Bitcoin Forum

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/04/30/business/30reuters-crypto-currency-fraud.html

It makes me sad to read how crypto crime has inflated as the market has slowed down. What has crypto become and is it becoming a means for people to do such dirty ways?

Securing the crypto space is crucial if we want mass adoption and further evolution of it.
Exchanges and  all kind of wallets should be maximally secure, plus people should educate
themselves how to prevent their devices to be compromised.

People are looking to crypto fraud as if the fiat fraud is something normal, this creates a very negative character for the crypto market itself. That's why most of the people that are looking to crypto will start to doubt it because of the 'frauds' knowing that there are also frauds happening in banks, credit cards, ATM's and other banking related services. The media plays a big part on this, they're making such articles that's intentional on what's their stand to the crypto market.

Because that's easy money for scammers. I thought that total amount must include with all of those hack amounts that happened with various exchange sites. When scammers are seeing an opportunity to fool those are expecting to gain fast through use crypto.  this must be stopped.

Is so bad that here on crypto is a lot of scam and theft, there i think every user of crypto should buy a hardware wallet and try to use it more than another wallets, because any os can be viruses and then if there are crypto coins the hackers will steal them.

crypto world is proceeding for the better, security tokens are a good choice I think that benefits investors and ieo is the process of selling the best tokens to ensure investors do not run away from investors' funds, especially those from large exchanges who have selectively chosen the projects they will receive

"cross-border payments to offshore exchanges have grown 46% over the last two years, contributing to the $8.7 trillion,"

Aside from fraud, this is very interesting. This only means that crypto is NOW being used to transfer value/wealth more than ever.
Bypassing traditional ways of transferring value which is thru banks.

Now there is no legal framework for electronic money. so there is a lot of ico cheating on long-term situation that can lead to the loss of trust of investors and a bad view of everyone's electronic money.

One of the challenges that has to be conquered in the industry is the prevalence of cyber theft and fraud. This has been a major reason while the government and many investors has lost support for the industry. The desire for mass adoption is less likely to be achieved with issues on cyber fraud dominating the media.

The fraud issues are really hard to solve not only in the cryptocurrency field but in traditional investment and other kind of business opportunity. The thing is, it is not a technical issue, it is more like community issue. No, matter how perfect we make regulation and secure anything with a system, if the people is uneducated about crypto when they entering this it will keep get bigger and bigger.

In fact, these 8.7 trillion dollars is the amount that is now laundered through offshore zones. This, in principle, was to be expected.
As for the thefts and cryptocurrency fraud, this has already become a serious obstacle for ordinary people to switch to the use of cryptocurrency. Hackers and fraudsters are now very active, using the lack of regulation of this type of activity and large amounts that can be stolen. Cryptocurrency urgently needs state regulation.

I do not agree in government regulation. Since the very meaning of the concept of cryptocurrency is lost. We need to do something at the software level. For example, if they stole funds, they will not be able to use them, since additional passwords are needed, which are locked in special smart contracts. In which it is indicated that they can be used at a certain point and on a certain date.

The ever increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies has been a magnet to ordinary people to become an unwilling victim of a fraud be it an online investment scam, phishing attacks, malware attacks, hacking attaks or even theft. Identifying this fraudulent activities and becoming more aware about its signs should be a priority for every crypto enthusiasts and we should find a way or at least educate ourselves in order to mitigate or prevent such incidence.

This is an alarming figure, we are a billion industry and the amount of fraud is also in billion, it's not good for crypto's future if the government will not try to regulate to minimize scams. The space is getting bigger now so more opportunity for the scammers and the thieves to operate, it's mentioned that it's coming majority from exchanges, hacks and scams, I think if they will add up the ICO scams, it would be bigger.

I'm sure half of the money is from hacks ,many investors still don't know how to keep safe there wallets from hackers ,all they care about is quick money making

This is alarming and saddening. A news like this is not good for the young industry especially at this time that we are seeking mass adoption of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. Something needs to be done and there is w need of a crowdfunding system that will surely protect the interest of investors.

"cryptocurrency" has not become anything. it is still the same thing as it always was, a TOOL. the fact that some people choose to use that tool in an unsafe or wrong way is their own choice. for example when they trust shady exchanges that are obviously going to scam them or when some of these exchange owners are newbies who are handling large sums of money in an unsafe way it is obvious that disasters like these would happen.

I sort of agree with this. Crypto currencies needs to be free from banks and government regulations. This the main reason why bitcoin was created - as a protest to how the banks are using and making endless supply of fiat currency.

Remember the Genesis Block:
“sknab roftuoliab dnoces fo knirb no rollecnahC 9002/naJ/30 semiT ehT”

These "too big to fail" banking institutions and government are the ones who created the 2008 subprime financial crisis.

This is a huge number and those money was belongs to all of us. I am sure many of us got scammed in this cryptocurrency world, some of us more than once.. 1.2 billions of dollars big money and this number is keep raising, scammer wants to steal more! We need to be carefuly about any invest or trade.. Also we need to keep our coins safe and never trust no one on the internet. I got scammed twice and lost $2300 in 2 years ago but i have learned my lessons well and now i am very very careful..

The Crypto market is a free market and anyone is free to carry out any project they want, I believe this is the problem because a lot of persons who launch Blockchain projects most times don't really focus on the security of their platform but on what they are bringing to the market which is so bad, because we have a lot of hackers that are looking for ways to bring this Blockchain platform down by all means ever.

I don't think that people are trying to take the blockchain platform down, I think they are trying to take down the dark markets and anyone who is going to exit scam. that's why the report is so thorough on these types of discoveries. cyber security firms aren't here to ruin the infrastructure they just want to take care of the bad actors

I think that in the future the market will become more regulated and this will reduce the amount of fraud in the market. I hope that in the future there will be much more fraud in the market.

i hope you are right. currently there is too much fraud in the crypto area and that is really bad. some people do not care about crypto because there are too many fraudsters.  :(

If there's money involves then expect that there's crimes of scamming to happen, there's people who used their skills to trick and hacked others, they scammed money as it's an easy way instead of working fairly and enjoy life in a fair way, scammers and hackers will choose the easy access than to work hard to succeed from the scratch.

In this case, the cryptocurrency will cease to be itself. Sometimes it seems to me that the crypto industry was created for fraudsters. And the evolution of vigilance in people.
Either crypto with scammers, or something, but not a cryptocurrency, without them.

There is no way we can think we will eliminate crime from the crypto place as long and financial transactions are involved there must be fraud and at that we need to acknowledged that fact. But we must try as much as possible to get over the criminal or better still minimize their operation.

I don't know that crypto fraud level can reach that high. Now, I'm sure there are still scam projects that have't been busted and to be coming soon. Fraud will never die no matter what world we are living in.

Sure I expect it to even be more than that amount. That's what we see in the beginning of most things in life. Some persons takes advantage of it to do the worse. One thing for sure is that it will not last forever, either way it will definitely stop

Many ICO's are popping up and having a good whitepaper and a good looking website with a believable team members. Will surely attract investors and many of them are attending blockchain shows and you will believe that they are legit and invest your hard earned money to them. And then suddenly they have this internal issue and then they disappeared with investors money.

Always where money is spinning, there are always people who want to get it in the easiest and most cost-effective way. That is, fraudulently. It is not only in crypto that happens. I think this phenomenon will push developers to create a new universal security tool.

Yes, crypto-fraudsters have a very negative impact on the market,since thanks to their efficiency, many projects fall very much in price,lose markets and investors ' money,there are many such examples,of course the world without fraudsters would be much better,we will believe in a bright future

I think the influence of the market and crypto crime has no effect because I remember when the market was going up, there were still cases of crypto hacking so security was the main thing

It was always there, and as long as there is an place like the internet, it will also. The recent increase may be due to the market situation. But surely as time goes by everything will be better.

The world scam is attached to Crypto this days which is a very sad thing, I am afraid that one day Crypto will be treated as HYIP programmes but that where we are heading with the number of scams we are seeing these days, no wonder no fresh money wants to enter the market at this moment.

yes, but where there is a lot of money the fraudsters will be very interested to take some part of them. and in crypto sphere there is lot of money.

This is not surprising since in any field of activity there are fraudsters and there are always naive people who believe them and I believe that it is necessary to think that you need to create a certain body.

Reading these responses it seems like for the most part people believe that where there is money there will always be fraud but what if this is a new type of money we are trying to spin up and create and run ourselves. My question then becomes is there a way we can add another level of security to help make changes to a broken system?

Why would we create a new monetary system that has the same old dirty habits?

Most of the places that have been infiltrated by hackers and scammers are crypto exchanges and those were where most funds got stolen. Which means that we really need to find ways in which we can secure and safeguard our funds on them.
Another very important area is ICO, but because of the rate of scam, so many investors are not creating interest in buying ICO. Although some of the ICOs still manage to raise their soft caps. Therefore, the larger amount of money stolen this year would have come from exchanges.

As far as there's no one yet or an organization in control of the crypto, believe me scamers won't stop coming and building more skills every day. What I think is needed is just a bit of control from some source which can at least bring up some rules and regulations into it.

Its because there is no regulation on ICOs. Many country dont have regulation about crowdfunding and scammers take advantages on this. In any fields, there is scammers and we should anticipating scammers by always doing analysis and make research before investing our money.

Truly sad but exchanges and online wallets now are already securing it so as to get away from the frauds and hi jacking. Users also now are more careful on phishing sites though there are still newbies fall for it. We'll just hope and pray that cryptocurrency system will go and prosper and this frauds will get minimized.

It will just be a matter of.time that problem like this will be solved in the near future.

This report is not good for a young developing industry like crypto. It totally paints the industry black and dark. Fraud can't be totally eliminated as it is in other works of life, but this one must be drastically reduced to avoid bad stinks. Regulation-wise and Technology-wise, something must be done to reduce this.

Reports like this don't need to come up before the desperate need for a regulation is put in place. Report like this is not good for an industry still in the process of developing, it scares people off from adopting the system. If a regulation is put in place, scammers won't stop scamming, as it is  a get rich quick scheme for them.

I agree. I think that having a ledger that is technically public allows people to see even though there are transactions being made without  the knowledge of what is being purchased, technology will always get better to prove that there will always be bad actors unfortunately. It's how we can stop them early on through these third parties that will help the large money losses

Just like he said, fraud cannot be eliminated, but we can be very careful enough to limit the rate or not even give chances for it to happen. Aside hacking of wallet, scammers will not directly deep hands into our pocket to steal money if we don’t give chance to them, we have been given them chance for too long to sweet talk us into transferring our wealth to them.

We need to be more careful, ensure that whatever project we pick interest in, even if its 1 project in the market, is worth it and would not threaten our investment, the whole chunk of the job is really in our hands because there is nothing the government can do right now to assist, since they are yet to legalize it.

We do not even know which one to believeagain because I just read another version of this same story where they said the total amount that has been lost to fraudulent act in the cryptocurrency is 850 million dollars, now I am seeing 1.2million dollars which makes it a difference of 450 million dollars, has this now becoming a speculative news to.

Anyway, I know fraud is really happening in the cryptocurrency market and it is very disheartening for those that has fallen victims of scam, but we still have to get our figures right, some of these fraudulent thing happening, I see some has even deliberate act by some powerful people to discredit crypto project and make government ban the cryptocurrency.

What happens in crypto does happen too in real sector. People should stop been greedy with a quick gain mentality and they should avoid HYIP, and they should well to safeguarding their wallets. Avoiding a phishing project is key. Participation in  ICO and IEO should be very discreet and minimal.

That is very alarming. This is very huge number of fraud. I think we really need to have an regularization and legalization so scammers and fraud will be prohibit here in crypto world. Because I believe if regularization and legalization will be executed there will a law to punish scammer so the number of fraud will be lessen and I hope this will be a clean crypto world.

crypto fraud is just another term for easy money.. those project tag as fraud/scammers have taken advantage to people new in the crypto market

If you compare this to other assets being used for fraud I doubt the former could even compare. We have a long way to go and this includes the bumps. On a positive note, fraud can teach people to be more mindful of their assets and wise with their decision.

This is rather very disheartening. This will pose a very bad image for cryptocurrency generally. The major impact will be to scare people away from investing in it, and may also affect its long term survival.

It is happening because of a lack of regulation. Decentralized exchanges will be safer for trading and holding the cryptocurrencies but everyone thinks it is early for the DEX for a reason. Crypto fraud can be prevented with the DEXs.

We got to be honest. It's hard to avoid scams and frauds in this crypto space because of its anonymity. I most of the time, people in invest in cryptocurrency to gain a lot of money but people takes short cuts and invest in ICO without knowing anything about it. It's really hard to avoid it.

that mean nothis is safe, even in fiat you can still be stolen, but yeah in real life that a was police, different wth crypto.
that make people view about crypto is bad, but i think is not bad if they all know how to use cold wallet it most stronger than web wallet.
and media make it very scary to invest on crypto, that always give bad impact to bitcoin and etc.

There's no business without a crime story. In that same business you will also see people that can say they made a lot of money. There's crime and fraud in crypto yes, but if I may ask, how did you get to 1.2 Billion calculation?

from the article it's the total of the Bitfinex exchange scam plus all the other smaller scams or stolen funds found

We should bring these numbers up to the public and care because even in crypto- crime happens. I hope that each quarter these numbers go down and we have people working on better security.

Bitfinex and Usd Tether are warnings for the crypto community. Crypto fraud numbers are growing every day, so we need to prevent the scam projects before it is get spread with the mainstream. Investors and significant exchanges should take care of investor funds and they should fill the holes before it is too late.