Never click on an Ad for Crypto
I just saw one of the most amazing scams the other day. If you typed Pancake Swap into Google, an ad would show up at the top of the page and take you to a clone of Pancake Swap that I assume will steal all of your money. I didn't check out the page too thoroughly. I will see if the ad is still live. Nope, someone must have caught it. I found out about it in one of the Pancake Swap Facebook groups. Someone showed a screen shot and asked if it was legit. I googled it and to my surprise I was served the same ad for the fake Pancake Swap site.
The bottom line is that if you can't tell the difference between a real website and a fake website you should probably stick with Centralized Exchanges. Defi is really dangerous. I learn about a new scam or rug pull every few weeks. Its pretty consistent.
Even the big guys like Balancer get exploited. There is so much theft and hacking in the crypto space. It might not just be random gangs. I would imagine if I was a King, I would set up a huge computer division to mine crypto and do organized scams. I have to imagine that countries like North Korea are using tons of electricity to mine crypto and have teams around the clock trying to get it from other sources.
It is really hard to steal the gold from Fort Knox. It is a lot easier to try and rob people digitally who don't secure their funds properly. It is a lot easier to try and trick people into sending you money than it is to rob tangible assets. When you start buying digital assets, you need to worry about protection more than any other asset class. Our team has lost at least 90 cryptokitties, about 2 Eth to a fake project, and has a lot of Shiba stuck in a wallet. We are not error free. Luckily most errors were made a while ago. Obviously the Shiba error is pretty recent.
I know I have a picture on a computer somewhere with my original recovery key for my Metamask wallet that has a bunch of cryptokitties but for the life of me, I can't find it.
In summation, do not use ads to get to your Defi protocols. You should not be searching for them. You should make sure you are there properly and then add a bookmark and use the bookmark.
I was reading that 80% of the ICO's that happened in 2017 were fake and robbed people of all their money. They built wonderful websites and they had terrific teams of real and fake people. If you are going to believe in crypto you need to trust something. Whether you trust the Bitcoin block chain or you trust Ether or you trust Citibank, they key to feeling safe is trusting the holder of your money. Even if you hold your own keys, you still have to have faith in Bitcoin.
We have decided that we trust Bitcoin, Ether, and Binance. Trusting Binance allows us to trust Pancake Swap and to trust Trust Wallet and Safepal. That is the ecosystem where we have the most faith. I trust Apple and Vudu to hold my digital movies and I trust Binance to act ethically. It can make so much more money by being honest and being the best chain. I hope they realize that.