The total crypto scam revenue year-to-date currently stands at $1.6 billion as recorded by a recent Chainalysis report.
This purports a near 65% decline from the previous year’s period which appears to be linked to falling cryptocurrency prices.
This is also reflected in the transaction volume across cryptocurrencies.
As things stand, crypto crime appears to be more resilient as compared to price declines across assets.
Illicit volumes are down just 15% YoY, as compared to the 36% drop in legitimate volumes.
Source: Chainalysis
Any links to prices?
It is no surprise that 2022 has been a tumultuous year for crypto assets as they struggled heavily through the bear market.
The Chainalysis report further shares the insights of cybercrime trends midway through 2022 as the crypto markets tackle the bear market.
Bitcoin [BTC] prices are currently ranging between $22,000- $24,500 after starting the year around $48,000.
Since January 2022, scam revenue has fallen in tandem with the Bitcoin prices.
Fewer people were washed away in crypto scams due to the exit of a plethora of inexperienced traders during the bear market. In this regard, the report stated,
“It’s not just scam revenue falling — the cumulative number of individual transfers to scams so far in 2022 is the lowest it’s been in the past four years.”
Source: Chainalysis
However, there is one area in crypto crimes that showed a tremendous increase during the period in review.
As the report collects, until July 2022, over $1.9 billion worth of crypto was stolen in hacks.
This is a sharp $700 million in comparison to the same point in 2021.
There are few expectations for this trend to exit any time soon after recent mammoth hacks in the crypto space.
Two recent hacks on the Nomad cross-chain bridge and Solana wallet led to a collective windfall of just below $200 million in August.
While these are included in the data chart, they represent the resistance of cybercrime to go down.
Source: Chainalysis
The report further alarmed the crypto community by saying that these trends can overhaul after one or two huge scams.
This means that the next report could signal a reverse in the trend of declining scam revenues than what we currently see.
Crime has surely gone down but there is much work to be done in the crypto space.
However, the bear market may have been a blessing in disguise as it flushed out inexperienced traders which again, may have paved the way for safer operations in the space.
