Today, we’re going to take back control of a stolen crypto wallet.

But first, let’s explore why and how so many fall victim to crypto phishing scams.

Anyone can sign up and create ads on Facebook and Google.

This includes crypto scammers. If you try to access your Trezor hardware wallet, you might see this:

All three ads are crypto scams. Google blocks me from advertising my wallet recovery service but has no problem allowing scammers to steal billions in cryptocurrencies.

How exactly do they steal your wallet? Like this:

In short, the scammers build a website that impersonates a crypto wallet and asks for your seed. (Read this guide to learn exactly how I keep my wallet secure from thieves.)

The best way to avoid falling for these scams is to use a hardware wallet and remember never to enter your seed into any other device.

It is impossible to reverse crypto transactions. It is also impossible to take back a secret after you’ve leaked it. It’s important to remember this because there is an entire cottage industry praying on victims with false promises to return your money. Google is happy to let these fake recovery services advertise my fraudulent services even as it (*sigh*) blocks mine.

However, the scammers are usually only interested in your big-time coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum. If you have NFT’s or locked-up investments, you can still take steps to recover them.

Here is the problem you must overcome: cybercriminals are professional organizations, and they use tools such as sweeper bots, which monitor all the addresses they hacked and immediately sweep anything you deposit to their own wallet. This makes it impossible for you to move your NFT’s, locked-up assets, or collect income-paying investments.

Here is what you can do in response:

A burn bot is just a loop that checks the blockchain every few seconds and immediately spends anything deposited to it. This denies the scammers access to your stolen crypto wallet.

Once your burn bot is running, you can take the time to sweep your NFT’s, locked-up assets, or collect income-paying investments. This is done by (1) having the transaction come from a third-party account, and (2) sending the transaction directly to the miners, bypassing the queue that miners normally accept transactions from.

I wish I could tell you exactly how this works, but the scammers are reading this too, and I don’t want to make it too easy for them to do the same thing. (I know this, because they’ve sent me angry messages when I’ve done this for their victims.). Suffice it to say, this can be done on any Ethereum-compatible network.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Bitcoin and other crypto assets are crashing along with the stock market.

There are a lot of things I could say about this, but keep this in mind: this is a long-term play. Anyone who bought Bitcoin at any time in its existence and held for 4+ years made a profit of at least 426%:

If you bought the S&P 500 in 2000, you would have needed to wait until 2007 to be in profit again, and 2013 for that level to be sustainable.

Things are going to get worse before they get better. But there is no safe haven that will protect you from economic volatility. All you can do is put your wealth in assets that offer long-term protection from the corrosive effects of inflation.