Fake Crypto Exchange: How to Spot and Avoid Scam Platforms
When you hear about a new fake crypto exchange, a platform that mimics legitimate trading sites but has no real infrastructure, liquidity, or team behind it. Also known as shut-down DEX, it’s not just a bad website—it’s a trap designed to steal your crypto before disappearing. These aren’t glitches or slow platforms. They’re built to look official, often copying real branding, using fake testimonials, and even listing fake trading volumes. By 2025, over a dozen once-popular DEXs like TombSwap and Flybit had $0 volume, zero updates, and no way to withdraw funds. People lost millions because they trusted names that sounded real.
What makes these scams dangerous is how they tie into other crypto risks. A crypto phishing, a deceptive attempt to steal private keys or seed phrases through fake login pages or misleading links often leads you to a fake exchange. Then there’s the DeFi exchange, a decentralized platform that lets users trade crypto without a central authority—real ones like Tinyman or SpookySwap have public code, active communities, and on-chain liquidity. Fake ones don’t. You can’t verify them. They don’t show transaction history. They don’t update. And when you try to pull your money out? Silence. Or worse, a "maintenance fee" demand.
The pattern is always the same: hype first, then vanish. Projects like JF airdrop and FLTY promised big rewards but left tokens worth nothing. Even when a token shows up on CoinMarketCap, that doesn’t mean it’s real—it just means someone paid to list it. The real warning signs? No team names, no GitHub activity, no audit reports, and a website that looks like it was built in 2018. If a platform says "no withdrawal fees" but blocks all withdrawals, that’s not a feature—it’s a red flag.
Below you’ll find detailed reviews of exchanges that claimed to be real but turned out to be ghosts. We’ll show you exactly what went wrong, who got burned, and how to check any platform before you deposit a single coin. This isn’t theory. These are real cases—with dates, numbers, and screenshots of what to look for.
- By Eva van den Bergh
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- 3 Dec 2025
Thodex Crypto Exchange Review: The $2 Billion Scam That Shook Turkey’s Crypto Market
Thodex was Turkey's largest crypto exchange until it vanished in April 2021 with $2 billion in user funds. This is the full story of the scam, what went wrong, and why it still matters today.