As a result of various fraudulent schemes, the owners of the Ethereum cryptocurrency lost in 2018 to $36 million in dollar terms. It is twice more than in 2017, when users have stolen $17 million, according to the study by the research company Chainalysis.
In 2018, Ethereum-based scams raked in $36 million, doubling the take of the prior year. Get a preview of our deep dive into the scams with the second blog in our Crypto Crime series. #cryptocurrency #cryptocrime https://t.co/So2FCJgv99
— Chainalysis (@chainalysis) January 23, 2019
In this case, said the company, a number of fraudulent schemes during the 2018 gradually decreased, however, those that continued to operate, had an even larger scale, and methods of obtaining funds, users have become increasingly sophisticated.
“For a number of reasons, which will be announced in our full report [in late January], broadcast has long been known as the most preferred for scammers cryptocurrency”, — said Chainalysis.
According to analysts, from late 2016 to late 2018 in Ethereum, they have identified more than 2,000 Scam-addresses which have received funds from nearly 40 thousand unique users. This is for 2018, there was a surge in scams in Ethereum – almost 75%.
Phishing Scam king
As noted Chainalysis most profitable fraudulent method for 2017 and 2018 remained phishing. However, if in 2017 it accounted for more than 88% of all fraudulent schemes in 2018, this method became less effective, and his success rate had fallen to 38.7%.
The other most popular methods of obtaining coins users have the disappearance of the organizers of the ICO (31,5%) and Ponzi schemes (financial pyramid) – 15%. The organizers of these schemes took millions of dollars in the air. Also, about 15% are pure “Scam”, but at this stage the company did not explain what activity lies behind these figures.
Earlier, the company Chainalysis as a spoiler to my upcoming report announced that the volume of bitcoin transactions in the darknet in 2018 exceeded $600 million.
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