ve stopped asking for your password directly. It’s an arms race of scams out there. Here are four ways to stay safer:
- Carefully check any URLs sent to you. Better yet, go to the official website yourself. Instead of OpenSea.io, hackers may put 0penSea.io, ÖpenSea.io, or OpenSeaa.io. These differences are easy to miss.
- Watch out for fake apps. Just because you can download it on the Google Play store doesn’t mean it’s legit. I can’t say it enough: do your research.
- Install an antivirus program. Scammers are constantly working out new angles. Getting evolving protection is one thing you can do to stay safe.
- Enable two-factor authentication (2FA). Anything you can do to bulk up your security is smart. 2FA is one of the easiest and most effective options.
Research Your Chat Rooms
© StocksToTrade
Those who fell for the Monkey Kingdom hack didn’t suffer long. The day after, the community announced a compensation fund to repay all of the scam’s victims.
This was a nice surprise. But it only happened because it was a legit chat room.
When you join any chat room, be sure you know who you’re trusting. The admins should be real people whose details are known. There should be some reason for the enthusiasm, ideally based on their past track record.
DM Stands for ‘Deceptive Marketing’
If you want to know what a Discord scam looks like, leave your DMs on. Pretty soon, you’ll be getting multiple messages a day advertising can’t-miss NFTs.
How do you know whether they’re scams or not?
Project teams will never DM you first. Legit NFTs don’t come out of nowhere. They take weeks or months to develop — and have a real reason for existing.
As always, research is your friend. Check out the artists involved and the project team. Most importantly, check out the community. These are the people who will be buying the NFT.
Here’s how to disable direct messages from people you don’t know:
- Open user settings
- Select ‘Privacy & Safety’
- Switch off ‘Allow direct messages from server members’
- When asked, click ‘yes’ to turn off direct messages from all Discord servers you belong to
Scammers might send friend requests to you to get around this. You can also limit who can add you as a friend … or do the friend-requesting yourself.
Tim Sykes’ NFT Club
This is the part where I stop scaring you.
Scammers aren’t the only ones making money on NFTs. Traders can build their accounts in this world too.
My friend and mentor Tim Sykes is one of the best day trading teachers out there. Now he’s launching a new program to teach NFT skills.
His student Adam Jarrett made $130,000 using Sykes’ penny stock strategies. Then he took them to the world of NFTs…
He’s developed an awesome strategy — which he’s about to share with traders.
Sign up for Tim Sykes’ NFT Trading Summit here.
This is the kind of community you want to be part of.
NFT chat rooms are dangerous because they want to sell you something…
Sykes has a proven track record of building communities where members support each other. This one won’t be an exception.
Are you in any NFT chat rooms? What’s your experience been like? Share it in the comments!