Chainalysis found that rogue crypto volumes are down this year, with total fraud revenue at $1.6 billion, 65 percent lower than where it was through the end of last July. The blockchain data analytics firm writes, “These numbers suggest that fewer people are falling for cryptocurrency scams than ever before.”
Data showing that the volume of fraudulent crypto is declining
Blockchain data analytics firm Chainalysis released a mid-year crypto crime update titled “Illicit Activity Falls With Rest of Market, With Some Notable Exceptions” on Tuesday.
The company writes overall:
illicit volume is down just 15% year over year, compared to 36% for legitimate volume.
Specifically, Chainalysis notes that “total fraud revenue for 2022 is currently $1.6 billion, 65% lower than where it was through the end of July 2021, and this decrease appears to be related to lower prices between different currencies.”
Additionally, “the cumulative number of individual transfers to fraud so far in 2022 is the lowest in the past four years,” the company added.
Chainalysis elaborates.
These numbers suggest that fewer people are falling for cryptocurrency scams than ever before. One reason for this is that falling asset prices have made cryptocurrency scams…
may be that they are becoming less attractive to potential victims.
The company noted that confirmed scams in 2022 do not approach the level of Plustoken or Finiko. The former netted more than $2 billion from victims in 2019, while the latter netted more than $1.5 billion in 2021.
In addition, darknet market revenues have declined significantly this year and are currently down 43% compared to where they were through July 2021.
Areas of increased illicit activity in 2022 are hacking and stolen funds. Blockchain analytics firms explain that.
By July 2022, $1.9 billion worth of cryptocurrency had been stolen in service hacks, compared to just under $1.2 billion at the same point in 2021.
“This trend does not appear to be reversing anytime soon, with a $190 million hack of the cross-chain bridge Nomad and a $5 million hack of multiple Solana wallets already occurring in the first week of August.” Chainalysis added.” Much of this can be attributed to the alarming rise in funds stolen from defi [decentralized finance] protocols, a trend that began in 2021.”
Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons