How it works
A brand you have never worked with sends a warm cold email praising your channel and offering a paid integration. The catch surfaces around payment. Instead of an invoice paid by bank transfer or PayPal, they say they pay creators in USDT, Tether, Bitcoin, or straight to your crypto wallet. Two things usually follow. In the first version they ask for your wallet address, then simply never pay, having collected your promo work or your audience's attention for free. In the second, more expensive version, they tell you the payout is ready but stuck behind a small fee: a gas fee, an activation deposit, a verification charge, or an exchange cost you need to send first so the larger sum can be released. The moment you send crypto, it is gone. There is no chargeback, no bank to call, and usually no real person behind the wallet. A common dressing on this is an escrow service or a finance manager who will hold the funds, which only adds a second wallet you are asked to trust.
The tell-tale signals
- The payment method is crypto. Real brands and agencies pay by invoice, bank transfer, or PayPal on net terms, because they need a paper trail for their own accounting. Crypto is chosen precisely because it is irreversible and hard to trace.
- Money is asked to move in the wrong direction. Any version where you send a fee, deposit, or charge before you are paid is an advance-fee scam. The sponsor pays you, never the other way around.
- The sender is a free mailbox like Gmail, Outlook, or Proton, or a throwaway address, rather than a company domain.
- There is pressure to settle quickly, before you have time to ask why a real company cannot cut a normal invoice.
What to do
Do not share a wallet address, and never send crypto to unlock, verify, or activate a payment. Reply on email and ask for a standard invoice, a contract, and payment on net-15 or net-30 by bank transfer or PayPal. A real partner will have all three without blinking. If they insist on crypto or a fee first, stop answering and mark the thread as a scam. If you already sent funds, treat the wallet and any credentials you shared as compromised and move on, because crypto sent to a stranger is not recoverable.