The crypto winter affects scammers’ income, which was 2.6 times lower in July 2022 than in the same period last year.
According to the Chainalysis report, the yield of crypto schemes fell by 65% in July this year compared to July 2021. The volume amounted to $1.6 billion. The amount of illegal transactions also decreased, falling by 15% compared to the previous year.
Chainalysis analysts attribute the drop in figures to the decrease in quotations of various cryptocurrencies. Since January 2022, the profitability of hackers began to fall rapidly, along with the decline of BTC. However, report author Eric Jardine, Cybercrimes Research Lead at Chainalysis, claims that the cumulative number of individual transfers to fraudsters in 2022 is the lowest in four years.
Jardine says such figures may indicate that the cryptocurrency winter has taken inexperienced users out of the market, who are more likely to fall victim to crypto scammers.
As for major scams in the crypto market, their rates also dropped significantly in 2022. For example, in 2019, the largest scam was the crypto service PlusToken, thanks to which fraudsters took $2 billion in cryptocurrency. In 2021, the Finiko blockchain project became a big scam — fraudsters took $1.5 billion. This year, the largest scam is JuicyFields, a crowdfunding platform that brought fraudsters only $273 million. Recall that in 2022, social media scams were the most profitable for hackers. Moreover, romance scam schemes are becoming more popular.
Income on the darknet this year decreased by 43% compared with 2021. Chainalysis analysts point out that the decline of the darknet indicators is directly related to the closure of the Hydra marketplace in April.
However, the rates of attacks on some sectors of the crypto market in 2022 still increased. Thus, hackers broke into various cross-chain bridges 13 times this year and withdrew about $2 billion from them. DeFi protocols still remain the most vulnerable sector of the crypto market — attacks increased by 27% in 2022.
