Crypto Scam Revenue Rises 81% To High Near $ 7.7 Billion In 2021, Says Chainalysis | Currency News | Financial and business news

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Crypto crooks raked in near-record revenue of $ 7.7 billion in 2021, Chainalysis said. The 81% rise in revenues was punctuated by a relatively new type of scam called “carpet draw”. A raffle is when developers unexpectedly abandon their cryptocurrency projects and take users’ funds with them.

Cryptocurrency crooks around the world generated nearly $ 8 billion in revenue in 2021, led by a relatively new tactic called a “stack draw,” according to Chainalysis.

Scam revenue jumped 81% from a year ago to $ 7.7 billion in cryptocurrency, the blockchain data platform said Thursday in a blog post that will be part of its Largest Crypto Crime Report Coming In 2022.

“As the largest form of cryptocurrency-based crime and targeted only at new users, scam poses one of the biggest threats to the continued adoption of cryptocurrency,” said Chainalysis.

This year’s surge in earnings has been propelled in part by the emergence of “plug plugs” that leave investors in crypto projects empty-handed.

They have become the “go-to” scam in the decentralized finance ecosystem, or DeFi, said Chainalysis. In these schemes, the developers of a cryptocurrency project – usually a new token – unexpectedly abandon it and take users’ funds with them.

Carpet draws accounted for 37% of all cryptocurrency scam revenue this year, up from 1% in 2020, and left victims without $ 2.8 billion of their cryptocurrency.

“Carpet draws are prevalent in DeFi because with the right technical know-how, it is easy and inexpensive to create new tokens on the Ethereum blockchain or others and get them listed on decentralized exchanges (DEX) without code audit, ”Chainalysis said.

“While code audits that would detect these vulnerabilities are common in the space, they are not required to be featured on most DEXs, which is why we see so many carpet draws. ”

However, this year’s biggest carpet draw didn’t start as a DeFi project, he said. Thodex was a large centralized Turkish exchange whose CEO disappeared shortly after the exchange halted user withdrawals, according to the report. Users have lost over $ 2 billion worth of cryptocurrency or nearly 90% of all value stolen from stack draws.

The second-biggest stack draw of 2021 was AnubisDAO, with more than $ 58 million in cryptocurrency stolen.

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