What is Social engineering?
Manipulating a person rather than attacking a system — the most effective attack vector in Bitcoin by a wide margin.
The cryptography is not the weak point. The weak point is a person under time pressure who trusts the wrong screen or the wrong voice.
Nearly every variant depends on manufactured urgency. Slowing down and verifying through a channel you chose yourself defeats most of them.
Related terms
Phishing
Tricking someone into revealing secrets or authorising a transfer by impersonating a service they trust.
Security & scamsCommon Bitcoin scams
Recurring fraud patterns: fake giveaways, impersonated support, romance-investment schemes, fake exchanges…
Keys & custodySeed phrase
Twelve or twenty-four words from which every key in a wallet is derived. Anyone with the words has the coins.
This definition is part of the Bitcoin Logical glossary. For the fuller explanation, start with Learn, or see the live numbers on The Bitcoin Signal.