Nano scams: fake wallets, fake support and giveaways to avoid

People rarely lose Nano to a flaw in the protocol. They lose it to someone who talked them into handing over a recovery phrase or sending a payment. If you remember one rule from this page, make it this one: nobody who helps you ever needs your seed.

Short on time? Go straight to the signs an offer is fake, the safety routine for every payment, or helping someone else get started.

Why a mistake costs so much here

A Nano send is final. Once funds are sent, they cannot be revoked by the sender. That is true of crypto in general: payments typically are not reversible and do not come with legal protections. Once you pay, you can usually only get your money back if the person you paid sends it back. Crypto accounts are not backed by a government, so no one is obliged to step in.

No company can freeze or return a Nano payment. Nano is not operated by a single company; independent representative nodes vote to confirm transactions. Your safety is therefore in your own habits, and the habits are short.

Editor's takeSlow down before you confirm a send. The sender cannot revoke it and no company can undo it, so the pause before you press confirm is the whole defence.

How big the problem is

Scams exist because they pay. Security firm Hacken’s figures, as reported by Ledger Academy, put investor losses to cryptocurrency scams and hacks at nearly $3.1 billion in the first half of 2025. The anonymity, cross-border operations and irreversible nature of blockchain transactions make the likelihood of capture low, which is part of why these scams keep coming. You cannot count on someone catching the thief after the fact, so the checks have to happen before you send.

The scams to expect

Fake support and recovery offers

The most damaging scam is the simplest: someone asks for your seed. A seed is the top-level secret of a wallet. Anyone with your seed phrase has instant access to every private key, and so to every account in the wallet. No fix for a wallet problem needs you to say the words aloud, type them into a site or send a photo of them.

Do not trust a stranger who messages you after you post a problem in a public thread. A real answer to a wallet question never starts with “send me your phrase”. The same goes for any site that asks you to type the phrase into a form to “verify” or “sync” your wallet. The phrase belongs in your wallet app and on your offline backup, and nowhere else.

Scammers also contact people out of the blue. Never click a link from an unexpected text, email or social media message, even if it seems to come from a company you know. Do not pay anyone who contacts you unexpectedly and demands payment with cryptocurrency.

Fake wallet apps and lookalike sites

A wallet is the one app that must be genuine, because it holds your keys. Newcomers are pointed to a wallet listing on Nano Hub, and every entry there has a link to the wallet’s own website. The safest route is to start from that list, then use the Visit Website link, instead of a search ad, a link in a chat or a link a stranger sent.

One entry shows how a lookalike can work. Nault’s mobile version runs on the web only and has no app store listing. An app called Nault in a phone store is therefore not the real one. The Nano wallets page lists every wallet in the directory with its platforms so you can check what a real entry runs on.

Before you move more than a small amount, check three things: the wallet is on the directory, its site is the one the directory links to, and you got the app from the link on its entry. Nano’s own advice is to start with a small amount.

Giveaways and “send some, get more back”

A common giveaway uses a celebrity: a scammer pretends to be someone famous who can multiply any cryptocurrency you send them. Celebrities do not contact you through social media.

A legitimate faucet is different, and the difference is the direction of money. You do not have to buy any nano to try it. A real way to get a first small amount never asks you to send anything first, and never asks for your seed.

Guaranteed returns and investment pitches

Only scammers guarantee profits or big returns. Nobody can make those guarantees. Scammers also make big claims without details or explanations, while honest advisors share how it works and back it up with details. This site gives no investment advice and makes no forecasts, and neither should anyone who contacts you.

Romance is a common wrapper. If someone you meet online wants to show you how to invest, or asks you to send them crypto, that is a scam: never mix online dating and investment advice.

Impersonators and fake jobs

Scammers pose as well-known companies, and as government agencies, law enforcement or utility companies, then say a payment in crypto will fix a problem. They also offer businesses issuing fraudulent crypto coins or tokens. A new “Nano token” from a company you have never heard of is one more version of the same pitch, because the supply of Nano itself was fixed at launch and the protocol issues no new coins.

Fake jobs follow a similar script. Scammers list fake jobs on job sites, and the job only starts after you pay. Never pay a fee to get a job.

The rule that covers all of these: no legitimate business or government will ever email, text or message you on social media to ask for money, and they will never demand that you buy or pay with cryptocurrency.

Fake sites, phishing pages and fake apps

Fake sites usually have similar but slightly different domain names from the sites they attempt to mimic. Some work as phishing pages, where everything you type, including a wallet password or recovery phrase, ends up with the scammer. Fake apps are a second route: scammers trick people through fake apps available for download through Google Play and the Apple App Store. Those apps are quickly found and removed, which does not stop them from costing victims money in the meantime.

Three habits cut most of this risk. Type or bookmark the address of a wallet’s site from the directory entry, and read the domain letter by letter before you enter anything. Treat any page that asks for a recovery phrase as hostile. And when you try a new wallet app, send only a small amount the first time to confirm that the wallet app is legitimate.

Browser extensions deserve the same suspicion. Unsuspecting users usually grant these extensions permissions without carefully reading the access privileges, allowing them to read and write data. Once connected, malicious scripts can modify transaction details in real time. Install an extension only from the wallet’s own entry in the directory, and remove any you no longer use.

Address poisoning and clipboard hijackers

Two scams target the moment you paste an address. Address poisoning exploits the victim’s tendency to copy-paste wallet addresses from transaction history rather than typing every digit. Clipboard hijackers are programs that monitor your clipboard for wallet addresses and replace them with the attacker’s addresses.

The defense is the same for both: carefully verify the entire recipient address, character by character, against a trusted source before you send funds. Keep a contact list of verified recipient wallets that you pay often, which significantly reduces the chance of falling for this scam. Nano’s address format helps with typos by encoding the key in a way that limits ambiguity between characters, but it cannot tell you whether the address belongs to the person you meant to pay, so the check against a trusted source is still yours to do.

Hype and fake “Nano mining”

Hype comes in the same shape: scammers promise to match or multiply the cryptocurrency sent to them. Any crypto offering that promises you will definitely make money is a red flag. If someone contacts you out of the blue to sell you a crypto investment opportunity, it is probably a scam. Scammers often use high-pressure tactics to get you to invest quickly.

Mining pitches deserve a special mention for Nano. Cloud mining pitches ask you to rent mining hardware they operate in exchange for a fixed fee and a share of the revenue you will supposedly make. Nano has no mining and no block rewards, so there is nothing to rent. An offer to mine Nano is an invention.

How the pressure works

Scams of this kind rest on social engineering, a deceptive tactic that exploits human psychology, rather than code vulnerabilities, to gain access to sensitive information such as a crypto wallet or account. Scammers often present themselves as reliable entities to gain your trust, and they create urgency to push you past your checks. A message that says your account will be locked in an hour is the standard example.

The antidote is time. A cooling-off period of 5 minutes, an hour or 24 hours before taking any action lets you reassess with a clear mind, and remaining calm destroys the sense of urgency that social engineers create. Any legitimate crypto platform or project will never ask for your secret recovery phrase or private keys. If a firm asks you to share your keys to take part in an investment, it is highly likely to be a scam.

Phone and account takeovers

Your wallet app is only as safe as the accounts around it: the email address you used to sign up, the phone number, the cloud drive. SIM swapping attacks in crypto exploit a vulnerability in SMS-based two-factor authentication. Avoid relying on SMS-based 2FA alone, and use more secure choices such as authentication apps, hardware wallets and hardware tokens. If a scam has already reached you, change your usernames and passwords across the board, because crypto fraudsters often sell the details they have captured to other criminals.

How to protect yourself against physical attacks

Physical threats are the bluntest scam of all: in the $5 wrench attack, someone uses force to steal your crypto. It is rare, and a few habits make it less likely to happen to you. Avoid drawing attention to your crypto holdings and maintain a low profile. A dummy wallet helps: a separate wallet with a different set of keys and only a small balance. It contains just enough digital assets to satisfy an attacker, but not all of your assets. If you hold a large balance, keep the seed backup where visitors and household members cannot find it. Keep your seed offline, and split what you keep for daily use from what you keep for the long term, so that no single demand can empty everything.

Signs an offer is fake

Every offer you meet can be run through the same short list:

• It promises you will definitely make money. No financial investment can guarantee future returns, because investments can go down as well as up.
• It promises free money. Any investment opportunity promising free money is likely to be fake.
• It arrives unasked, by call, text or message, and asks for personal information or a transfer. Never disclose personal information or transfer money to someone who contacts you in this way.
• It is loud. One way that crypto fraudsters attract people is by investing in heavy marketing.
• Nobody will say who runs it. If you cannot find out who is running a cryptocurrency, be cautious.
• It is in a hurry. Scammers foster a sense of urgency, through account anomalies, irregular fund withdrawals, investment opportunities or time-sensitive airdrops, so that fear of missing out replaces thinking.

One flag is enough to stop. Two together are nearly always a scam. This site holds itself to the opposite standard: it gives no prices, forecasts or advice about buying, and it asks for nothing from you.

A short safety routine for every payment

• Keep your recovery phrase offline and share it with no one. Never upload a text or image copy of it to online storage.
• Install a wallet only from an entry on the list that nano.org links to.
• Copy addresses from the wallet, not from a message. An address starts with nano_ and carries 52 characters of the account public key. How a Nano address is built shows the typo protection.
• Send a small test payment first. Nano’s own advice is to start with a small amount.
• Remember that every send is final. If you are unsure, do not send.
• Slow down when a message is urgent. Urgency is how scammers hurry you past these checks.

If you are helping someone else get started

A relative or friend who receives Nano for the first time is exactly who these scams look for. Sit with them for the first setup. Choose the wallet together from the list that nano.org links to, and install it from the link on the wallet’s own entry. Let them write down the recovery phrase themselves and keep it offline, and agree that it is never shared.

Then give them two sentences to repeat. Only scammers demand payment in cryptocurrency. No legitimate business or government will ever email, text or message you on social media to ask for money. If a message does not fit those two sentences, they can call you before they click anything.

If it already happened

Act quickly if you have made a payment or disclosed personal information. Report fraud and suspicious activity involving cryptocurrency. If the scam ran through a social media account, report it to that platform as well. In the United States the FTC takes reports at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and the Internet Crime Complaint Center takes them at ic3.gov/Home/FileComplaint. Report quickly, keep the messages and addresses, and do not pay anyone who offers to get the money back for a fee. If a phrase or seed was exposed, move your funds to a new wallet with a new seed at once, because anyone with the old seed can freely access them.

Where to go next

Set up a wallet from the Nano wallets list, learn what to protect in seed vs private key, and read how to send Nano before your first transfer. The wallets hub collects the rest of this section. The primary texts are the FTC’s crypto scams guidance, the Nano Hub wallets listing and the key management guide.