Bitcoin veteran tricks crypto scammer into learning Lightning

There’s a poetic justness to scammers getting bushed astatine their ain game. A cryptocurrency scammer met their lucifer erstwhile trying to instrumentality Bitcoiner, Felix Crisan into sending them Tether (USDT). 

The scammer tried to impersonate John Carvalho, the CEO of Synonym, a Bitcoiner Cointelegraph regularly cites. The scammer, who we volition telephone fake John from present on, wanted Crisan to nonstop USDT, but Crisan–who’s been learning and getting progressive with Bitcoin (BTC) for astir a decade–had different ideas:

Today I've convinced a scammer to instal a Lightning Network wallet. BTW @BitcoinErrorLog there's idiosyncratic impersonating you connected Telegram pic.twitter.com/Qd0I9pAney

— felix crisan (@fixone) March 23, 2022

In brief, Crisan, a CTO astatine NETOPIA Payments, convinced the scammer to instal a Lightning (LN) wallet arsenic helium lone deals with “LN assets.” So, Fake John installed a Bitcoin LN wallet, Blue Wallet. However, alternatively of sending Fake John the money, Crisan sent a connection saying “Eat crap you fucking scammer!”.

Justice duly served–all portion providing a escaped acquisition successful however to usage Bitcoin LN.

On the different hand, it does rise questions arsenic to whether Fake John volition proceed scamming radical but present with Bitcoin LN addresses astatine their disposal.

The Bitcoin Lightning Network is a fast-growing near-instant outgo web built connected apical of the Bitcoin basal concatenation known arsenic furniture two. It’s brought innovations specified as a speedy mode to determination a pint, portion the aforementioned (real) John Carvalho is building his institution connected Lightning successful concern with Tether.

Crisan told Cointelegraph that helium “constantly get DMs shilling 1 concern strategy oregon another.” Prudence and precaution are cardinal erstwhile interacting and transacting online: scammers, bots and cryptocurrency shills are commonplace connected societal media platforms specified arsenic Twitter portion Malware bots tin sometimes interfere with wallet addresses to bargain Bitcoin.

In presumption of pursuing and possibly catching the miscreant, Crisan said that “ if the scammer opened a transmission with this node, past it would beryllium possible. But determination are besides services that connection benignant of on-demand transmission creation, truthful that's not a precise reliable method.” However, ultimately, “only the node relation would beryllium capable to bash this enhanced tracing.”

It’s not Crisan’s archetypal clip playing tricks connected scammers. In 2019, helium outsmarted a Bitcoin illiterate scammer into sending 21 cardinal (and one) Bitcoin to their address. Bitcoin has a hard headdress of 21 cardinal Bitcoin, truthful the scammer intelligibly needs to bash immoderate homework.

1/ I spent immoderate clip contiguous trolling a scammer. At 1 constituent I was "ready" to nonstop him 21mil BTC to "trade". He was being considerate, though, lone wanting 100k pic.twitter.com/4sxgf0d4DI

— felix crisan (@fixone) July 7, 2019

The supra Tweet thread makes wide that immoderate scammers are misinformed astatine best, portion Bitcoin needs much radical similar Crisan. 

Related: ‘How I met Satoshi’: The ngo to thatch 100M radical astir Bitcoin by 2030

Asked whether Crisan had immoderate proposal to stock with cryptocurrency and net users faced with a seemingly changeless menace of scams, Crisan told Cointelegraph: 

“Avoiding scams should ever stem from a communal past with the requestor. I.e. to find if they are who they assertion they are to inquire for a communal notation (yesterday this benignant of question was the archetypal I asked this scammer and the effect astir confirmed that he's not John).”