The U.S. and Peru are the top 3 most affected countries by cryptocurrency fraudsters in 2021.
ESET, an anti-virus software developer, presented a report analyzing the actions of crypto fraudsters in 2021. According to their data, Russian users suffered the most from crypto attacks — they accounted for 11.2% of all incidents. Peru and the U.S. were also in the top 3 — they accounted for 6.4% and 5.8% of cryptocurrency frauds, respectively.
The most typical lures of crypto scammers in 2021 were Trust Wallet, NFT marketplace OpenSea and Elon Musk. Kraken and Paxful were the most popular crypto exchanges. MetaMask and Exodus wallets also attracted fraudsters’ attention. Scammers use the design of the most popular cryptocurrency wallets and platforms as phishing sites.
Cryptocurrency giveaways from Elon Musk or Tesla remain quite popular. To participate in such a “giveaway,” negligent users are asked to leave any personal information. In the last third of 2021, the interest of fraudsters in the NFT sphere increased significantly. Experts predict that this sphere will face the highest growth of cryptocurrency threats in 2022.
