Sometimes the economic situation is so bad that things you already know very well somehow stop being things you actively think about. We all know that we should distrust those offers floating around the internet promising free crypto. But hope—that complex human feeling—and the classic FOMO can blind us into thinking that this time will be different.

In Cuba, where people are living through an unbearable economic crisis, the chances of falling victim to these scams increase considerably. If it is a Ponzi scheme, you may at least convince yourself that you can enjoy the beginning of the wave and leave roughly around its crest. In other words, the fear of missing the opportunity to take advantage of the "good part" becomes part of the scam itself.

There are real examples of this. One painful case was Trust Investing, where many people eventually suffered considerable losses, but where many others also made plenty of money because they got in while it was still relatively "safe" to be there.

What happened to my cousin

He told me about a "platform" where you could earn 2 USDT for every person you brought in through your referral branch. Once you reached 15 USDT, you could withdraw them as USDT BEP-20. You could also accumulate the crypto by completing simple tasks such as watching ads, opening YouTube videos, and other activities common across countless initiatives of this kind on the web, including many that are Bitcoin-related. The money these platforms can make by massively exploiting users who spend their time and attention on tasks they will supposedly be rewarded for can be considerable.

The truth is that it simply created the illusion that you had earned and withdrawn USDT BEP-20. I reviewed my cousin's wallet record, and the platform sent what looked like a BEP-20 token from this contract. He says that Trust Wallet recognized the token and displayed it as a BEP-20 asset. Of course it did. But that does not make it real USDT, nor does it give the token any real-world value, I said to him. It was dust all along.

I repeatedly told my cousin to verify whether anyone had actually managed to turn these supposed USDT tokens into real money. Eventually, he found out the hard way. He tried to transfer his fake tokens to a peer using a SafePal wallet. It did not even show a notification.

And this is what worries me most. What if the receiving wallet had displayed a notification that, at first glance, looked exactly like a normal USDT BEP-20 transfer? The recipient could easily assume that he had received something worth $15, $50, or whatever amount was involved, only to discover later that the token had no meaningful market value.

So, no. As far as we know, there is no such thing as free BTC, free USDT, or free money in general—at least not at scale.