Man Loses $1000 in BTC to Palihapitiya Giveaway YouTube Scam

Giveaway cryptocurrency scams continue to plague the cryptocurrency industry, despite the many reports we have covered about such nefarious events in the past. The perpetrators of these fake giveaways usually use the identities of popular crypto brands and influencers to deceive unsuspecting crypto users, especially newbies.

More recently, reports of a Bitcoin giveaway scam surfaced on Reddit, revealing that some fraudsters are doing a live session of BTC giveaway on YouTube in an attempt to deceive people to give out their Bitcoins into different wallets that belong to the scammers. 

According to the witnesses, this session was held in the name of Chamath Palihapitiya, the Social Capital chief executive, a billionaire investor and a Bitcoin bull. Hence, making the live stream session so convincing and real such that it attracted not just newbies but also long time crypto users.

Man loses $1000 fake Bitcoin giveaway

A man who lost his $1000 worth of BTC to the giveaway scam being a fan of Chamath took to Reddit and exclaimed his shock to fall for such scam being that he is not a veteran nor newbie in crypto, hence warning the public to stay away and be careful.

The victim said everything looked so real, and that the Live stream on YouTube showed that Chamath Palihapitiya, was doing a “5000 BTC giveaway.”

Not the first

Another Redditor who had also claimed to have witnessed two different live events, requesting BTC in different wallets, shared pictures of the stream session asking participants to send Bitcoins into a particular wallet of which they will be credited with double.

Crypto holders should be aware that scammers can go any length to rip people off their digital currencies, and giveaway scams are the most common, but unfortunately, people still fall for it. Coinformania recently reported a popular giveaway scam that made away with a whole Bitcoin, leaving the victim with the pain of losing $7,200 at that time. 

YouTube sued for allowing fake giveaway scams

YouTube is known for hitting and deleting crypto-related videos. However, the content sharing platform has, time and again, failed to stop these giveaway scam videos on its platform. For this reason, Ripple filed a lawsuit against Youtube, for not preventing such fraudulent content.

According to the report at that time, Ripple said that YouTube ignored XRP-related scam videos on the platform that defrauded users while damaging the company’s reputation.