A lack of regulation and the anonymity of digital money has created a cryptocurrency environment perfect for fraudulent operators according to the WSJ.
The Federal Trade Commission reports that around $82 million was lost in crypto scams during the last quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of this year. Scammers have targeted just about everyone from veteran well-educated investors to the average person scrolling through social media reading about the cryptocurrency buzz.
It remains difficult to determine the true damage of cryptocurrency scams as figures largely rely on self-reporting and are often limited to just the United States. But CipherTrace, an analytics firm, says global crypto crime has decreased from 2019, “from $4.1 billion in 2019 to $432 million during the first four months of this year.”
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