It appears that crypto fraudsters have already started impersonating the newly-launched Bitcoin futures trading platform Bakkt.
Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) launched Bakkt on Monday after being delayed two times in the past. The trading platform facilitates the institutional-grade investors to take positions on the cryptocurrencies through a government-regulated channel. For scammers, that turned out to be an opportunity and they started a series of scams, incorporating the Bakkt website.
Cryptocurrency giveaway scams, phishing, and Ponzi schemes are nothing new when it comes to looting innocent crypto traders and investors. In the past, fraudsters had impersonated popular personalities like Elon Musk and Vitalik Buterin to con people more easily through familiar and trusted known figures.
Bakkt, just days after its launch, has also witnessed crypto con artists impersonating the platform. It seems that the crypto con artists launched a duplicate website with the domain name bakktlaunch[.]com, earlier this week.
The fake website appears to have a similar look like the original and legitimate Bakkt site; in addition, the fake site is also offering a “Bakkt official BTC and ETH giveaway.” However, the fake website was impersonating quite poorly, as the scammers copied the official description of Bakkt in its entirety, which talks about the platform going live and how the company’s Bitcoin warehouse protected by a $125 million insurance policy.
Talking about the giveaway offer, the description reads: “We wanted to commemorate such an achievement by holding a giveaway of 5000BTC and 10000 ETH! Special promotion for BTC and ETH users!”
The fake website then asked users to click on the links which were right below the description in order to claim either Bitcoin (BTC or Ethereum (ETH)trade. After clicking on any of those links, the users would be redirected to a page where they would be asked to deposit a small amount of cryptocurrency to verify the address. The page later claims that the users would get back a greater amount of the BTC or ETH that they sent.
However, not surprisingly, the users would never receive back any BTC or ETH and the fraudsters run away with all the cryptocurrency deposits that the victims send. Neither of the addresses presented on the fake sites seems to receive any cryptocurrency funds from unsuspecting users as of yet. But it is important to note that these types of scams often generate new addresses for each user.
With this specific crypto scam, the scammers have to wait at least until the platform is launched. Unlike this one, there are a few fraudsters who have recently tried to impersonate sales of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency, when the real digital currency wasn’t even launched yet.
