Blockchain security firm PeckShield uncovers new crypto scam pretending to be affiliated with ChatGPT
Blockchain security company PeckShield found a number of scam tokens whose creators appear to be profiting from ChatGPT mania.
PeckShield tweeted on Tuesday that,
“[It] discovered dozens of newly created BingChatGPT tokens, 3 of which appear to be honeypots and 2 of which have high sales tax.”
A honeypot is a popular type of scam where a malicious actor creates a fake crypto or crypto wallet to lure victims into investing, sending or trading crypto. The scammer often poses as a legitimate business or organization, promising services or rewards.
Transaction fee is how much money a smart contract takes when a token connected to it is sold. This tax can be too high: 50% and higher. This means that the developer of the smart contact gets equal or more money from every sale a victim makes.
PeckShield added that at the time, two of those coins had already fallen almost 100%. Another fell by around 65%.
The security firm noted that these coins appear to be typical pump and dump schemes, where the price of a coin is artificially “pumped up”, usually via misleading statements, before selling – also called “dumping” – a large amount of coins at a higher price .
The news here is that these misleading statements focus on claims that the scam projects are associated with ChatGPT – a chatbot developed by the US AI research laboratory. OpenAI and was launched in November 2022.
Then on February 7 this year, just two weeks ago, Microsoft announced that it is “launching an all-new, AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser,” leverages its partnership with OpenAI. The tech giant further described its own chatpot, stating that “the new Bing runs on a new, next-generation OpenAI large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT and tailored specifically for search.”
And as the craze around ChatGPT continues, so will the scams looking to cash in on it – and users will have to research every coin they want to put their money into. Looking at the data provided by DEXToolsfor example, about 20 ‘BingChatGPT’ coins have been issued on BNB chain, Ethereumand Arbitration. These show thousands of dollars in trading volume.
And that’s not all. There are a total of 175 coins called “ChatGPT”, as shown by the website. The vast majority, or 136 of these, are issued on BNB Chain, 22 on Ethereum, 8 on Arbitrum, and the rest on OKC, Polygon, Solana, Cronos, EthereumPoWand Phantom. These have hundreds of thousands of dollars in liquidity.
Of these, at the time of writing (Wednesday, 10 UTC), the first on the list has $457.9 million in market capitalization. The data further shows 319 holders, $180,910 in 24-hour volume and $614,240 in liquidity.
Where there are people, there is money, and where there is money, there are scammers. You can read more about various scams in the crypto world below.
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