Crypto Scams: Past and Future

A glimpse into the past

• In 2020, more than 400,000 crypto scams were observed. This was a 40% surge from 2019.
• The scams that topped the charts include giveaways, fake prizes, and sweepstakes. This was followed by investment scams, celebrity impersonation, and advance-fee schemes.
• There were 28 cryptocurrency exchange breaches recorded last year, which amounted to a loss of $300.15 million.
• While Binance, Coinbase, and Gemini were the most targeted crypto wallets, Bitcoin, ChainLink, and Ethereum were the most stolen cryptocurrencies. Crypto wallets suffered 27 successful breaches and the loss amounted to $3.03 billion.

What about the future?

• Bolster predicted a rise of 75% in crypto scams this year.
• In January, the global market capitalization for cryptocurrencies attained $1.7 trillion, an eightfold increase from January 2020.
• It is predicted that crypto scams will reach more than 300 Top-Level-Domains (TLDs), as compared to 187 TLDs in 2020.
• Now, Dogecoin has become the next popular cryptocurrency as it witnessed a sudden increase in value by 800%, in less than 24 hours, in January.

Recent crypto-related incidents

• A phishing campaign was observed targeting Coinbase users to steal their account credentials, and consequently, drain their crypto wallets.
• The z0Miner cryptomining botnet was found targeting unpatched vulnerabilities in cloud servers.
• Fake cryptocurrency giveaway scams on social media, especially Twitter, have gained huge traction as attackers have started reaping huge financial gains from them. One such scam generated around $580,000 in a single week.

The bottom line