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Last year, more than $4.3 billion in digital currencies was stolen in various crypto scams, according to Chainalysis. The majority of the scams were linked to Ponzi schemes including the PlusToken and OneCoin scams.

Last year, more than $4.3 billion in digital currencies was stolen in various crypto scams, according to Chainalysis. The majority of the scams were linked to Ponzi schemes including the PlusToken and OneCoin scams.

Approximately $2.9 billion deposits have been lost in an alleged scam with a crypto wallet provider and exchange PlusToken. Six suspects affiliated with PlusToken have been arrested, although main operators of the alleged scam are still on the run. PlusToken allowed users to earn profits on their crypto deposits and incentivized members to bring in new users by providing monetary rewards.

As least 75 crypto exchanges have closed down due hacks, scams or simply disappeared for unknown reasons so far this year. According to the Crypto Wisser Exchange Graveyard five of the exchanges were labelled as scams, and four including Altsbit, and Nerae, were flagged as being hacked. In total 31 were shut down voluntarily while 34 were labeled as 'MIA' for disappearing with no explanation. The growth of DeFi and the rise of decentralized exchanges in 2020, increasing regulatory pressures, and hacks and scams were cited as factors.

Nouriel Roubini on the circular Tether fiat scam feeds and manipulates Bitcoin day in and day out. Criminal scam soon to be cracked down by law enforcement and regulators.

According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, since the start of 2021, approximately 46,000 Americans have lost more than $1 billion worth of digital assets in crypto scams. The fraudulent activities affected approximately 46,000 people. $575 million was lost in investment-related crypto scams, $185 million to romance frauds, and $93 million to business imposters. Because the vast majority of frauds are not reported, these figures are assumed to reflect just a small fraction of the public harm.

US banks are reportedly exploring ways to get consumers to trust the fast payments system Zelle, which is jointly owned by several financial institutions, by standardizing the refund procedure. They are discussing a "playbook" on how to refund customers and each other for illegitimate transfers. While Zelle operator Early Warning Services maintains fraud and scam claims make-up less than 0.1% of payments, scammers often use Zelle to trick users into sending them money "under the guise of customer support." Banks are required to refund customers for transactions they didn't authorize, but there is no such protection for customers who are duped into sending money.

"My second post about El Salvador adopting Bitcoin, last June, called it a "Tether scam." It wasn't the particular scam I thought it was at the time - but it's turning out to be a different, and bigger, one."

Cryptocrime is expanding. Ponzi schemes and other frauds involving bitcoin and cryptocurrencies lured at least $4.3 billion from investors in 2019, according to Chainalysis. That was a bigger haul than the combined $3 billion in 2017 and 2018.

Investigations by Brave New Coin (BNC) indicate that the current issues with OKEx customers being unable to withdraw their assets are not a criminal scam or hack - but instead are a show of force by the Chinese Communist Party - designed to ensure China's new wave of billionaire entrepreneurs tow the party line. BNC thinks it unlikely that the Chinese state will seize user's funds. Although China's attitude to crypto has been mostly negative, it has never moved to mass confiscation before.

As speculation and impatience arises over the upcoming Bitfinex token sale, opportunistic fakers are creating bogus white papers that purport to describe the details of the upcoming sale. Why? To scam potential buyers out of their cash.

CipherTrace found that losses due to cryptocurrency thefts, scams and fraud tally more than $1.2 billion in A1 2019. This includes $356 million stolen from exchanges and the loss of $850 million by major exchange Bitfinex

Ireland-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitsane disappeared without a trace last week, likely taking hundreds of thousands of users' assets with it. Account holders told Forbes that attempts to withdraw bitcoin, XRP and other cryptocurrencies began failing in May, with Bitsane's support team writing in emails that withdrawals were "temporarily disabled due to technical reasons." By June 17, Bitsane's website was offline and its Twitter and Facebook accounts were deleted.

PlusToken's intake of BTC, EOS, and XRP since the beginning of the scam in mid 2018 is still being calculated by our team. Once this data is finalized, we expect that PlusToken will easily emerge as the largest crypto Ponzi scheme in history, surpassing both BitConnect and OneCoin by a handsome margin.

According to CipherTrace, outright thefts, scams and other kinds of misappropriation of funds from digital currency holders and trading platforms resulted in around $4.3 billion in losses throughout 2019.

"A "safe harbor" that made it more difficult for retail investors to distinguish bona fide projects like Blockstack from known scams like OneCoin for a three-year period would likely undo much of the progress towards mainstreaming crypto adoption that has been made to date, which has seen large institutional players like Bakkt or Fidelity Digital Assets enter the space."

"Bitcoin began its sudden crash due to another giant sell-off from the PlusToken pyramid scheme, analysts are suggesting as BTC/USD lost $8,000 support. According to various online commentators citing Blockchain data, participants in the $2.9 billion scheme are again attempting to rid themselves of their BTC."

"All in all, Ampleforth is an innovative cryptocurrency that solves a major problem that faces cryptocurrency - price stability. The biggest hurdle Ampleforth will have to overcome is people understanding how rebasing works. It's not a scam or even dangerous.

NFTs exist so that the crypto grifters can have a new kind of magic bean to sell for actual money, and pretend they're not selling magic beans.

"The question remains as to why Tether management still refuses to provide more transparency. If indeed the company has nothing to hide, putting all questions to rest is astonishingly easy: move the money to a select pool of large well-known banks, and have the statements properly audited by a select pool of large well-known auditing firms. Commit to performing and documenting funds certification for example quarterly and that's it, you're done. If Tether wanted to go a step further it could also disclose the investment strategy (or lack thereof) it pursues with the cash under its responsibility. In my mind there can be only one reason why the firm doesn't follow those very simple steps."