Transcript
Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome to Keyword Meerkat.
Speaker: I got phished.
Speaker: Mother fuck, I got phished.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Keyword crypto, my name is Michael.
Speaker: Michael that got phished.
Speaker: And it's like the most embarrassing fish of all time.
Speaker: So for the last month, if you are on Twitter or on Discord or anywhere, you've been getting DMs and mentions and whatever about, oh, Bored Ape.
Speaker: you know, new drop or whatever, you know, new, new tokens or this or that, you know, and it's always a scam.
Speaker: So on Twitter, I would constantly, and I'm both, I'd be constantly reporting, reporting the spam and scammers on Twitter and discord.
Speaker: religiously.
Speaker: It's like the Bored Apes, like a hundred.
Speaker: I've reported a hundred accounts and they're all blue checkmarked.
Speaker: So they all look totally legitimate.
Speaker: So today I'm doing a bunch of different stuff, bunch of different stuff, bunch of stuff.
Speaker: And I get a DM or not a DM.
Speaker: I get a mention about moon birds and I didn't want to do moon birds because they, it was just like ridiculous how much they were charging.
Speaker: And I was just like, this is ridiculous.
Speaker: I'm not, I'm not even wasting my time on this.
Speaker: And it was like, Oh, it's a raffle.
Speaker: I'm like, okay, well, if they're raffling off a whitelist spot, because I signed up for whatever, I think I signed up, I don't remember, it was like a month ago, I don't even remember.
Speaker: And I click on it.
Speaker: And it's assigned the transaction $3.
Speaker: And I was like $3.
Speaker: That's okay, whatever, it's $3.
Speaker: And then a second one pops up is like $5.
Speaker: It's like, okay, so I'm so used to defy
Speaker: I don't know, like my brain was just in DeFi mode where you have to give permission to the website to use a certain token before you can transact with that token.
Speaker: Like it needs, you have to give it permission.
Speaker: You can give it permission one time or you can give it endless permission.
Speaker: So I was like, wait a minute.
Speaker: So I click yes.
Speaker: And then as soon as I click yes, I was like, oh shit.
Speaker: And then a third one pops up for like $4.
Speaker: And I was like, oh fuck, I just got phished.
Speaker: And those two transactions that I was signing was me sending NFTs from my wallet to the scammer's wallet.
Speaker: And thank God I had a ledger.
Speaker: I keep everything on ledgers, plural, because if I had not had ledger, if I had not had all my NFTs on a ledger, and when I say all my NFTs, I have a bunch of entities that NFTs and they're all worth zero, except for the two that they got.
Speaker: And I'll explain.
Speaker: So if I hadn't been on a ledger, as soon as I did it once, they would have had full control of my entire wallet and they would have been able to send everything off.
Speaker: And that would have been it.
Speaker: I'd have zero NFTs.
Speaker: So, but because everything is on a hardware wallet, I have to manually physically give them permission every single time.
Speaker: And by the third time I realized what I, you know, the error of my ways and I lost two and a half ETH worth of NFTs.
Speaker: I had my sandbox land that I wanted to build on a game on and then my WASI and, uh, it's pretty painful.
Speaker: It's pretty embarrassing.
Speaker: It's pretty shaming.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I thought I'd go through today's episode.
Speaker: I haven't been on for a while.
Speaker: Well, I have been.
Speaker: And I'll tell you what happened there.
Speaker: That's a funny-ass story.
Speaker: But I thought this episode I'd go through and go through a hardcore security scan of yourself.
Speaker: And I'm going to give you a bunch of stuff to do and like a checklist.
Speaker: And please, dear God, go down this checklist because I said it on Twitter and I'll say it here is that no person can catch 100% of the scammers 100% of the time.
Speaker: So the trick is when they finally do get through the front door, you know, because you're going to have like a million people trying to get through your front door.
Speaker: And you know, it's so easy to send them away, send them away and then somebody tries a different tactic and you're like, oh yeah, cool.
Speaker: You seem legitimate.
Speaker: Come on in.
Speaker: And then they get in and they start stealing.
Speaker: And the trick is you gotta have things cordoned off.
Speaker: So what they steal is very, very small amount or, you know, the least amount they can possibly steal.
Speaker: So I'm going to give you a checklist and I'm going to double, redouble down on my security.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: And I pray to God it doesn't happen to you guys.
Speaker: I have literally, this show has always been me being a guinea pig for the rest of you.
Speaker: I told you about my getting rugged on a token launch on BSC, losing $6,000.
Speaker: This was, fuck, this was a, this was like a seven and a half, almost $8,000 loss.
Speaker: That is like a massive percentage of my wealth.
Speaker: So it's painful and I'm trying not to cry right now.
Speaker: So seriously, like I'm trying not to think about it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So the last episode I did, if you get podcasts, you'll, I left like a minute long message.
Speaker: Go to the, go to YouTube, go to my YouTube.
Speaker: It was a whole episode teaching people about internet literacy to not get scammed, to not fall for hoaxes.
Speaker: And so I went through a couple COVID denier websites and I taught people how to prove that these people were lying.
Speaker: So, you know, COVID is real.
Speaker: People are dying from COVID.
Speaker: It's not a hoax.
Speaker: And I went to these, I went to the top search, the top Google searches for, you know, is COVID real or something like that.
Speaker: And I went through on video and I showed this is how they catch you.
Speaker: Like this is how they lie to you.
Speaker: This is how they convince you that it's not real when it is real.
Speaker: And YouTube took it down.
Speaker: claiming that I was spreading COVID misinformation.
Speaker: So I replied back to them.
Speaker: I say, um, this is literally a step-by-step on how to not fall for COVID misinformation.
Speaker: I'm teaching people how, you know, how to avoid falling for, for COVID denial hoaxes.
Speaker: They said, sorry, you're spreading misinformation.
Speaker: So yeah, fuck YouTube.
Speaker: I can't tell if they're just dumb or if they actually want COVID hoax stuff on there just to get more clicks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's been a weird, weird month to say the least.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So let's get into how to protect yourself security wise.
Speaker: So luckily,
Speaker: You know, rule number one, use a ledger, use a ledger, use a ledger, use a ledger.
Speaker: Rule number two, use a ledger, use a ledger, use a ledger.
Speaker: Rule number three, use a ledger.
Speaker: Because like I said earlier, ledgers force you to manually confirm every single transaction.
Speaker: So nobody has control of your wallet ever.
Speaker: They can't physically get control because they have to manually press these buttons to make any transaction go through.
Speaker: That's the reason why it's so great.
Speaker: So I got phished.
Speaker: I didn't get hacked.
Speaker: I got phished.
Speaker: I gave a scammer my two most expensive NFTs.
Speaker: They tricked me into giving them my NFTs.
Speaker: That's what a phish is.
Speaker: That's what getting phished is.
Speaker: P-H-I-S-H.
Speaker: That's what getting phished is.
Speaker: So I didn't get hacked.
Speaker: My ledger didn't get hacked.
Speaker: My computer didn't get hacked.
Speaker: I got duped.
Speaker: And it happens.
Speaker: And as embarrassing as it is, I'm putting this out there because I want you guys to realize because you guys know that this entire show has always been about helping people not get scammed.
Speaker: And I want people to realize it's like it is relentless the amount of people trying to steal from us.
Speaker: And even the person trying to teach you how to avoid getting stolen from
Speaker: can make mistakes too and got stolen from.
Speaker: It's, it's, you know, you gotta be like relentless with your own security.
Speaker: Um, and it's as frustrating as it is, it's just, you know, I lost $8,000 today in three minutes.
Speaker: And fuck, that is a lot of money.
Speaker: Next step.
Speaker: Don't sign transactions that are asking for money.
Speaker: So unless you are actively doing something that needs a gas fee, right?
Speaker: And so what needs gas fees?
Speaker: When I'm sending funds from one wallet to another, that needs gas.
Speaker: So on Ethereum or any chain that has gas,
Speaker: it's going to say you want to send your money from this wall to this wall.
Speaker: It's going to cost X amount of dollars and it's going to say the dollar amount like 425 or 323 or 1516 or whatever in gas to make that transaction.
Speaker: or to send an NFT or to buy an NFT or to stake an NFT, like, or to stake crypto.
Speaker: You know, if you want to stake some Ethereum on
Speaker: on a Lido or whatever, you know, whatever it is, whatever you're trying to do, it costs gas.
Speaker: But when you're doing something like that, or giving permission, so if I'm on DeFi, and it says, okay, I need we need permission for you to trade USDC.
Speaker: Like let's say I'm on Uniswap, and I want to trade Ethereum for USDC.
Speaker: It's going to say, you need permission
Speaker: So let's say, let's say I send USDC from one wallet to another, and then I want to change that USDC into Ethereum.
Speaker: I've never given that, that site permission to use USDC.
Speaker: So it's going to say, Hey, before you can exchange that USDC for Ethereum, you have to give us permission to use your USDC.
Speaker: And that's something that's on chain and you're going to get charged for.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So these are things that cost gas.
Speaker: When someone's verifying that you own something, like on Collabland or something like that, they don't need gas for that.
Speaker: They just need permission to view your wallet.
Speaker: And for you to sign that you own that wallet, you're signing a transaction that say, yes, I own this wallet.
Speaker: The danger of that was when Collabland got hacked a while back, people were saying, I don't even think there's that.
Speaker: I think it was just getting sent to a wrong address, like a fake website or something like that.
Speaker: But I think they did get hacked.
Speaker: And when you clicked sign, yes, I own this, you're essentially giving them permission to have your wallet.
Speaker: And if you didn't have it on a ledger, they now had control of your wallet.
Speaker: So this is why ledgers are so important.
Speaker: Because even if the bot like Collabland, the website gets hacked, they still can't do anything unless you actually confirm transactions to send money or NFTs off your wallet.
Speaker: And you're going to see like, so confirming a transaction, signing a transaction that you own something costs zero gas.
Speaker: So if anybody says, hey, we're just trying to verify that you own this so we can give you an airdrop or for us that we can, you know, give you a certain role on Discord or anything, it's it's it's going to verify it.
Speaker: It's going to say, please sign this.
Speaker: It's not going to say, please send this amount of money.
Speaker: It's going to say, please sign this and you sign it and then you're going to get an alert on your ledger saying, you know, do you want to sign this?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's never going to ask for money to verify that you own something.
Speaker: So I fell for a Moonbirds one.
Speaker: And I've been, like I said, I've been doing the Bored Ape.
Speaker: I've gotten like over 100 Bored Ape Yacht Club scams sent to me in the last month.
Speaker: And I've reported all of them.
Speaker: diligently, and then I just fell for a Moonbirds one.
Speaker: Because Moonbirds was in the back of my mind about a month ago.
Speaker: I said, nope, I'm not going to do that one.
Speaker: Too expensive.
Speaker: And I fell for that one.
Speaker: So Moonbirds is the new one.
Speaker: So make sure you don't fall for the new ones.
Speaker: And literally five minutes later, I got an Izuki one, an Izuki scam.
Speaker: So I think now that I fell for it, they're gonna target me, they're gonna be relentlessly, they're gonna target me relentlessly.
Speaker: Don't spend gas to verify transactions.
Speaker: You're only sending gas to move stuff around or give permission to transact with something.
Speaker: So like when you want to sell an NFT on open C or on looks rare or wherever, it's going to say, Hey, you have to give us permission to sell this collection.
Speaker: So any, let's just say, you know, like, uh, um,
Speaker: Crypto punks.
Speaker: So you have three crypto punks.
Speaker: You're a millionaire.
Speaker: Congratulations.
Speaker: I just lost $8,000.
Speaker: Fuck you.
Speaker: No, just kidding.
Speaker: So let's say you have three, three crypto punks and you want to sell all of them.
Speaker: You're done.
Speaker: You're done with NFTs.
Speaker: So when you go to sell the first one, it's going to say, okay,
Speaker: small gas fee, you got to give us permission to sell crypto punks, any crypto punk.
Speaker: And then once that goes through, you only have to do that once.
Speaker: And now anytime you list an NFT on, on open C, I think they let you list it for free, but even if they didn't back in the day, you had to pay every single time you wanted to list it.
Speaker: You only had to give it permission once, but then you had to actually list it.
Speaker: And that was the second gas fee.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So you don't have to do that anymore.
Speaker: Now it's just, you know, you have to give it permission to sell any, and then now, and then you just sell all three of them individually.
Speaker: So yeah, just be aware of that.
Speaker: You don't need
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: There's just, there's so many different things.
Speaker: I can't tell everybody, I can't tell you guys every single one because I don't have every single one in front of me, but there are, there are reasons to spend gas that are reasons not to spend gas.
Speaker: So just, just please be careful.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Rule number two, three is it's okay to click on links in Twitter.
Speaker: Don't click on any links once you go to that link.
Speaker: So open up that link.
Speaker: And then go back to Twitter, do a search for moon birds and make sure that moon birds pops up.
Speaker: It's go to their website on their verified Twitter.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: You can't really verify anything more because all these, all these fake accounts have verified check marks.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But that's the best way to do it is make sure they have a ton of followers, whatever, because the fake ones usually have like 10 or 100 or something like that.
Speaker: That's usually a dead giveaway.
Speaker: Scroll through the feed for a few seconds.
Speaker: Make sure it looks like a legitimate one.
Speaker: Go to their website.
Speaker: Make sure the website that you are now on is the same as the first one you went to.
Speaker: It's like little things like that.
Speaker: This is kind of like security 101 of...
Speaker: You maybe do a Google search.
Speaker: So let's just use moon birds since I got hacked by moon birds.
Speaker: Not hacked.
Speaker: I got fished by somebody pretending to be a moon bird.
Speaker: Do a Google search for moon birds, NFT and see what website pops up because chances of the fake one coming up first are really slim.
Speaker: Um, look for stuff with dashes in the name.
Speaker: I just, you know, all this stuff that I just wasn't paying attention.
Speaker: I was, I was busy doing something else and I let myself make a stupid thing.
Speaker: It had a dash in the name, big giveaway, big giveaway, any dashes, any hyphens, you know, nothing like that.
Speaker: That's a big giveaway.
Speaker: So that's, so, you know, really double check, make sure.
Speaker: On Discord, as soon as you join a server, right click, mute it, because you're gonna get a million alerts.
Speaker: You're gonna get an alert every single time anybody talks.
Speaker: So just mute the whole thing until you turn it back on.
Speaker: It'll give you a list, 10 minutes, an hour, whatever, until I turn it back on.
Speaker: Just click mute, right click the server icon on the left, mute until you turn it back on.
Speaker: Then right click the server icon again on the left.
Speaker: Go down to just want to make sure I get the right thing.
Speaker: So right click on it, go down to privacy settings and make sure the the toggle is to the left and grayed out.
Speaker: So you don't want to allow direct messages from the server from any server.
Speaker: If you need a direct message, somebody talk to them in the main server, send a friend request, become friends, and then you can DM each other.
Speaker: But don't allow direct messages from that server because what scammers do is they go in there and they start DMing every single person in the server trying to get them to, you know, sign on to a fake website, a scammer's website.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: double check that, you know, on Twitter double, like do a search, find the main website and make sure it matches up with the one that you just clicked on.
Speaker: And then on discord, right click mute and then right click privacy settings and turn off DMS.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Because once you do that, you've eliminated like 95% of the problems.
Speaker: If you do those two things, turn off DMs and Discord and double check the person who sent you the fake link, that's it.
Speaker: You've already protected yourself from like 95% of the scams out there.
Speaker: And if you do that, that's like having a club on your car.
Speaker: If you're old like I am, you remember that people had clubs back in the day.
Speaker: It was like this big red thing.
Speaker: You put it over your steering wheel.
Speaker: Like, oh, you know, people can't steal your car now because you can't turn your wheel.
Speaker: Well, you could turn your wheel enough so they could get it away.
Speaker: But also they just figured out how to cut through the club or cut through the steering wheel and take the club off.
Speaker: But the thing is those, but even once people figured out how to cut through your steering wheel,
Speaker: People still left them on there because people would see it and be like, there's this Mercedes right here with a club and there's that Mercedes there without a club.
Speaker: I'm just going to go to the one without the club and save myself an extra 10 seconds because that 10 seconds could be the 10 seconds that I get caught by the police.
Speaker: So if you can avoid those two things, you're already giving yourself a leg up because they're like, this person already kind of knows what they're doing.
Speaker: Do I really want to waste my time trying to convince this person to give me their money?
Speaker: I just forgot to put the club on.
Speaker: I have the club.
Speaker: I use it every single day.
Speaker: And the one day I forget to put the club on is the one day somebody steals my car.
Speaker: I knew the scam.
Speaker: I knew what they were doing.
Speaker: I just, for whatever reason, my brain glossed over in that one moment.
Speaker: So the trick is they'll send you, they'll send a tweet and then they'll do a bunch of tweets with like 20 names tagged.
Speaker: And if you see it, if you see a tweet in your, in your replies and there's just like 20 names, that's a scam.
Speaker: Click on that, scroll up.
Speaker: That's the scam.
Speaker: They're scamming you.
Speaker: That that's the dead giveaway.
Speaker: If it's like one or two, it's probably like a friend of a friend or something like that.
Speaker: But if it's like, the whole thing is filled with just handles, Twitter handles, that's a scam.
Speaker: So I'm probably saying stuff that you already know, but I'm just going to drill this shit into your head so you don't, you know, fall for it again like I did.
Speaker: Rule number four, keep your NFTs on one wallet address and keep your other money, your other cryptocurrency on a different wallet address.
Speaker: So that way if somebody accesses, you know, if you have a ledger, it's next to impossible because there's
Speaker: They got to go through everything.
Speaker: But let's say you just like make a brain dead move and you have, you know, 50 ETH on one address.
Speaker: You know, let's say you're a millionaire.
Speaker: Fuck you.
Speaker: I just lost $8,000.
Speaker: But, you know, let's say you have 50 or 100 ETH.
Speaker: What they're doing, what the hackers are going to do is they're going to go, they're going to look at your wallet and say, what's the most valuable asset you have?
Speaker: All right, so I had a piece of land for Sandbox worth two ETH and a Wasee that was worth like.6 ETH or something like that.
Speaker: So they knew exactly in order my most expensive one down to my least expensive one.
Speaker: And they targeted the most expensive one first because they're like in their minds like, hey, if we're going to trick them, we know we're not going to be able to trick them forever.
Speaker: So let's make sure to get the most value out off of the wallet at first.
Speaker: And luckily, I don't have any funds on that wallet.
Speaker: I only have NFTs on that wallet address.
Speaker: So there was no money to actually steal.
Speaker: So that's a good trick, you know, because like on MetaMask, you can have it show like a bunch of different wallets, wallet addresses on your ledger.
Speaker: So, you know, you can have like 10 or 20 or 100.
Speaker: You just got to go through and just check it.
Speaker: They'll say how you know which addresses do you want to show and you just like check as many as you want.
Speaker: Just keep scrolling through and check more and more and more.
Speaker: So keep it on different wallets.
Speaker: That's the smartest thing you can possibly do is spread out your wealth.
Speaker: Spread it out.
Speaker: Rule number five.
Speaker: when you have an NFT that goes up in value, let's say you were lucky and you got a bored ape and now the floor is 110th.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Don't keep it with your other NFTs.
Speaker: Make sure, A, you have it on a ledger, but at that point, if you get tricked like I did,
Speaker: and they get two of your NFTs and one of them is your bored ape, you're fucked.
Speaker: You just lost 110 ETH.
Speaker: do all your NFT stuff on a shitty wallet with all your NFTs that are worth zero.
Speaker: I've got a bunch of NFTs that went to zero.
Speaker: Cool, I like the art, whatever, the team's still working, maybe one day it'll go up, but I don't care, I like the art, I'm supporting the artist.
Speaker: If one of those actually goes up in value, let's just pick a number, let's just say if it goes above one ETH, move it, move it to another address that you don't do anything else on.
Speaker: So, you know, the chances of you of it getting stolen already are decreasing because if you're only normally interacting with your main NFT wallet and nothing is, and there's nothing of value on it, like, you know, more than like a hundred bucks or something like that.
Speaker: If you lose a couple, okay, it sucks to lose a couple hundred bucks, but it's not the end of the world in terms of, you know, NFT prices right now.
Speaker: And chances are,
Speaker: You know, they're going to take your stuff, but they're going to be like, wow, that was a bust.
Speaker: You know, we stole the guy's wallet and he had $1.50 in it and no credit cards and no driver's license and a library card.
Speaker: Woohoo.
Speaker: You know, we almost went to jail.
Speaker: You know, we risked going to jail for stealing $1.50.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: You know, but they're still going to do it just because they don't know what's in your wallet at the time.
Speaker: So they want to steal it.
Speaker: So make it so if they do steal your wallet or if they do get access to your wallet or if they do fish you, con you into making a couple transactions, they're not taking anything of value.
Speaker: Or, you know, whatever.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: It may have sentimental value, but at least it's not, you know, $10,000 worth of NFT or a hundred eighth worth.
Speaker: um so spread that out and you know and maybe if you have four board apes have your main nft wallet and then have four extra wallets and keep all the and keep those four board apes on four different wallets like really spread that shit out or
Speaker: That was loud.
Speaker: Sorry, I didn't mean to pop.
Speaker: Or keep your, if you want to just have one wallet, keep those four bored apes on a different ledger and put that ledger in, you know, a separate space.
Speaker: So you have to physically go over there and get it, pull it out, do all that.
Speaker: Because in the process, that stuff's going to make you
Speaker: Like those little, any red flags that you didn't notice in the moment, you know, because that's what con men do is, you know, con artists do.
Speaker: They try to rush you.
Speaker: They try to keep you off your, because the more they keep you uncomfortable, like feeling rushed, that's when people make mistakes.
Speaker: And so the moment, and it's a technique that used car salesmen and regular salespeople do.
Speaker: They just try to rush you to make a mistake and to make a decision that if you had a day to sit on it, you probably wouldn't make.
Speaker: But in the moment you're feeling the euphoria, you make a mistake.
Speaker: So just separate your wealth, you know, like I said, like, so we have, you know, the NFTs here, the, the crypto, like the, you know, if you're, if you're doing some staking, have it over in a different wallet, have your more expensive ones on different addresses.
Speaker: Like this is just spread out your wealth.
Speaker: And this goes back to that thing.
Speaker: Like if somebody breaks into your house,
Speaker: Let them grab the first thing.
Speaker: But when they go to grab the second thing, they realize that's chained to the floor.
Speaker: And they're like, fuck, okay, do I spend 20 minutes trying to cut through that chain?
Speaker: Or do I just keep looking around and see if there's anything else not not tied to the chain, or you know, not chained to the floor?
Speaker: Like, I'm gonna go look around.
Speaker: So they have that first thing in their pocket.
Speaker: And they're looking around looking around like, holy shit, everything's chained to the floor.
Speaker: So at that part, they hear somebody coming and they run out and they took one thing because you protected yourself from having everything stolen all at once.
Speaker: So spread it out, spread out your wealth.
Speaker: This kind of goes back to the whole thing of like diversification.
Speaker: So if all your money's in Bitcoin and Bitcoin goes to zero, you don't lose all your money.
Speaker: You know, have some in Ethereum, have some in Nano, have some in Avalanche, whatever.
Speaker: Whatever you're going to do, have it spread out.
Speaker: So that way you're protecting yourself.
Speaker: Well, the same thing with your assets.
Speaker: Have them physically spread out in different wallets, maybe different hardware wallets, different, you know, whatever.
Speaker: Just make sure you have to physically press a button for the transaction to go through on a piece of hardware because that's where they get you.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Never keep gas on the wallet with your main NFTs, with any of your NFTs.
Speaker: Have some money on an exchange, maybe like a hundred bucks, 50 bucks, whatever.
Speaker: If it's, if it's Ethereum, you know, keep like a hundred bucks and send it to that wallet.
Speaker: Cause it only takes a few minutes to send Ethereum to a hardware wallet.
Speaker: It's not, it's doesn't, doesn't really take that long.
Speaker: Even during like really high, high gas times, it still doesn't take that long.
Speaker: Um, keep zero ETH in your wallet because what happens is they tricked me into sending them ETH into sending them my NFT.
Speaker: But if I didn't have gas in the wallet, I would have had to go to the exchange
Speaker: you know, do all the different things, security things I have to do to send money off.
Speaker: Wait, wait, 10 minutes, five, 10 minutes, and then go through it again.
Speaker: And at that point I'd be like, wait a minute, why did it ask me to sign something for gas?
Speaker: Wait a minute.
Speaker: Oh shit.
Speaker: You know, and in that moment I would have probably realized, oh shit, this is a scam.
Speaker: Thank God I didn't have any gas in my wallet because they couldn't steal anything.
Speaker: So that's a good, that's a good little trick is just like, it forces you to slow down a little bit, keep gas off, off, off your wallet.
Speaker: And, and when I say keep it on an exchange, the thing about decentralization is if I have two wallets and one of us, my, one of us, one of them is my NFT wallet.
Speaker: And one of them is my just keeping gas on that wallet.
Speaker: And I send it to my NFT wallet.
Speaker: Well, anybody who looks at the transaction knows, okay, those are both his wallets.
Speaker: So let's target both those wallets now.
Speaker: So, but when you send it from like KuCoin or Coinbase or Binance, whatever, it's just a random hot wallet that you're sharing that address with a million other people.
Speaker: So they don't know who it is, where it's coming from.
Speaker: They know where it's coming from, from KuCoin, but they don't know individually who you are.
Speaker: So that's a way to anonymize yourself.
Speaker: But in that situation, let's say I have two ledger wallets and I want to use a KuCoin exchange as an intermediary to kind of like anonymize myself.
Speaker: If I send one ETH to KuCoin and then send that one ETH directly to that other wallet, it's going to be relatively easy to track.
Speaker: One of the listeners actually reached out to me and was like, hey, I just found all your wallets on Nano.
Speaker: Um, cause I found the wallet, I found your donation wallet, you know, because you, you shared your donation address and then I just looked and you sent, you know, it was, I think it was like 300 nano or something like that.
Speaker: So I sent 300 nano.
Speaker: to, so I did, I did two things.
Speaker: I sent, I sent 300 nano to one address and he goes, I, now I know your, now I know your security address.
Speaker: I was like, oh shit.
Speaker: I didn't even think of that.
Speaker: So I sent it to KuCoin and then sent it to a different address.
Speaker: And he goes, now I know your other address.
Speaker: I was like, how do you know my other address?
Speaker: He goes, because you sent 300 there.
Speaker: And then I just looked at the hot wallet on KuCoin and I, and I looked for a transaction of 300 nano and it sent it off to that one.
Speaker: So obviously that's you.
Speaker: So I was like, oh shit.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's why I say it's better just to keep some gas money on KuCoin or on Binance or wherever, because that way you're not sending it to a bunch of things.
Speaker: People can start tracking wallets that way because people are really smart.
Speaker: The people are good detectives and
Speaker: And luckily this guy, this listener didn't want to steal all my money or try to.
Speaker: And he didn't, he warned me, said, Hey, this is a, this is a common, common way that people can try to like con you and track your wallets.
Speaker: So
Speaker: Don't keep any money.
Speaker: Don't keep any funds.
Speaker: Don't keep enough.
Speaker: Don't keep any gas funds on the wallets for your NFT because that'll be a trap.
Speaker: That'll be, you know, another speed bump that they have to stop the car and then slowly go over.
Speaker: And in that time, you can get out.
Speaker: They got done up scam.
Speaker: Not doing this.
Speaker: Yeah, that's all I got right now.
Speaker: Be vigilant, be vigilant because people are always trying to steal, steal our stuff.
Speaker: And if you're on Twitter or discord all the time, like I am, you're just an open target.
Speaker: You know, I have, I have an ENS name, Michael corrupto dot, dot ETH.
Speaker: And I, that's in my NFT account.
Speaker: And so,
Speaker: Unfortunately, when we send NFTs to a different wallet, there's no way not to track it.
Speaker: I think LooksRare has an option, either LooksRare or OpenSea has an option now where you can say, sell it, but only sell it to this person, to this address.
Speaker: So what you could do,
Speaker: is you could send money from an exchange to that new address and have that address buy it from yourself.
Speaker: You would lose the 2.5% transaction fee, but if you're that worried about security, that could be a way to kind of circumvent because there'd be no way to know who that is, who that wallet is.
Speaker: They could guess, but there's really no true way if it came from, if the funds came from an exchange.
Speaker: um so that that would be a way of to really anonymize those those security accounts with your high high value nfts but other than that i mean it's just about being vigilant diversifying from a security risk standpoint you know your your funds in different wallets your nfts into different wallets uh and just
Speaker: Don't click on stuff right away.
Speaker: And every single person who I've listened to or read about who got fished, they all said the same thing.
Speaker: I was doing a few things at once and I clicked on a link and I signed a transaction.
Speaker: So, you know, when it comes to our money, don't do a bunch of things at once.
Speaker: And I'm not just saying even on your computer.
Speaker: If you have kids and you're home alone trying to take care of your kids and you're like, oh shit, there's a new drop coming and I want to make sure I get in on it and blah, blah, and you click on something.
Speaker: It's so easy to do.
Speaker: That's why con artists exist.
Speaker: It's because it's easy to trick people into thinking something is legitimate and real.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Try not to fall for it.
Speaker: Don't be like me.
Speaker: So I I'm I haven't had a ton of episodes lately and I'm doing an NFT project.
Speaker: And it's with Niano, which me and somebody else, which I essentially created.
Speaker: Somebody had the idea about a year ago.
Speaker: I didn't realize they wanted it to be this way and I wanted it to be that way.
Speaker: And so I did it.
Speaker: And they're like, no, no, no, that's what I want.
Speaker: I was like, oh, okay, great, cool.
Speaker: They're like, but nobody listened to me.
Speaker: And so I might have them on the show and talk about it.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: Niano is kind of like Satoshi's are for Bitcoin.
Speaker: It's just a small unit of measure of nano and it's kind of like a meme for fun and I'm doing an NFT drop.
Speaker: So I'm on the fence about continuing the show for a while or just talking about my experience doing it because I don't want the show to be just me showing the NFT to everybody, even though I want you all to buy it, even though I'm giving away like half of them almost almost half.
Speaker: I'm giving away 25% for free and then another 25% for like next to nothing in terms of ETH prices, in terms of NFT prices.
Speaker: So I don't want you to feel like I'm showing you something.
Speaker: So I'm on the fence about doing the podcast at the same time as I'm doing that.
Speaker: So I'm going to think about it.
Speaker: But then I did two things.
Speaker: I, you know, I did the creating the self-directed IRA that Sharon had talked about on the tax stuff.
Speaker: And that was a whole can of
Speaker: just shit that I wouldn't recommend anybody do unless you have a high net worth because it's become extremely expensive.
Speaker: kind of regret doing it because at the end of the day, it's like there's just fees everywhere and not, you know, $10 here.
Speaker: It's like $50 here, $100 there.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's becoming expensive and I'm losing a ton of money.
Speaker: So I kind of want to do an episode about that.
Speaker: And then I, what was the other thing?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: The other thing is not happening yet.
Speaker: So I won't talk about that.
Speaker: So I do have a couple of episodes I want to do.
Speaker: So maybe reach out if you feel like I shouldn't keep doing the podcast for a while while I'm doing this NFT thing.
Speaker: Because you don't want to be shilled.
Speaker: I promise I won't.
Speaker: I mean, I don't, I, yeah, I may talk about it, but I don't want to be like, yeah, keyword crypto.
Speaker: Here are the, here are the,
Speaker: Here are my NFTs, buy my stuff.
Speaker: You know, I had NFTs for sale as a way to donate to the show so you actually get something in return.
Speaker: This is entirely different.
Speaker: This is, the point of Niano is to kind of like promote Niano.
Speaker: And I've always been like, I have my favorites, but I don't want people to feel like,
Speaker: They're being shilled something and then me being, you know, if it goes to zero, because I've been critical of Nano, but at the same time, I kind of felt like I had to pick something as opposed to kind of sitting on the fence like I do with this show.
Speaker: I take sides a little bit, but at the same time, I'm never advocating for you to go out and buy something.
Speaker: I'm just trying to educate you and I...
Speaker: tell you all the negative issues with something as well as the positives.
Speaker: This is to like actively market nano.
Speaker: And so that's why I'm kind of on the fence of doing them both at the same time.
Speaker: So let me know if you have a problem with that or if you want me to keep going and talk about other stuff as it happens, like this whole getting fished thing, which is,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: We'll leave it there.
Speaker: Thanks for listening.
Speaker: Thanks for the support.
Speaker: As always, love you guys and gals.
Speaker: And I'll talk to you in the next one.
