A Telegram stranger calling himself “Francesco, BD” drops into your inbox with jargon: KOL, AF rev share, USDT volume bonuses, twenty-five thousand dollars “allocated” for campaigns. LBank, like many centralised exchanges, does run public affiliate and lead-trader programmes that pay a cut of referred users’ trading fees. So the vocabulary can sound authentic. A vague cold pitch with no written percentage, no legal entity, no contract and Telegram’s “Not an official account” banner is still only a lead-gen cast, not a deal.
Decode the money. Affiliates earn when invited people trade — especially futures, where notional volume and fees stack quickly. The “$25K in rewards” line is usually a shared campaign pot, not a personal guarantee. Phrases such as “highest among any CEXs” are marketing, not audited fact. For a creator, the conflict is blunt: your pay rises with how often your audience clicks and churns positions, not with whether they keep their capital. Exchange marketing pages that celebrate copy-trading and high-leverage products make that misalignment worse, not better.
If you might partner for real, open the exchange’s official affiliate page yourself, demand a named counterparty and payment terms in writing, and refuse to push products you would not hold. If the message asks you to collect deposits into a personal wallet “for onboarding”, walk away — that is no longer a referral fee, that is custody risk. Readers who already lost money after an influencer funnel should use Get help; anyone selling a fee-based “recovery” from the same trail belongs on Fake recovery.
This article is for general information only. It is not legal or financial advice. Details change. If you have lost money, contact your bank or card issuer and use the routes on the help pages.