If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Those are words spawned from age-old wisdom, and should be heeded every time one finds free stuff in their crypto wallet. Unless you have a rich uncle with your ETH wallet address, no one is sending you real money for free. Remember that. This tale begins with a story of a man who did not remember.

It was a Tuesday. John had been smoking market hopium all week as altcoins had pushed to yearly highs. For days the soft green glow of God candles had been saturating John’s phone and tablet screens. John had fallen asleep just the night before to their lovely teal sheen and dreams of a baller future.

Then John checked his wallet on his blockchain explorer URL. He stopped mid-crunch in a big bite of Honey Nut Cheerios. An NFT was now sitting in his wallet. Upon closer inspection it said “Visit ScammyuRL.biz/rob-u-blnd2 to redeem for 10,000 USDT”.

‘Woah! 10,000 USDT’ John thought. ‘That would cover school this semester and payoff Baby Mama.’ Without thinking about the low probability that someone would not simply dump $10k into his ETH wallet ( i mean he’s no Vitalek) for no good reason, John clicked through to the URL and approved the transaction in his wallet.

Then a cold and tingling sensation grew in John’s spine as he refreshed the wallet and noticed the total balance was now $0.00 USD. Refresh…..refresh….REFRESH!!!!! Panic turned to Reddit’ing and John learned he had fallen victim to a classic honeypot scam in crypto. Damn.

Don’t be like John.

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