FTC Says Consumers Lost $1B To Crypto Fraud Since 2021

The Federal Trade Commission, FTC says consumers lost $1 billion to crypto fraud since 2021 but that crypto is becoming the preferred method for many scammers as we are reading more today in our latest cryptocurrency news.

The consumers reported that they lost over $1 billion in crypto fraud from January 2021 to March of this year according to an analysis from the Federal Trade Commission. The median amount lost was $2600 citing 46,000 people that reported being defrauded. The top three crypto consumers said they used to pay scammers in BTC at 70% and 10% in the tether. The FTC says that one in every four dollars is lost to fraud using crypto:

“Cryptocurrency is quickly becoming the payment of choice for many scammers.”

Most of the scams involved bogus investment schemes with romance scams and business/governemnt impersonation frauds as well and those aged 20-49 were more than three times as likely to report losing money in fraud than the older age groups.

As recently reported, Billy Markus, the DOGE co-founder says 95% of crypto projects are scams and garbage that has no real value to offer. They argued that most cryptocurrencies are worthless as they succeeded in destroying the reputation of the industry. According to Markus, the financial players and mainstream internet users labeled the entire digital asset landscape as garbage and a scam because of the bad players and projects in the space. Markus’ tweet came in the wake of a terrible failure of the terra project.

Also, The UK Financial Conduct Authority announced that over the past six months, it opened more than 300 cases that relate to crypto asset businesses. The cases relate to businesses that are not registered with the financial authority as well as potential scams but also an FCA spokesperson said that the businesses have more than one case tied to it. The FCA is the UK’s supervisory authority when it comes to AML and counter-terrorism financing requirements.

Back in 2020, the businesses that carry out the crypto-asset activity in the UK were required to become compliant with the Terrorist Financing, money laundering, and transfer of funds regulations but the same businesses have to be registered with the FCA. Despite this, the financial watchdog raised consumer protection concerns as they often pertain to the entire crypto industry.