Note that the cryptocurrency industry is evolving due to trends. For example, the summer of 2020 was a period of popularization of decentralized finance, which is why it is also called the DeFi summer. This vector was replaced by NFT tokens, which were quite profitable investments in 2021. Also during this period, native high-performance blockchain tokens like Solana and Avalanche became particularly popular, which were in the spotlight due to the congestion of Etherium.

Since then, blockchain gaming, augmented privacy technologies and networks using so-called zk rollups, as well as various casinos along the lines of Rollbit, have been trending. As a result, AI tokens were at the centre of the hype amid the rise of artificial intelligence and various chat rooms.

It is worth noting that these tokens have nothing to do with artificial intelligence, as this technology does not yet overlap with blockchain. Accordingly, project developers are only using the trend to grow in popularity and raise funds.

Alas, some developers are not trying to do that either. They simply attract hype for the sake of stealing other people’s funds.

How cryptocurrencies get scammed

The platform’s analysts have published a list of hundreds of suspicious tokens, part of the list can be seen in the screenshot below. These are all scam projects created solely to steal investors’ money.

Note the first column – the token tickers mention the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, which has started to rapidly gain popularity in recent months. According to Cointelegraph sources, search engine Bing integrated ChatGPT into its engine on February 7, 2023, which could trigger another wave of popularity for such tokens.

PeckShield also found that a single address beginning with 0xb583 created dozens of fraudulent tokens with a focus on the hype around artificial intelligence. Most of them, however, have already managed to depreciate almost completely.

Another analyst firm Chainalysis noted in its latest report that about 10,000 new tokens launched in 2022 had signs of the so-called “pump-and-dump” scheme. It consists of pre-purchasing a little-known token, actively marketing it and then selling it to unsuspecting investors who believed in the project’s prospects.

A total of around 1.1 million tokens were launched last year, but only just over 40,000 of them had an “impact on the cryptocurrency ecosystem”. That is, at least ten transactions were made with them in four consecutive years after the launch. Here’s a relevant quote from the experts.

Of the 40,521 tokens launched in 2022 that received enough exposure to be analysed, 9902 tokens or 24 per cent dropped in value during the first week, indicating possible dumping and dumping schemes.

The vast majority of such tokens appear on decentralised exchanges, as the listing on them is much simpler than the procedures of centralised trading platforms. Therefore, only a small portion of your capital should be allocated to trading on decentralised platforms with risky assets, and in theory you should be prepared to lose money completely.


The conclusions of the situation are obvious. There are more than enough scammers in the cryptocurrency industry, and some of them are very cunning, adapting to current trends and trying to cash in on investors' attention. Consequently, users should not blindly run after the hype and buy whatever they can to try to make money.

Before investing in any token, you should take a few hours to familiarize yourself with the project website, its developers, roadmap and other important details. It is also ideal to review the details of the smart contract. Maybe it has restrictions on selling, like the Squid Game token based on the Squid Game series, or something else? Ideally, investments in crypto should be long term, so investors should pick appropriate projects. Otherwise, such an association with digital assets is fraught with the risk of losing money.