Is SpaceX Crypto a Scam? How does the Scam Work?
The topic of this essay is SpaceX cryptocurrency. If you’re interested in both SpaceX and cryptocurrencies, you may have lately seen some YouTube advertisements claiming that Elon Musk is creating $SpaceX, his own cryptocurrency.
Is SpaceX Crypto a Scam?
There isn’t a real cryptocurrency named $SpaceX connected to Elon Musk or SpaceX. The YouTube advertisements that make false claims are a part of a scam designed to trick consumers into buying a cryptocurrency that doesn’t exist. To entice victims, the scammers behind this effort have created phony advertisements with an attached video of sporadic clips of Elon Musk interviews and a false tweet from the billionaire investor.
The three- to five-minute long advertisements have an embedded video with a series of sporadic excerpts of Elon Musk interviews at the top, coupled with a spoof tweet from the billionaire. There are no direct links to websites promoting the phony cryptocurrency in the advertisements. Rather, they promote websites that the victims are instructed to access.
It’s crucial to remember that these advertisements are fake and that Elon Musk or SpaceX are not connected to any genuine cryptocurrency named $SpaceX. The advertisements aim to trick viewers into purchasing a fictitious cryptocurrency in order to possibly steal their money or personal data.
It seems that in order to reach a large audience, the crooks behind this campaign have lawfully purchased ad space from YouTube. The cybersecurity company Tenable, which conducted the analysis, submitted the fake advertisements to YouTube; however, they have not heard back from the platform as of yet.
How does the Scam Work?
The hoax employs a number of techniques to give the impression that it is authentic and credible. Initially, it targets bitcoin aficionados who watch videos about this issue by using legally purchased YouTube advertising. The three to five minute commercials feature a fictitious tweet from Musk introducing the $SpaceX coin, intercut with sporadic video snippets from his interviews. The advertisements show the website in a different part of the template rather than directly on it.
Second, to build a completely believable phony currency gambit, the scam makes use of real liquidity, the genuine DEX Uniswap, and the real wallet extension MetaMask. A decentralized exchange mechanism called Uniswap enables everyone to generate and exchange any Ethereum blockchain ERC20 token. With the help of the browser extension MetaMask, users may communicate with Ethereum-based apps. The con artists construct a fictitious ERC20 token named $SpaceX and list it with some initial liquidity on Uniswap. They also design a webpage that requests visitors to connect their MetaMask wallets and imitates the Uniswap interface.
Third, in order to get people to purchase the fictitious coin and transfer it to a certain address, the hoax employs social engineering. According to the website, a gift will be paid in support of Elon Musk’s mission to space-research firms for each transaction involving the $SpaceX coin. Additionally, it states that 100 million $SpaceX coins are limited and that when more are purchased, the price will rise quickly. It exhorts users to move quickly so they don’t miss this chance.
