Crypto Airdrop Scam: How to Spot Fake Airdrops and Avoid Losing Your Crypto

When you hear "free crypto" from an airdrop, your first thought might be excitement—but too often, it’s a trap. A crypto airdrop scam, a fraudulent scheme disguised as a free token distribution tricks people into giving up private keys, paying gas fees, or connecting wallets to malicious contracts. These scams don’t just steal crypto—they steal trust. And they’re everywhere: fake Twitter accounts, cloned websites, and even fake CoinMarketCap listings like the RBT Rabbit token, a non-existent token with $0 price and zero trading volume that lures beginners into clicking phishing links.

Real airdrops don’t ask for your seed phrase. They don’t require you to send crypto first. They don’t pressure you with countdown timers. If a project asks you to pay to claim free tokens, it’s not an airdrop—it’s a robbery. The Biswap (BSW) airdrop, a legitimate DeFi reward system tied to official farms on Binance Smart Chain shows how real airdrops work: no upfront payment, no secret links, just clear instructions from verified platforms. Meanwhile, scams like EtherMuim, a fake exchange name that doesn’t exist exploit misspellings of Ethereum to trick people into visiting phishing sites. These aren’t mistakes—they’re designed to look real.

How to protect yourself from fake airdrops

Always check the official website. Look at the project’s Twitter, Discord, and GitHub. If the team is anonymous, if there’s no whitepaper, if the contract address isn’t verified on Etherscan—walk away. Real airdrops like the TopGoal x CoinMarketCap NFT airdrop, a limited campaign that gave away 10,000 football-themed NFTs with clear rules have public records, verifiable participants, and no hidden fees. Scammers, on the other hand, vanish after the first wave of victims send funds. They rely on speed and fear. You have time. Double-check. Ask in trusted communities. If something feels off, it probably is.

The posts below show real cases—from the fake LEPA Lepasa Polqueen NFT airdrop, a legitimate project that still confused users with unclear terms, to the outright fraud of ANTSCOIN (ANTS), a micro-cap token flagged by experts as high-risk. You’ll find breakdowns of fake listings, how scammers clone real projects, and which tools actually help you verify legitimacy. No fluff. No hype. Just what you need to spot the next scam before you lose money.