Scams

If you’ve spent any time on YouTube or social media lately, you may have noticed a peculiar kind of comment popping up. It goes something like this: “I have some USDT in my OKX wallet along with my seed phrase (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). How do I transfer them to Binance?” At first glance, it’s obviously a bad idea: never share your seed phrase, especially not in a random YouTube comment.

But what’s really going on here? Surprisingly, these wallets do appear to hold some crypto. That might make an opportunistic person think, “I just need to open the wallet using the seed phrase, add enough gas to move the tokens, and the money is mine!” Except the moment you send the required gas, it vanishes. You can kiss your funds goodbye.

Why do I find this scam so interesting? Because, unlike other scams, this one targets people trying to do the wrong thing in the first place. If you ignore the golden rule of keeping seed phrases secret and attempt to steal someone else’s “free” crypto, you’re actually the target. This custom wallet code cleverly prevents you from withdrawing the supposed fortune—and any gas you send is gone for good. It’s a unique case where you have to do something shady to get scammed. And to be honest, if someone falls for it, I find it hard to sympathize.