I “lost” $100 in a crypto “scam” so you don’t have to lose thousands!

Part of the journey of being a Web3 user is the discovery aspect; the little nuts and bolts that you simply can’t learn but can only experience. While I’m all for decentralized finance and everything that it stands for, my journey has led me to two interesting experiences which I’ld like to share with the community.

This first article will cover my experience with the Web3 project PUSHD. TLDR: I purchased PUSHD tokens in the system but to “receive” them, I need to input my secret recovery phrase ???? Sounds strange? Read on to find out.

What is PUSHD? https://pushd.store/

Part of winning the crypto game is knowledge and to this end, knowing which projects are in their early stages (ideally seed stage or pre-sale) is crucial. As such I’m always on the lookout for such projects, and in this pursuit, I came across PUSHD.

PUSHD is essentially a marketplace and is set to be the Web3 version of eBay. Nothing too fancy or particularly innovative here, but overall, it’s an early-stage project I came across on Reddit.

My investment “returns” – 2.5x in 3 months.

I invested about $100 USD worth of SHIB into the project on the 19th of January 2024 and received a total of 1769 PUSHD tokens. Reference to the transaction below.

At the time of writing, the 1769 PUSHD tokens are now worth $254.76 USD. Thus around a 2.5x return in 3 months. Not bad at all!

Conducting Investor Due Diligence – 3 Green Flags

✅ Public Relations & Communications

As with any investment, due diligence (DD) needs to be conducted, so if you google ‘PUSHD Crypto’ real quick, you’ll come across some pretty impressive results.

For the majority of the population, seeing results like this would warrant a nod of approval. In terms of validation, there are at least 20 crypto-related media publications validating their existence hence with that many “supporters”, I conclude that this is one “green flag” in the project. Furthermore, the publication dates of all these articles are all recent, further adding to the legitimacy of the project.

✅ Coinbase Profile Page

Another DD check that I performed was to check in on their CEX (Centralised Exchange) token profiles etc. While I could not find them on the Coinbase exchange itself (mainly because they are still at “seed” stage), I could find a page on the Coinbase Wallet app. Being the most highly regulated platform, if Coinbase approves, then it’s a stamp of approval from me as well.

✅ Website UI and UX, ease of purchase.

Throughout the entire DD process, I would say the part that I enjoyed most was scrutinizing their website. There is in crypto, this underlying theme called “Chain Abstraction”. TLDR it means making the process of interacting with crypto so easy and flawless such that even newbies would find it easy to participate. This would come with removing (or abstracting) the chain away from the process hence theoretically, users would be able to receive the full benefits of Web3 without dealing with their complexities (Bridges, DEXs etc.)

With the PUSHD website, the entire process of parting with my tokens was flawless and easy. I’ve attached some screenshots below in the following order,

1. Main Website
2. Dashboard
3. Buy Tokens
4. Transactions (With Proof of my $100 investment)

Overall, the process was pretty smooth. I transferred some leftover SHIB into a wallet, and in less than 10 minutes, my purchase was reflected in the dashboard with the transaction number and all other relevant details in place.

Conducting Investor Due Diligence – 3 Red Flags

❌ Social Media Presence + NO proof of product.

In conducting my DD of their social media platforms, what I want to see are signs of growing communities and users shouting praise of the product. While metrics like follower count matter, the focus would be on community interaction and engagement.

I looked into their following social media and here are some of my thoughts,

• ✅ Telegram – Telegram checks out. They have 4 telegram channels (The biggest one has 62k members @pushdbot) all of which are active. Their Telegram admin is really on it as well (as you will see later), hence Telegram checks out.
• ❌ Twitter – Twitter is the problem. With only 3,000 followers, the first major inconsistency is the difference between their number of twitter and telegram followers. Not a major red flag but an inconsistency nonetheless. We can let it slide. What spooked me more was the content being posted on Twitter.
• ❌ Reddit – MAJOR Red Flag, will explain more below.

❌ Twitter Content – No Proof of Product

The problem with their Twitter account is the lack of any product demos or screenshots. For any project, if they just walk around with a fancy deck with no actual proof of existence of the product itself, this is a major red flag for me. Reference to screenshots below where all their posts were about investing. However, considering that their project is still at its SEED stage, can the lack of any proof of product be something that can be overlooked? Depending on your investment appetite this may require further DD, but for my mere $100 investment, I can overlook it.

❌ Reddit – Scam Warnings!!!

Let’s put it this way, for any honest project out there, the moment communities link your project with even the slightest thoughts of “scam” the project is probably dead in the water. The only thing that would make investors continue to invest in the project would probably be purely because of greed or hope. A quick search in the land where #NFW was made popular brought up various threads of users doubting the legitimacy of the project.

While such doubts exist, they are small and do not appear to be very “loud” or “active”. Assuming that these users are victims of this “scam”, they don’t appear very agitated about the situation hence once again compelling me to overlook this.

Is PUSHD a Scam?

Note that even now, I refer to this “scam” in inverted commas as I haven’t actually been scammed. I’m just unwilling to take the “last step” to being actually scammed by the project . That said, here we go, this is the good part.

Sequence of Events

1. Tokens are in my dashboard (as per screenshot above) but the tokens themselves were not deposited into my Coinbase ERC-20 wallet.

2. Reached out to their Telegram Customer Service who sent me this.

3. Enjoy

What now?

The conversation ended there, leaving me stuck in limbo. Obviously, I would NEVER REVEAL my SECRET recovery phrase, and NEITHER SHOULD YOU.

The word SECRET is in SECRET RECOVERY PHRASE for a reason. For all Web3 users old, new, future, NEVER EVER REVEAL this, as you will lose everything.

Bryan

While my $100 has already been transferred to the PUSHD project team, it is fair to say that I’ve lost it and would never get it back. But until I’m 100% sure that this project has been shut down, it is also not fair for me to say that I’ve been scammed entirely. Lots of variables here but the only constant once again, is that you should NEVER REVEAL YOUR SECRET RECOVERY PHRASE.

Interested in learning more about Crypto? Worried about potential scams? AK will be sharing the lessons he wished he knew before he started investing in cryptocurrency, the trends he’s watching out for and how he’s managing his cryptocurrency portfolio in 2024. Join him to learn more!