normie.markets
All guides

Scams, rugs, and how not to get got

8 minute read

Almost everything people lose comes from a short list. Learn the list once and you avoid most of it forever.

1. The seed phrase ask

Someone helpful in a chat, a “support” account, a site that wants you to “validate” your wallet. Anything that asks for your twelve words is stealing, without exception.

2. The rug pull

The creator keeps most of the supply, waits for buyers, then sells everything at once. The price goes to zero in a single block.

Who owns it■ team holds 60%□ everyone else 40%Check “Top 10 holders” before you buy.Over ~30% in a few wallets is a warning.
A rug: the team owns most of the supply, then sells it all into your money.
  • Check how concentrated the holders are before buying.
  • Check that liquidity isn’t trivially small compared to market cap.
  • A coin minutes old with a big market cap and no liquidity is a warning, not a find.

3. The fake token

A copy with the same name and picture as something real, hoping you buy the wrong one. Always arrive via the contract address, and confirm it in two places.

4. Malicious approvals

A site asks you to sign something that isn’t a trade. It’s permission to move your tokens later. Phantom warns about many of these. If a popup appears you didn’t trigger, reject it.

5. The airdrop that costs money

Random tokens appear in your wallet. Selling them sends you to a site that drains you. Unknown tokens you didn’t buy are best left alone entirely.

If it's urgent, it's a scam
Every one of these relies on hurry: the presale ends in ten minutes, the claim expires tonight, you have to act now. Real opportunities are still there after you take twenty minutes to check. Manufactured urgency is the tell.

A sane setup

  • Keep a small wallet for trading and a separate one for anything you want to keep.
  • Never connect the second one to a site you found today.
  • Bookmark the sites you use, and get there from bookmarks rather than search.
  • Assume anything that finds you, DM, reply, tag, is hostile until proven otherwise.