Scamming has become less appealing due to less trusting retail investors and declining asset prices, but hackers salivate the flood of new DeFi applications.
According to a new crypto crime study, fewer people have been scammed by bitcoin in 2022 due to dropping asset values and novice cryptocurrency users leaving the industry.
According to a report released Tuesday by Chainalysis, the total revenue generated by cryptocurrency scams year so far is currently at $1.6 billion, a 65% decrease from last year. This dip appears to be related to the falling values of cryptocurrencies.
The report’s author and cybercrimes research head at Chainalysis, Eric Jardine, notes that bull markets, when investment prospects and outsized returns are most alluring to victims, are when frauds on cryptocurrency investors are more likely to succeed.
Crypto Scams Fell By 65% After Noobs Exit Market:
Jardine also proposed that the number of new, novice crypto users is often larger during bull markets, increasing their vulnerability to crypto scams.
The analyst said that the relatively significant PlusToken and Finiko crypto scams in 2021, which generated $3.5 billion in total scam income, distort the statistics.
On the other hand, according to Jardine, the biggest fraud of 2022 has only netted $273 million. It is connected to the cannabis investing website JuicyFields.io, which has purportedly locked investors out of their accounts on their cannabis-focused “e-growing” service.
While scam revenue has decreased this year, Jardine points out that cryptocurrency-based hacking has defied the trend, rising by 58.3% to $1.9 billion through July.
The research also revealed that a significant portion of these hackers originated from elite North Korean cyber outfits like Lazarus Group, with these entities accounting for about half of the cryptocurrency stolen in hacks.
