Title: Crypto scams fall 65% after gullible noobs exit the market

Aug 17, 2022 01:40AM ET

By: AnalysisWatch

Fewer people fell victim to cryptocurrency fraud in 2022 due to falling asset prices and unsophisticated cryptocurrency users exiting the market, according to a new crime report.

According to a Chainalysis report released on August 16, total crypto fraud revenue year to date stands at $1.6 billion, a 65 percent decrease from the previous 12-month period, which appears to be related to falling cryptocurrency prices.

Although fraud revenue has declined over the past year, Jardine notes that cryptocurrency-based hacking attacks have bucked the trend, increasing 58.3% through July 2022 to $1.9 billion—a figure that does not include the $190 million Nomad Bridge hack that began on August 1.

DeFi protocols are uniquely vulnerable to hacker attacks because their open-source code can be studied ad nauseum by cybercriminals looking for exploits.

But Jardine added that it's not all bad, as smart contract programming languages like Solidity are relatively new and these exploits can "be useful for security as they allow auditing of code."

The report also notes that a large concentration of these hackers come from North Korean elite hacking units such as the Lazarus Group, with roughly half of the cryptocurrency stolen in hacking attacks coming from these groups alone.

Jardine also noted that revenue in the darknet market is down 43 percent so far in 2022, mainly due to German law enforcement shutting down the servers of Russian darknet marketplace Hydra Marketplace on April 5.

Darknet marketplaces are black markets on the dark web that offer illegal goods and services for sale, often using cryptocurrencies as a payment method.