Blockchain Security Firm PeckShield Uncovers New Crypto Scam That Pretends To Be Affiliated With ChatGPT

cryptonews.com:

Blockchain security firm PeckShield has found a number of scam tokens looking to profit from the ChatGPT AI chatbot craze. 

PeckShield tweeted on Tuesday that, 

"[It] detected dozens of newly created BingChatGPT tokens, of which 3 appear to be honeypots & 2 have high sell tax."

A honeypot is a popular type of scam whereby 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.

Sales tax is the amount of money a smart contract takes once a token is sold. Many legitimate projects use sales tax as a means to incentivize long-term holding as well as rewards for token holders.

However, scam projects use high taxes, oftentimes set at 100%, to steal money from unsuspecting users.

PeckShield added that two of these coins had, by that point, already dropped nearly 100%. Another one fell by some 65%. 

The security firm noted that these coins appear to be typical pump and dump schemes, whereby the price of a coin is artificially 'pumped', usually via misleading statements, before selling - aka 'dumping' - a large number of coins at a higher price. 

In this case, the projects claimed to be affiliated with ChatGPT - a chatbot developed by the American AI research laboratory OpenAI. 

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it was "launching an all-new, AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser," leveraging its partnership with OpenAI. The tech giant stated that "the new Bing is running on a new, next-generation OpenAI large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT and customized specifically for search."

And while the craze around ChatGPT continues, so will the scams