Jane Edwards
An analysis by blockchain analytics company Chainalysis shows that scammers took in more than $7.7 billion worth of cryptocurrency from victims in 2021, reflecting an increase of 81 percent from the previous year.
A new type of scam in the decentralized finance ecosystem called “rug pulls” accounted for 37 percent of the total cryptocurrency scam revenue in 2021 compared with 1 percent in 2020, according to a blog post published Thursday.
With rug pulls, developers of a cryptocurrency project bring the value of a token to zero by taking users’ funds from the liquidity pool and abandoning the token.
Rug pulls accounted for over $2.8 billion of the total cryptocurrency value received by scammers in 2021. Thodex topped the list of rug pulls in 2021, with over $2.6 billion worth of cryptocurrency stolen, followed by AnubisDAO at $58.3 million.
The number of active financial investment scams climbed to 3,300 in 2021 from 2,052 in 2020, according to a preview of Chainalysis’ 2022 Crypto Crime Report.
Chainalysis will sponsor the Potomac Officers Club’s Digital Currency and National Security Forum on Jan. 27. The virtual event will feature National Cyber Director Chris Inglis and Juan Zarate, global co-managing partner and chief strategy officer at K2 Integrity, as speakers.
