We Investigated Btrbyt: Legit or Scam? The Facts

Recently, Btrbyt.com website surfaced, promoting itself as a place to keep cryptocurrency and other assets securely. I managed to gather reliable evidence that clearly indicates it is, in fact, a fraudulent service.

Regardless of the promises of the most easy, dependable, and customer-centric service, Btrbyt.com does not follow any of them. In fact, all this is just a gilded wrap around a blatant scam, which steals your funds and never returns them. Any stories about gifts, endorsement from celebrities etc are nowhere to be found as well.

Btrbyt Scam Overview

Originally, Btrbyt poses as a cryptocurrency trading & cryptowallet service with exceptionally low commission fees. Another bright marketing point for this site is partnerships with celebrities that have relation to the crypto world. Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Vitalii Buterin, Jeff Bezos – the site claims having significant support from them. To make these claims look more realistic, rascals use AI-generated videos where those celebrities promote the fake crypto service as the best thing in the world. Obviously, Elon Musk is the most common among them. But, as I said in the introduction, all this is just a blatant wrap around an obvious scam.

Btrbyt Scam

To begin with, Btrbyt repeats the appearance of numerous equivalent pages. There are quite a few examples, like Bitstader, Joobit or Gortox. They are totally identical in terms of graphic elements, with minor discrepancies in the website header. Other particulars, and at times even crypto wallet addresses, are unchanged. Probably, all these fraudulent online platforms are led by the same team of scoundrels.

Cryptocurrency Scam Summary

How the Btrbyt Scam Works?

Btrbyt is a part of a extensive cryptocurrency scam scheme that started circulating actively in 2023. Rascals who stand behind it use various website designs, which still share the identical overall layout. Another common element are the ways the scams like NAME are promoted, and the manner all this ends up to the victim of the scam. To reach peak efficiency, frauds apply advanced psychological tricks that make the user believe in the validity of the website. But let’s review them one by one.

Step 1: Promotion

To start the scam, criminals establish and fill accounts on well-liked social media platforms. They mainly target Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Subsequently, the promotional campaign starts. Utilizing bots and paid ads (when possible), scam actors increase the presence of their scam activities to potential victims. And as I said, scammers do not disdain using deepfake for creating clips with the mentioned celebrities that promote their scam to the public. To boost the folks even more, frauds claim the bonus for every user who joins the service immediately.

Promotions of cryptoscams like Btrbyt in TikTok. Most of these videos are AI-generated deepfakes

Users get an incentive to enroll, drawn by the assurance of obtaining cryptocurrency prizes valued at hundreds of dollars, all free of charge. To augment the attractiveness of the offer, fake claims of cooperation with a celebrity are incorporated. As you may guess, these assertions are completely baseless.

Step 2: Gaining Traffic

After clicking the promos, targets end up on a page filled with enticing offers. “Crypto starts with Btrbyt”, “Your crypto savings are secured with Btrbyt, “Start earning with Btrbyt – they look rather reliable. To heat up users and make them proceed to step 3, scammers say that obtaining the pledged bonus requires registration. And as nothing suspicious happens at this point, unexperienced users happily keep on – especially since the bonus appears to be right behind the corner.

At this point, it is possible to steer away from the scam without any losses. Before you sign up using your personal data, crooks will not earn even a nickel from your presence on the website.

Step 3: Data Gathering

This is the starting poing of the main fraud action. As I just mentioned, deceivers bait folks into registration for bonuses. And all the personal data needed for it – email, username, cryptocurrency wallet address – is valuable for user identification. Exclusively by gathering this data and selling it further into the Darknet, fraudsters can earn quite a penny. Still, their plans go much further.

As it turns out, the promised bonus is not available for withdrawal right away. To make at least crypto purchases on the platform with it, the user should top up the account with the sum of a bonus. At this point, the final stage of the scam begins.

Step 4: Requesting funds

Obviously, any crypto purchases require having funds on your account. In the case of Btrbyt, users are also forced to top up to claim the bonuses. And these top ups is what creates the majority of the money flow to this fraudulent website. By topping up the account, users hope to get the pledged gift (usually $500-1000 in USDT), and may start trading on this website hoping to use all the credited funds and withdraw them.

This, however, is where the first obvious problems start to surface. When keeping an eye on the real cryptocurrency wallet vs what the site says, you can observe that no transactions are done whatsoever. And then, when you’d try to pull out the funds from your account, the scam is finally uncovered to the user.

Step 5: Escaping from Funds Withdrawal

Needless to say that swindlers have 0 intentions to send you money. Though to make it look more realistic, they’ve developed a whole bunch of reasons to decline the wireout request. Most of them repeat what KYC regulations say, but for the Btrbyt.com they are here only to make the wireout impossible.

By asking for your personal data, deceivers just stall hoping for you to accept the loss and stop contacting them. If you don’t – well, there are a dozen other checks you should go through before getting your grand back. And every check will reveal more and more information, which – you guessed it right – will be then marketed on the Darknet. Never reveal your real info to strangers!

Signs of Scam

I gathered several facts that point at the scammy nature of the Btrbyt.com. Actually, there are a lot of scams that fall under the same points, so they are pretty much universal.

• Absent company details. Btrbyt does not provide any documentation about its ownership, location or registration. No legitimate contact details are given either. Moreover, it appears that the domain and all social network pages were registered quite recently.
• Fake sponsorship from a celebrity. Scams like Btrbyt like to pick a celebrity as a sponsor of this entire campaign. For obvious reasons, fraudsters generally choose Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mr. Beast, Mark Zuckerberg, and similar celebrities. They do not disdain claiming partnership with a company as well. Even though Coinbase, Binance or MetaMask never heard of Btrbyt, they do not care – this creates a halo of credibility.
• Potential Ponzi Scheme. The scam relies on a Ponzi-like referral system to spread reach through social media. In fact, only the first members will receive the payoff, at the cost of the money brought by other members.
• Hype without facts. Frauds can cheer up their victims from time to time, using claims about non-existent events. “We got contracts with Coinbase”, “Elon Musk mentioned us as the most prolific crypto project” – you could likely hear something like that. This is made to make people believe in their money return. This can be the sauce to make people top-up their accounts once again.
• Crypto-only incoming payments. Whether the user tries to top-up the account, hackers will only accept payments in crypto – no bank transfers or other payment methods. Such an approach completely hides the identity of the company and deprives you of the ability to ask for a refund.
• Claims are too good to be true. Let’s be sane and sober: even in crypto space, there are not many places where you can earn 50-100-200%. Being able to participate in all of them is nearly impossible, as well as it is impossible to insure or hedge all the risks. Even by that reason alone I can tell that the Btrbyt is a definite scam.

What Should I do as a Victim?

If you had to deal with Btrbyt site and fell victim to that scam, there are still some steps to take. They will make further scam attempts harder, and also boost the knowledge about that scam among folks.

• Secure Your Actions. Begin by promptly reporting the scam to appropriate local authorities tasked with handling financial fraud. Notify wallet providers and engage with social networks’ technical support teams. By taking these measures, you contribute to making the scammers’ operations significantly more difficult.
• Expand Awareness. Extend your efforts by sharing the scam information with your close friends. This action has a parallel effect to reporting to the authorities, as disseminating details about fraudulent crypto services reduces the potential victims they can deceive.
• Gather Evidence. Preserve comprehensive evidence by capturing screenshots and saving all pertinent data linked to the deceptive website. Collect the URL, screenshots of the main page, login interface, end-user license agreement (EULA), account top-up menu, and wallet addresses. These materials could prove invaluable for authorities in their pursuit of the scammers.
• Explore Refund Possibilities. While cryptocurrency payments generally fall outside the scope of refund policies within most banks, it’s worth investigating the potential for a refund in specific circumstances. Maintain optimism until you definitively confirm the loss.
• Convert Mistake into Wisdom. Transform your financial setback into a valuable learning experience. Treat your loss as an investment in understanding the tactics of crypto scam sites. Familiarize yourself with their key characteristics, how they lure individuals, and the grandiose promises they make. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll be well-equipped to recognize and avoid falling into future traps without incurring further losses.

Scan your system for possible malware infections

Beware of cross scams! Scam actors can use your trust to make you download some stuff or interact with certain documents. It may be a trap that installs malware to your system. There are no moral barriers or limits for these scoundrels.

Throughout the timeline of the fraud, its actors may get in touch with you with particular files. Alternatively, they may offer you to deploy “cryptocurrency wallet applications” or “browser extensions” to streamline access to your crypto savings. As we already figured out, these scammers have no plan of giving back your funds. So, what can these messages and browser add-ons represent? Correct – this is another element of the fraudulent scheme designed to throw you into deliberately installing malicious software onto your system.

Both plugins and files included to emails can serve as a shell for diverse malicious code. In this case, I anticipate the presence of spyware and stealers among all forms of malware. While it is not mandatory for scammers to distribute malware, the likelihood is always significant. As previously mentioned, their ethics is of little concern, and their reputation is already neck deep in mud. They have no principles to lose and intend to boost revenues.

Frequently asked questions