Hacking of firms, theft of millions of dollars of cash: The emerging world of cryptocurrencies, like any young industry, is plagued with scams. And almost daily these multiply in different forms.
The latest is aimed at investors in Binance, the first cryptocurrency exchange where users buy and sell bitcoin, ether and many other cryptocurrencies.
Scammers send SMS messages to crypto users informing them of a withdrawal request from an unknown IP address. To prevent the withdrawal from taking place, the user is asked to click on a link to cancel the request. Unfortunately, the link leads to a phishing website that will try to steal credentials from investors.
Proof that this scam could draw in many victims: The alert comes from Changpeng Zhao, the chief executive of Binance.
"There is a massive phishing scam via SMS with a link to cancel withdrawals. It leads to a phishing website to harvest your credential as in the screenshot below," the billionaire has warned on his Twitter account.
He added: " NEVER click on links from SMS! Always go to Binance.com via a bookmark or type it in."
$14 Billion of Cryptocurrencies Stolen
The long list of scams in the cryptosphere has grown in parallel with the arrival of many individual investors. For some of these retail investors, digital currencies are often their first investments. No wonder then that some users expressed their exasperation following Zhao's post.
"This thing just never ends," commented one user.
Another user said they observed this scam for the first time: "I noticed this Phishing First time thanks for letting us know."
Binance is not the first crypto exchange targeted by an SMS scam. Last August, Coinbase (COIN) , the third largest exchange, according to CoinGecko, was taken over by scammers.
Coinbase users had received different types of text messages urging them to click on a link to deactivate accounts because someone might have logged in with their credentials to their accounts.
Scammers raked in a record $14 billion in cryptocurrency last year, according to the blockchain data and services provider Chainalysis.
