Illicit Cryptocurrency Schemes Flashcards

A victim met someone on a dating app who later steered them to a polished trading platform showing large 'profits', but withdrawals required paying a 'tax' first. What scheme best describes this?

Answer: Pig butchering (sha zhu pan)

Pig butchering scams build a relationship over time, then 'fatten' the victim on a fake platform before demanding fees and disappearing.

Developers launch a token, attract liquidity, then pull all funds from the liquidity pool, leaving holders with worthless tokens. This is called a:

Answer: Rug pull

A rug pull occurs when project insiders drain liquidity or abandon the project after collecting investor funds.

Which feature most clearly distinguishes a Ponzi scheme from a pyramid scheme?

Answer: Ponzi returns are paid to earlier investors from new investors' funds without requiring recruitment

Ponzi schemes pay earlier investors with new money, while pyramid schemes explicitly require participants to recruit others.

An attacker sends a tiny transaction from an address whose first and last characters match a victim's frequent counterparty. What is the attacker hoping for?

Answer: That the victim copies the lookalike address from history and sends funds to it

Address poisoning relies on victims copying a lookalike address from their transaction history.

Coordinated groups on Telegram buy a low-cap token, hype it, then sell into the resulting buying frenzy. This is a:

Answer: Pump and dump

Pump-and-dump schemes artificially inflate price through hype so organizers can sell at the top.

Malware that secretly uses a victim's CPU or cloud resources to mine Monero is an example of:

Answer: Cryptojacking

Cryptojacking hijacks computing resources to mine cryptocurrency without the owner's consent.

Which on-chain pattern is commonly associated with laundering proceeds by sending decreasing amounts through a long series of new addresses?

Answer: Peel chain

A peel chain repeatedly 'peels' small amounts off a large balance, passing the remainder to a fresh address each hop.