The volume of transactions with digital assets related to illegal activities in January-July decreased by 15% compared to the same period last year. Such data is given in Chainalysis.
Analysts attributed this to a decrease in prices for digital assets. According to calculations, the volume of unsuspicious crypto transactions for the same period fell by 36%.
“If we delve into specific forms of crime, we will find that some of them have actually increased, while others have decreased more than the market as a whole,” the report says.
Thus, the total income from the scam was 65% lower than a year ago, amounting to $ 1.6 billion. The indicator was the lowest in the last four years.
Data: Chainalysis.
Experts concluded that the attractiveness of scammers’ advertising has decreased against the background of the deterioration of the cryptocurrency market situation. The statistics were also affected by the absence of such large Ponzi schemes as PlusToken ($2 billion in 2019) and Finico ($1.5 billion in 2021).
The damage from the hacks from January to July amounted to $1.9 billion. For comparison, for the same period last year, the figure was $ 1.2 billion. The increase is due to the growing popularity of DeFi protocols, which become victims of hackers due to insufficient attention to the audit of smart contracts.
“We do not expect that the number of hacks will decrease depending on the market movement, as it happens with fraud. As long as assets stored in DeFi protocol pools and other services have value and are vulnerable, attackers will try to steal them,” the experts concluded.
Recall that Chainalysis estimated the damage from hacking of cross-chain protocols since the beginning of the year at $ 2 billion.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has previously stated that he is “pessimistic” about cross-chain bridges. In his opinion, the latter are vulnerable to attacks like 51%.