Online scammers are posing as major cryptocurrency companies Ripple and Binance by creating fake websites and imposter emails pretending to provide staking services for XRP.
One of these websites ripple.com-staking.tech, includes a blog post titled “XRP staking set to debut January 2023 for retail users” (lit. “XRP staking will begin for retail users in January 2023”), inviting users to “bet” your XRP with unrealistic returns on investment (ROI), ranging from 12% to 27%. The fake scheme tries to rush the decision of XRP investors by claiming that only the first 10,000 accounts will receive a higher ROI.
The fake website offers a well-crafted clone of Ripple’s website, ripple.com, copying the original design and fonts and linking to some of its previous blog posts. The impostors also tried to add more credibility to their posts by adding information about the importance of self-custody using hardware wallets like Ledger or Trezor.
The scam website has many mirror domains like ripple.org.th or ripple.com.veaimed at XRP users around the world.
The crypto community has alerted to a new scam scheme targeting XRP (XRP) investors through a fake staking program.
The fake XRP staking site is accompanied by imposter emails posing as Binance and offering up to 31% ROI on XRP staking. One industry enthusiast, RipplePandaXRP, took to Twitter on January 21 to warn to the XRP community about the scam.
“Do not send your XRP to an unknown address and always check the address to see if it is a legitimate site”, wrote RipplePandaXRP.
That being said, real estate exchange Binance actually offers decentralized finance (DeFi) staking for XRP as part of its Binance Earn program. However, Binance’s XRP DeFi staking program only allows users to earn up to 1.4% per year.
It is important to note that XRP is not stakeable because it does not work with a proof-of-stake system like major PoS cryptocurrencies, such as Ether (ETH). Instead, XRP transactions rely on a network of “single nodes” who agree on which transactions can be processed on the network.
Investors are advised to do their research thoroughly to ensure the legitimacy of a platform before making any investment.
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