One-third of crypto owners have had their crypto assets stolen: Report

• A report published by Kaspersky found that one-third of crypto owners have had their crypto assets stolen.
• The average value of stolen crypto assets was found to be more than $97,000.

Kaspersky, the popular cybersecurity firm, recently published a report that took a closer look at the threats surrounding crypto and its users, including investors encountering scams, fraudulent websites, identity theft, and theft of crypto assets.

Kaspersky surveyed a group of 2000 American adults between 20 October and 24 October last year. The subjects were questioned about their experience with crypto as well as the steps taken by them to protect their crypto assets.

A third of the respondents have had their crypto stolen

According to the report, one-third of the respondents who have owned crypto assets, have had them stolen. The average value of theft came in at a whopping $97,583.

The value of theft ranged from less than $100 to $1 million. 15% of the respondents said that they had between $100,000 and $1 million worth of crypto assets stolen.

The most common range was $1,001 to $10,000, with a quarter of the respondents falling under the same. 

A third of the respondents who owned or had owned crypto assets revealed that they had fallen victim to an investment scam or a fraudulent crypto-related website.

Cryptocurrency theft emerged as the most popular form of threat to cryptocurrency users. The next most popular victim category was- those who had their payment details stolen and money stolen from their bank accounts. Nearly half of the respondents aged between 18-24 revealed that they have had crypto assets stolen. 

The data gathered by Kaspersky revealed that improper storage of seed phrases and private keys was a commonly occurring problem among the respondents.

Nearly half of them had their keys written down on a piece of paper, instead of storing them in a password-protected device.

The most popular protection method adopted by over 33% of the respondents was using the multi-factor authentication offered by their exchange account website. 

“Users should be very careful where they invest their money, keeping a close eye out for phishing scams and fake websites. They should employ any extra security measures that are available to them, such as multi-factor authentication, and should use strong, unique passwords across all accounts,” said Marc Rivero, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team.