How many scams with SEPA, how to avoid them?

1

I think I read a thread about a german SEPA scammer that was active a few months ago.

I am thinking about buying BTC with SEPA but would like to estimate the probability of entering a trade with a scammer.

I would do only buy but not sell so stolen bank account wouldn’t be an issue but tainted BTC could be.

Have tainted BTCs been an issue so far?

What percentage of SEPA transactions are scams? I intend to do a small number of larger trades with the maximum limit.

Is it possible to decrease risk by avoiding transacting with certain countries or by using only sellers with a history of large trading volume?

I would guess scammers wouldn’t have many large volume transaction over a longer period of time?

2

Hi @jennus5. Welcome to t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶a̶b̶b̶i̶t̶ ̶h̶o̶l̶e̶ Bisq.

It is practically impossible to get scammed as a buyer. Tainted BTC are rare on Bisq and kinda rare in general since any form of tainting can be negated with CoinJoin, mixers etc. Still, there is always a way for you to check if the seller is selling tainted BTC.

  1. Click on the i button next to SEPA (COUNTRY_CODE)
  2. In the pop up that appears, click on the link next to Maker fee transaction ID

You will get to a transaction that contains the trade deposit and the maker fee. You can use this info to track the BTC trail for the trade. To do this, you need to know:

  1. How Bitcoin works
  2. How to use block explorers
  3. A list of ‘bad’ transactions you want to avoid

Let me know if this helps

1 Like
3

Never heard of globally tainted BTC.
Likely exchanges maintain their own lists of tainted btc addresses but dont share them publicly. And indeed, mixing and other coinjoin techniques makes them untainted anyway.

As a new btc buyer your issue will probably be the 0.01 buy limit.

Wondering how one would filter “sellers with a history of large trading volume” as only account age is available ?

4

OK. I thought there would be more data than transaction volume.