During July 2022, scammers stole more than 4,600 NFTs in a single year.
Analysts at Elliptic have presented a report on the scale of fraud in the non-fungible token market. So, according to their data, the total value of stolen NFTs was $100.6 million over 13 months since July 2021. Scammers stole the most tokens in July 2022 — at least 4,647 assets. The highest total value of stolen NFTs was recorded in May 2022 — about $23.9 million.
The most expensive loss was a CryptoPunk token, valued at about $490,000 at the time of the theft. Fraudsters stole it in November 2021. Next month, 16 NFTs were stolen, so-called “blue-chip stocks,” the most expensive and liquid assets. They all belonged to the same user, and the damage amounted to more than $2.1 million.
Moreover, the report contains information on NFTs used to launder illicit funds. For instance, over $8 million has been laundered through NFT marketplaces since 2017. In addition, approximately $137.6 million were sent from Tornado Cash to NFT marketplaces. By the way, Tornado Cash recently came under the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions. The total amount of funds sent from crypto mixers to NFT marketplaces exceeded $328 million.
Analysts clarify that the above figures likely reflect only a small part of the complete picture, as data on thefts is analyzed from open sources, and some fraudulent transactions are identified ex post facto or remain unnoticed. Earlier, analysts from Comparitech presented data showing that in 2022, hackers carried out 150 targeted attacks against different NFT projects and stole tokens worth around $87 million.
