The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) sets global standards for countries to fight money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) in crypto, requiring Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) like exchanges to follow Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules, including customer due diligence (CDD) and reporting suspicious transactions, most notably the "Travel Rule" for sender/receiver info on transfers over $1,000/€1,000, aiming to bring the crypto sector into the regulated financial system.
KYC (Know Your Customer) in crypto exchanges is a mandatory identity verification process requiring users to provide personal details like name, address, and
To protect against scams, be skeptical of unexpected contacts, never share personal info quickly, use strong unique passwords with multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Social engineering in crypto is the use of psychological manipulation and deception to trick people into revealing sensitive information (like private keys or seed phrases), authorizing malicious transactions, or sending funds directly to scammers.
MEV (Maximal Extractable Value, formerly Miner Extractable Value) is the profit block producers (miners/validators) can gain by strategically reordering
The risks of using centralized exchanges (CEXs) primarily stem from the user relinquishing control of their private keys to a third party, as well as operational, security, and regulatory factors
Slippage in trading is when your order executes at a different price than you intended, usually due to fast market movements, low liquidity, or large order sizes, resulting in a worse (negative) or sometimes better (positive) price than quoted
A Sybil attack in blockchain is when a single attacker creates numerous fake identities (nodes/accounts) to gain disproportionate influence, overwhelming the network's integrity
A 51% attack is when a single entity controls over half the network's computing power (hashrate) in a blockchain, allowing them to manipulate transactions, like preventing confirmations or double-spending coins
A reentrancy attack is a critical smart contract vulnerability that allows a malicious contract to repeatedly call a function in a victim contract before the initial execution is complete
The fall of these exchanges shows that size and popularity do not guarantee safety in crypto. Each collapse exposed weaknesses, whether technical, financial, or managerial, and pushed the industry toward better standards and accountability.
A honeypot scam in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is a type of fraud where scammers create a seemingly legitimate and attractive investment opportunity (like a new token or a yield farm)
In DeFi, front-running is exploiting knowledge of pending transactions in the blockchain's public mempool (waiting area) to place your own transaction first, often by paying higher gas fees
A multisig (multi-signature) wallet is a digital crypto wallet that requires multiple private keys (signatures) from different people or devices to authorize a transaction, acting like a shared digital safe needing several keys to open
Cold storage in crypto is an offline method for storing your cryptocurrency's private keys, keeping them completely disconnected from the internet to protect against online threats like hacking