2021 noticed cryptocurrency primarily based scams report over $7.7 billion price of cryptocurrency taken from victims worldwide, as per the Chainalysis Crypto Crime report 2022. As per the report, the quantity represented an 81% improve in crypto scams in comparison with 2020.
Insights from the report acknowledged {that a} new sort of rip-off referred to as rug pulls, wherein the builders of a brand new crypto mission, sometimes a brand new token, would abandon it unexpectedly by stealing all invested funds, elevated 2021’s rip-off income rely. Moreover, rug pull scams accounted for 37% of all cryptocurrency rip-off income in 2021, in comparison with 1% in 2020. Overall, rug pulls scammed its victims of $2.8 billion price of cryptocurrency. Turkish centralised trade Thodex accounted for the largest rug pull of the 12 months by scamming its customers over $2 billion price of cryptocurrency, and represented 90% of all worth stolen in rug pulls. The second greatest rug pull of 2021 was finished by KuCoin Community Chain (KCC) primarily based protocol AnubisDAO which scammed over $58 million price of cryptocurrency, by elevating practically $60 million from buyers.
Ponzi scheme Finiko scammed greater than $1.1 billion price of cryptocurrency focusing on Russian audio system all through Eastern Europe. While whole rip-off income elevated in 2021, the variety of deposits to rip-off addresses fell from underneath 10.7 million to 4.1 million. The variety of monetary scams elevated from 2,052 in 2020 to three,300 in 2021. Finiko despatched most of its greater than $1.5 billion price of cryptocurrency to mainstream exchanges, high-risk exchanges, a hosted pockets service, and a P2P trade. It additionally despatched $34 million to a DeFi protocol designed for cross-chain transactions through a collection of middleman wallets.
The report’s information acknowledged that the common monetary rip-off was energetic for simply 70 in 2021, in comparison with 192 in 2020. A pattern of investigators getting higher at investigating and prosecuting scams was seen when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed fees towards 14 funding scams in September 2021. The transferring 30-day common day by day transaction quantity of transfers to scams fell 88% from $730,000 in September 2020 to $90,000 by November 2021.
(With insights from the Chainalysis Crypto Crime Report, 2022)
Source: www.financialexpress.com”