You think your losses from hodling been bad this year? Odds are, they pale in comparison to losses accrued from hacks and scams.
A Bull Run for Crypto Scammers
According to data shared with Business Insider, hackers and scammers have made already off with $670 million in cryptocurrency this year.
The data comes from cryptocurrency investment advisors Crypto Aware, which has collected information on every major cryptocurrency-related hack and scam since June 2011. During that time, $1.7 billion in digital assets has been stolen, which means that a staggering 40 percent has been lost in 2018 alone — the lion’s share of which came out of cryptocurrency exchange BitGrail’s and Japanese exchange Coincheck’s coffers.
The rest of the stolen funds largely came from the pockets of inexperienced investors eager to capitalize on December’s massive bull run — or recoup losses during the subsequent correction. However, as noted by Crypto Aware’s founder, Anna Wu, an influx of inexperienced investors has signaled “more and more validation.” Wu told Business Insider:
Cryptocurrency is receiving more and more validation as a means of value transfer, with top coins reaching historically high prices toward the end of last year. This attracted a lot of new, unseasoned investors who are not well versed in terms of online security and who are identified as easy targets by scammers.
‘Don’t be Greedy’
It’s easy to get greedy when almost every day yields a sea of green on the cryptocurrency charts. However, Wu reminds investors that a hot market doesn’t merely bring in big money — it also attracts unsavory characters. She told Business Insider:
Cryptocurrency frauds, scams, and hacks tend to rise every time there is considerable upward momentum in pricing for cryptocurrency market, so be extra cautious when the market is bullish.
Wu also recommends investors exercise common sense when investing in cryptocurrency:
Phishing scams are by far the most popular type of scams and you can easily avoid them by checking the website address against the officially published URLs character by character.
She also adds:
If it seems too good to be true — it is. Investment scams often try to entice gullible investors with unrealistic returns. Don’t be greedy.
Also, don’t send 0.1 ETH to fake Twitter accounts and expect to receive 1 ETH back. Spoiler alert: you won’t.
Are you surprised to learn that hackers and scammers have been raking in the most money over the last three months? Let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Wikipedia Commons