If you’ve ever made the mistake of searching for “crypto” on YouTube, you’re probably still being bombarded with ads on how to make money through digital currency. You will be shocked to know that all these are not at the proposal stage. A new trend, called “front running,” has been gaining traction of late, which means you can earn as much as $1,400 a day in passive income with crypto. This is also a good way to cheat.
A new report from blockchain security firm Certik found that 232 YouTube videos with the phrase “front running bot” in their title, 84% were scams— Six times increase from 2021. To understand how this technique is being used to give victims their cryptocurrency, we must first understand what front running is.
What is crypto front running?
The details of front running can get technically overwhelming, especially if you are not familiar with crypto. But in layman’s terms, front running consists of bad actors waiting around for a victim to make a crypto transaction, which they charge more “gas fees” (which determine the speed at which the transaction takes place) than the victim. With which the transaction is processed on the blockchain). This places them at the front of the transaction queue. After the frontrunner buys crypto ahead of the hunt, the price of crypto goes up (because there is less of it). The fronter then immediately sells the newly purchased crypto at a higher price such that the victim has a slow transaction, and the fronter realizes the profit. Victims have less cryptocurrency left than expected because the price spiked at the last minute.
Cypto front running is analogous to a similar scheme in stock market trading. The difference comes down to the fact that stock market front running hinges on the schemer having prior knowledge of a big upcoming trade that will increase the stock’s value – commonly referred to as insider trading. Crypto on the other hand, exploits the base technology of the currency itselfEmploying bots pre-programmed to perform a task with mile-a-second speed moments after it is publicly announced on the blockchain, but before it is actually executed.
Here is a visual representation of the Certik report on how crypto front running works:
g/o media can get commission
So where does the scam come in? Shady front runners will claim to have “insider knowledge” of when and where crypto assets will increase in value. They “teach” others to run their own frontend by installing some code that will do all the work, thereby generating passive income. (Of course, this type of insider trading is illegal in crypto, as in the traditional stock market, According to the Securities and Exchange Commission.) And this is where the front running scam begins.
How do crypto front running scams work?
Victims are lured by promises of easy passive income, explained in motivational YouTube videos from “crypto gurus” who show them how to execute front running code in their computers.
But instead of helping a trail make passive income, the code is actually a cover for malware. Once you have copied it to your computer, you are vulnerable to being monitored by scammers, who will ask you to allocate funds to be “traded” on their behalf. But all you are doing is giving your crypto to scammers.
How to protect yourself from crypto scams
Unless you know how to read the code, never run any code unless you absolutely trust the person who supplies it to you (and trust that more than watching a bunch of YouTube videos of theirs). should be built on
It also goes without saying that if something sounds too good to be true – like making over $1,000 a day in passive income by copying and pasting a few lines of code – it probably is. Any promise that a particular trading strategy or technique will guarantee high returns for very little effort should raise your suspicions.