Over on Reddit's r/CryptoScams, a warning popped up about Avalcoin, a fraudulent trading platform. According to user Afrmthabay, the service runs a classic scam, luring victims in with the illusion of steady payouts.

The playbook is painfully familiar: at first, the platform lets you withdraw small amounts of crypto to lull you into a false sense of security and get you to trust the exchange. But as soon as you deposit a bigger sum, your account suddenly gets frozen. According to Afrmthabay, once you're locked out, support starts cooking up fake excuses to deny your withdrawal requests — essentially just sitting on other people's assets.

In the comments, users took aim at the victim's judgment. According to user IdeaFrequent4358, a company called Avalcoin doesn't legally exist at all, so it was a sham from the get-go. User Jenn2895 asked the author what exactly made him put money into this project, so that others could learn from his mistake and learn to spot the psychological hooks scammers use.

The main and most obvious piece of advice came from user Tall_Run_2814. His take: only use trading platforms that are as well-known and battle-tested as possible. Getting tangled up with no-name exchanges — as the Avalcoin case makes clear — is a one-way ticket to losing your savings.