Bitcoin Forum

https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/singapore-police-say-crypto-related-crimes-keep-rising-across-the-country/

OK, I think generalizing crimes such as "fraud, cheating" as "crypto crimes" is kind of weird, odd, or heck bad even. Any medium can be used to actually cheat someone ngl, whether it be medicine, a technology, a method to achieve inner peace or whatnot, crypto is just something new that fraudsters are using now. Let's be real here, crimes like this happen because of the ignorance of people, plus the fact that they don't even bother researching stuff for themselves.

Pretty much sums up stuff people should do ngl.

It's because Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is going for mass adoption, that's why the crime also increased just like fiat. On 2019 FBI record 2,440 violations on Bank [1] , it's far bigger than Bitcoin and cryptocurrency... but no one is complaints about how bad is fiat and want to ban it :P It's normal thing, if it's has a value of course all people will trying to get it with any ways.

---

[1] https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/bank-crime-statistics-2019.pdf/view

Really? It looks like FUDs are still continuing to exist. Singapore Police are saying like there are no fiat-related crimes. In fact, their number is much more than crypto-related ones. So, please don't continue to do this. If you think the crime rate is increasing, then do something about it to lower the number of crimes.

It has been stressed here in this forum and on every other cryptocurrency related website and media, to do your own research. Do not trust what you see on social media. If it claims that it will make you rich then it is more likely the opposite. You need to be sure that the so called developers, managers, community, are really legit and that there should not be any negative remarks about them. I would say stay with the top 100 coins and do your research before you decide.

I think the main reason that crypto-crimes will increase is because people takes a jet above trying to research on cryptocurrency, also that thinking of crypto-currency making them overnight wealth, this would make you vulnerable to scammers.
The cryptocurrency and anyother crime rate would keep increase as long as people wants to earn, and with the pandemic making people lose their source of income, they become relegated to desperation.

Crime is increasing so please call the police to arrest the criminals. Where are the law enforcement agencies ?
Don't blame the crypto for the failure of the law enforcement department in Singapore.

Writing articles and including Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies is the way news outlets gets more traffic, governments also use it to spread further and strengthen their claims for more regulation, so we should not expect the crime theories to stop soon.
People lose money due to their carelessness and/or greed and not as a result of the currency being utilized. Fiat, cryptos, jewelleries and other valuable items can all facilitate scams, but only one of those would be deemed newsworthy.

If the crypto related crimes are increasing, then the solution is to arrest those criminals and give them punishment. This does not mean that we should abandon crypto in Singapore just because crime rate has increased. Have you heard anywhere that any country stop using fiat currencies because there are a lot of money related frauds.  8)

What else should we expect? Crypto community also skyrocked in last years. Its hard to expect that same amount of crimes will be made in 1000 people community and 100 000 people community. Question is if the percentage of crimes vs number of people rised? I guess not

The figure given here ($28 million) is for the three year duration between 2018 and 2020. That is around $9 million per year. They should compare it with the amount stolen every year through debit card cloning and hacking of bank accounts. I am sure that the amount involved is at least 100 times higher. The statement is in bad taste, as they are blaming cryptocurrency for these crimes. Ideally they should have clarified that out of financial fraud cases, around 1% involves the usage of cryptocurrency and for the remaining 99% fiat currency is used.

Well, this is not the best way for bitcoin to get recognized but what can we do, people with malicious intent are going to use it no matter what so I guess bad publicity is still publicity? Also, that amount in crypto is really high and worse than fiat even though fiat is the one that's frequently used, remember that if you smuggle fiat, there's a chance that it will be sniffed out and get taken away and you can't launder it really fast because it is really heavy.

This.

As Bitcoin and cryptos become standardised and used, either as a means of payment or as an investment, it is only natural that crimes related to them will increase. Where there is money, there is crime looking to get hold of that money.

This is quite expected, and I think this can be true with any country that has put some regulatory legality into cryptocurrency. However, we have to understand that this is just a shift of the many usual frauds from using fiat money into cryptocurrency. Now, this is because more and more fraudsters, scammers and hackers are now getting their feet wet with cryptocurrency recognizing that they can do much bigger business with this emerging industry. We have to be honest that this is the bad side with cryptocurrency, though not its own fault as it is by human nature. Scams and frauds have been with us since the beginning of time and even if there will be no cryptocurrency they will happen in many forms and types. Maybe time is coming that a tax can be taken for every transaction involving cryptocurrency specifically funding anti-frauds operation by the government.

You only read the title of the news article, you did not read the entire intent and purpose of the Singapore government, you should not just take the title, it could be misinterpreted by the community here.

The purpose of the title News about fraudulent complaints against Bitcoin users to the police in Singapore has increased from 2018 to the present.

I quote the real meaning:

The aim of the Singapore government in the future is to prevent fraud / crime against Bitcoin users in Singapore every exchange in the Singapore country must have an official 'license' of the laws enacted by Singapore, against crypto / Bitcoin payments for its users, that's the point.

Conclusion: This is a positive action that will be implemented by the Singapore government in the future to prevent crime / fraud like what is happening today, that's the point of the news.

OK, crypto crime is on the rise, but is crime in other older financial systems different?

For me, this issue is not worth giving much thought to, for me the crypto system is the place where criminals are the least active, just like before it was still thought that crypto was used for illegal purposes in law, but in reality what is the greater evil done in the legitimacy we think.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With the emergence of any new form of cryptocurrency,Few people with ulterior motives will  use it to obtain ill-gotten gains. But we cannot deny the development of cryptocurrency because of these few things.

I think it's safe to say that all sorts of crimes ^{[not just crypto-related]} have been on the rise in the past year or two ^{[due to the overall increase in costs, caused by this ongoing pandemic]} and prior to that, the increase in crimes was mainly due to the fact that a lot of newcomers try to use it for the wrong reason ^[greed] and that always ends in a disaster ^{[their fault]}; Add the adoption rate as well and that number will continue to rise ^{[unfortunately, it's inevitable]}.

This is highly expected. Not just in Singapore, but I expect that it will do the same in other countries. As cryptocurrencies are already trending right now, it is also an opportunity for criminals to use this path rather than the traditional way in committing online crime.

well singapore being one of the toughest in terms of Public order and governance ? I'm sure they are just trying to imply everything before putting those behind bars.

sure that they will take them down in time and if their government made this? then the whole world will follow and will have idea how to track them down easily .

When the popularity of cryptocurrency rises naturally the crime rate also increases along with it. You need to be careful which sites you visit when you are storing your coins in a wallet which is always connected to the internet and it is not clear how they fell to the scams. It is either they have invested in scam sites and doubling scams, other than that it is not clear about how $29 millions are lost to criminals.

That may be true. But there are limitations in using cryptocurrency for these fraudulent activities. First issue is the limited liquidity for various cryptocurrencies. It is not very easy to convert cryptocurrencies to fiat cash, and that too anonymously. And this is one of the primary reasons why criminals prefer various fiat options instead of cryptocurrency for their activities. But the mainstream media would like to concentrate on the few instances where cryptocurrencies are used for scams.

And how much is fiat related crime which is more complicated?. In my opinion inflation itself is a crime because it steal value from people. I think one of factors that caused it is because many people are live in poor or didn't have good job with good salary. It is not because of the cryptocurrency but it is because of the human.

This is just one in the list. We have to understand that crimes are increasing no doubt but we have to understand that it's not just crimes and frauds related to Cryptos! The government is just trying to highlight this so that in the future they can dominate the market indirectly. This is kind of like a "silent war".

- These kinds of news 🗞️ is for sure manipulative, as long as you do not give the percentage of crimes related to the fiat etc, you should not put all the blame on cryptocurrencies.

- Crimes are untraceable, easier, more common in fiat. Everyone is well aware of that but unfortunately they get ignored since government brain washes people and lead them to believe that what they are doing or holding torch for is right.

Think for yourself.
-You can track all the crypto transactions
-Its harder to buy crypto as compared to money
-A full on investigation can be carried out much easily
Etc..

This statement is true in the global context as well. Crypto related cyber crimes are at all time high. Many corporates were affected by the ransomware attack since last year. There was a recent attack on an American pipeline where again bitcoin was paid to the scammers. It seems majority of the cyber crimes are happening and bitcoin is inevitably involved in that. These incidents are earning a bad name for bitcoin for sure. The pseudo anonymity has indeed granted a power to the scammers!

Singapore is a country that allows startups to raise ICOs. Startup projects are high risk so it is normal for complaints to take place. Even countries in Southeast Asia have experienced crypto-related scams.
The tricks of criminals are to take advantage of people's greed and ignorance to entice investments into cryptocurrency projects. The money raised is usually crypto so it is not possible to recover the money the crimin
have scammed.

Let's start by counting cards and bank accounts first, 400k using bitcoin daily and 500 million using cards, let's compare the numbers of addresses with a balance with the numbers of people owning a card! Damn it's like comparing the murder numbers in Antarctica with Orlando!

Bitcoin-related crime will rise as usage will rise, when you will have a few hundred million people using bitcoins daily and for everything just like cards you will see this skyrocketing, and not proportional for the increase in numbers, even worse than that as the new ones that are getting into cryptos are less and less tech-savvy and far more gullible since 99% of them came for the money, not for the technology. People have to acknowledge that one can't have the advantages of Bitcoins, especially the security against confiscation, and not have criminals trying to profit from it, just as anything it will be exploited by somebody, from knives to cars to cough syrup it's the same.

Getting into the ostrich pose and shouting "what about fiat" won't make it go away!



I will not be that harsh to say for greed or that greed is a wrong reason.
People will look for profit, everyone does, some indeed fall for Ponzi schemes but there are a lot who get scammed in other ways, there are hundreds of people getting scammed with fake warnings from the IRS, they rush to pay fines to ATMs, people that get tricked by phishing links and many many more.
Probably yeah, the ones tricked by ICOs are the biggest chunk but there are a few who are quite innocent, that buy some coins and then end up downloading the wrong wallet...

Either way, as you say, things will, unfortunately, get only worse!

They just want to counter attack cryptos due to sudden increase of demand among the masses and they need any agenda to spread FUD like cryptos promote crimes? The fiat has been there for years and government is unable to stop such crimes then and the number has been increasing from that time aslo but they never give a single statement against it.Why? Because it is centerlised currency? But still we don't need to worry about such things as crypto will progress even high in these times.

It's quite obvious because the fame of crypto has been increasing quite a lot lately. With the rise of crypto fame the number of scammers would increase as well.
Scammers are finding new ways to scam people and things will only turn out to be worse as crypto is adopted more.
More number of people will try to scam others and this is why it is better to develop the skill of research so that we know what we are doing.
Most of the times it's the lack of knowledge that scammers use as a vulnerability to scam their victims.
If people become more educated on crypto then the number of scams will decreased gradually.

I am not getting in to ostrich pose. I agree with many of your points and it is a concern that a number of criminals are using Bitcoin. However, my problem is that the cops, as well as the mainstream media want to target only Bitcoin and they don't react in a similar way against crimes involving fiat. Also, I have to disagree with you when you claim that the crimes will skyrocket as more and more people start to use Bitcoin. From what I have seen, it has actually gone down a lot. Back in the early days, there was Hidden Wiki, xDedic, Silk Road, Black Death, Armory and all sort of unwanted businesses, which accounted for a large share of the Bitcoin transactions. Their share have gone down by a lot now. And dark market volumes are declining, despite the expanding user base of Bitcoin.  

crypto has started to rise in recent years and become one of the easy ways to earn money so many people are starting to look at it and not only in large countries, small countries have also started to see how crypto can change someone.
of course this also applies to people who want to do evil, such as swindlers and thieves.
they already know about the prosperity of crypto so they twist their brains to do things that are not justified.
in fact this is definitely happening because everyone is not all good of course there is evil one of them is the thief and the fraudster, in the world of crypto a lot of people and their minds are of course various not all good. all you have to do is always be vigilant and don't trust anyone too much here because when it comes to money everyone can be so greedy that they can commit crimes

Mention "money laundering" one more time. ::)
Authorities think that crimes like money laundering mostly happens using crypto just because it is behind their probation/observation, but they do not even realize how many of those happens using paper money.

I remember one incident that happened in Singapore and was also reported to the authorities and that transaction was related to cryptocurrency. I think the government is taking this seriously and they should remind their people to remain lowkey and if they're doing crypto transactions, they must be vigilant and check every detail that they will do to avoid being a victim of fraudulent activities. I hope that these incidents won't make crypto look bad in their country and won't have that bad impression on other countries too. Because when there are incidents like this, they're only looking to crypto related as if it's the only thing that happens and neglects real world transactions through banks and cash transactions.

It's almost inevitable as more inexperienced people get involved with cryptocurrency that it will be abused by scammers. I'm guessing there was also a bit of a stigma, which has since broken down, that Bitcoin only used to be used by criminals and people may not have wanted to "incriminate" or turn attention to themselves by reporting problems to the police. I saw the other day that there were a record number of wallet holders a couple weeks ago, identified by unique wallets having 2 or more transactions with no spends, signalling that people were actually rushing in to buy during the recent dip. Looking at it from the other side, it makes sense for criminals to attack cryptocurrency because it is like stealing cash - very hard to trace where it goes.

which is very common using paper money, but since crypto is new to them they are really chasing the activities of their people, it's sad that we've seen news like this where negative implication can damaged the usages of this system.

Only time can tell what fate Bitcoin have from that perspectives, if government like Singapore will see it that way, which is more on the negative than looking to the positive side.

Another test of time, crypto supporters are immune to this negative publicity.

It isn't surprising because there are so many people who are getting into crypto so I expect that there would be more scammer around to lurk for newbies to be their victim.
It isn't just crypto but also internet prank order on shopping apps any type of scam in the internet is increasing because of the pandemic.
Those who aren't really spending much time in the internet are now using it to avoid being bored because they have nothing else to do.

In my opinion, there is nothing surprising in this. Since the popularity of cryptocurrency causes the growth of the community, for 100 normal people there will definitely be some person with similar inclinations and therefore it is natural that there is a growth, but judging by the numbers, there are not so many such cases. There is dynamics, but in reality it is a drop in the sea of ​​real crime, it is strange that this is emphasized.

People are victims of crypto-related scams due to their complete ignorance. Criminals have embezzled $29 million from 2018 to 2020, It is reprehensible. But every year more amount is scammed by using fiat money, in that case, no one has any complaint.
Newcomers are more likely to be cheated than older ones, I think these crypto-scams will be reduced if the newcomers do not fall into the trap of scammers after being greedy. Before investing/depositing at any online platform, we should be reviewing other's opinions to avoid such incidents. We need to raise awareness among all and take legal action against scam sites.

Its very difficult if not impossible to recover funds or prosecute cyber criminals if they reside in north korea or a nation that does not cooperate with law enforcement. There is a significant extradition barrier to overcome in many cases.

There is a kneejerk reaction whereby people blame crypto for these crimes. This negative trend is unfair in my opinion.

Example, if criminals in russia or china upload ransomware to american systems. And the ransom is paid in crypto. It can be impossible to recover funds due to those nations not cooperating with US law enforcement and having no system whereby criminals can be extradited. These cases could be more complicated and difficult than they might seem on the surface. These circumstances are also not exclusive to crypto. The overwhelming amount of fraud, crime and money laundering occurs in fiat. Crypto based crime is a tiny sliver in contrast.

Criminals are just using the fame of thus new introduced opportunity to the newbies thats why they grab the opportunity to fool them by offering them some service which can give a huge profit if they invest their money unto them. This is not new and so expect that the crime will rise since scammers have high guts since they are actually almost traceable if they do crime.

With the uptrend happening within the crypto community on which many people are wanting to get along with the popularity and trend, many are being caught off-guard with those scammers making newbies believe into scam schemes being created by some people wanting to take advantage of their innocence when it comes to crypto. Such crimes are being easily executed and many have been victimized because of lack of knowledge with regards to cryptocurrency. But the increase of crypto related crimes must not always been point out for fiat related crimes are also increasing continuously for a certain person need to have certain knowledge with the field to execute such crimes.

Even though the crypto world has been running for more than a decade, there are still many people who don't really understand cryptocurrencies.
So criminals often take advantage of new and famous things to get money, So it should come as no surprise that finally crypto-related crimes continue
to increase. So this is a lesson for all of us. if we find something new that we don't understand, don't believe in tempting offers. So if there are
attractive crypto-related investment offers, try to study and do some research first. So we distinguish which one is legitimate or which one is fraudulent.

It's not surprising that they (police) talk like that because there are so many people who get into crypto and can't be banned and in this case there will be more scammers lurking newbies to fall victim to them.
Crypto crime should not be as bad as fiat crime, indeed crypto crime if you have hacked one of the exchanges can harm a million users of the exchange without bleeding.
but if Fiat's crime definitely takes its toll in its actions

The popularity of Cryptocurrency continues to increase, making many people interested in entering this world. And makes bad people interested in committing crimes, they commit crypto crimes because they think getting money from here is easier than dealing directly with humans. And it turns out to be true, and it is proven that this Crypto crime is increasing. 
Many hackers take the assets of novices, even reckless criminals by hacking an exchange. 
We need to be aware of this, if we have Crypto assets in large or small amounts, we must be really careful in doing all the activities here.

This is bad, Singapore is a good country to be on the good side of crypto, it has a stable economy and it's one of the richest country in the world and a ban on usage of crypto in there is going to be bad, hopefully it doesn't come to that because with the new technology to trace cyber crimes, hopefully it will deter cyber criminals.

This is common things happened for the past years of crypto and people should always look after this to avoid any scams they can actually search the said modus since mostly those criminals offer a lot of money in return to their investors so that they can convince them to put some money on their platforms. If people will just research about what type of scams they need to avoid for sure the incident of being a victim of this schemes will minimize but unfortunately many are so lazy thats why we keep seeing newbie got baited by scammers.

almost all countries prohibit the use of cryptocurrencies because cryptocurrencies are not taxed and also cannot be traced who the wallet user is so that it will be detrimental to countries where cryptocurrency can be used as a tool for money laundering which is the most difficult to trace and even almost impossible to trace

Most of the crimes happening with cryptocurrency were the scams, cheating. Mostly this happens as a result of improper understanding about the cryptocurrency, its usage and the real purpose. If we go deep into the core element of getting scammed, it'll be the expectation to earn big in short time. Most of the users who suffer this will be the beginners.

I think that a lot of us would agree that it's not the way to go, I mean you can easily tax those users if you want to. Countries have their own tax bureaus right? I am sure that when someone gets a lot of money each month, pretty sure someone will eventually notice plus banning won't get you votes. What do you mean that it can't be traced? Dude you are so out of touch, FBI can already track people who use bitcoin to evade taxes so it's easy now to tax people that are involved in crypto

too good to be true, right? We should realize this that nothing is really easy and without risk in this world. unfortunately newbies ignore this, their goal is to want to feel instant profit and get rich quick, without any knowledge base and only fomo, so they are easy to manipulate. when caught in a scam or scam they loudly shout: bitcoin scam!
oh come on... we have to be wiser and more attentive to what we are going to do. if we are ready to profit then we must be prepared to lose, we must know that the crypto world is very risky, don't just be interested in profits.

Regarding crime in crypto, it really depends on the user. all things in the world can definitely be used for evil tools, depending on who the user is. Don't just look at the bad side.

For the past year, more than likely, there are a lot of users who were being scammed because a lot of newbies jump on board when btc started to go up. So these newcomers they didn't know yet all sort of scamming techniques and they fell into those traps. Crypto itself is not a scam, however, it is the people that are using this technology to scam people. And a lot of them don't know yet about those schemes. Once scammed, people should learn their lessons and try to at least do their homework before blindly sending funds to the scammers.

Not only the scams but also involves physical injury and worst, killing. That's why to avoid such things, you better know who you are trading or dealing with if it's related to cryptocurrencies. Because unaware people thinks that when someone owns a crypto, he's that rich already.
That is why they intend to do harm just to get that crypto assets which they think is going to change their lives and make them rich quick.

We cannot avoid this problem. Maybe the reality is. And this becomes another additional FUD related to Bitcoin and other Crypto. And it could be used by certain parties to exaggerate this problem and dropped the world of Crypto.
Well, we don't know the truth. Are Crimes with Crypto more increasing exactly than Fiat?

Scams and frauds would continue to exist as long there are people who do keep feeding those scammers due to lack of knowledge and research that hadn't been done by those investors.

Modus is becoming more enhanced to make it more legit because once a method or modus had been busted up then these scammers wont stop on making new one

which means that you would basically or potentially get victimized if you aren't aware on how things been happening around in the market.

Why crypto is currently getting more and more highlighted because the development of crypto also growing rapidly. Many people are familiar with crypto and are trying to get into the crypto world. Not only in the crypto world, all other investments or other deposits have their own evils. It's just that at this time and recently crypto is booming, the crime in crypto is also getting more and more highlighted. Fraud or other fraud in the crypto world has indeed happened since the beginning and as crypto lovers and holders we must not give up, protect each other's assets so that they are safe and do not suffer big losses.

Welcome to the world, where not all people are kind and not all people are bad.
This is the world where people may always use the easiest ways to support their crimes.
And does it the mistake of the crypto itself? We cannot blame it.
But, let's wait for what kind of issues and news that media is spreading later, this FUD, seems a nice thing to rise up again.
Well, in fact, whatever the negative issues about crypto, this will be always going on.

Considering the anonymity offered by crypto and the transaction that is not traced by the government, all crimes are possible within it. Scams or frauds are very evident specially for the new ones who are much more likely to be vulnerable in getting involved on such acts. Also, in the dark web, the currency being used is cryptocurrency specially bitcoin wherein it is used for buying illegal stuffs like weapons and videos. It should be expected since the number of crypto investors is also growing and we cannot be certain that all of it does not have any bad ideas in mind.

They are blowing this up to look as if this is a huge problem, but have a look at the total amount of crimes (37 409 cases) ... then it is nothing compared to the other cases that are not Crypto related. (393 reports of Crypto related crimes)  ::) ::)

Source : https://www.statista.com/statistics/947850/singapore-total-crime-case-number/

So why is this such a big issue? Well, it is simple.... when you want to create your own digital currency, you have to get some kind of reason to "ban" the competition.  >:(

I thought that singapore is one of the toughest in terms of crime prevention and also police matters? they are even recorded to be one of the safest country in the world? then why does this had been an issue?
does crypto really shaking the whole country?
so Singapore is planning on creating their own crypto like other countries? but they are pointing literally about crypto related crimes and not just specific currencies.

Singapore is quite a rich country in comparison to its size. It's also got a big financial industry and is one of the most trusted legally in the region - especially since Hong Kong has lost all credibility lately. It will be inevitable that Singapore will have a disproportionate amount of crimes both detected and also prosecuted, as in other Asian countries the complete infrastructure might be lacking. You could say that is one downside of having increased accountability - it looks bad on paper, but in actual fact it's happening much worse in countries all around them and simply goes unrecorded due to all sorts of corruption. Be careful how you judge them.

Ok, so crypto crime is increasing in Singapore? Very funny.
I have known Singapore since 2017 as a crypto friendly country, found most of the crypto startup companies have a license in Singapore. It doesn't make sense if such legal friendliness doesn't match the readiness of the population to adopt and adapt to crypto, including the possible crimes that will occur next.

Regarding $29m, what I understand is that the criminal report must involve the legal institution where the company license was made even though it operates in a different country or has customers all over the world. So, I doubt that the reported criminal cases occurred or suffered by people not only in Singapore.

for a country so small with less than 10M people on it, they do have this huge crime rate for the crypto industry alone, which is really unbelievable. it will only make sense if they are about to regulate it heavily or push their own digital currency for easy regulation. having a CBDC is a great tool for China which is a close neighborhood of China. having a CBDC proves to be an excellent tool for surveillance else China wouldn't be using it.

During the pandemic I noticed that there was a surge in the rate of crimes that were being committed with bitcoin, it wasn’t just in one country alone, but in lots of countries and I couldn’t really understand why that happened, might have to look into it later. So, it’s not just Singapore that experienced. But that aside, there are still a lot of crimes that are being carried out using fiat and banks and they go unnoticed.

The payment method that is being used by the scammers shouldn’t be the issues here, the focus should be more on how to figure out those that are behind the crime, no matter what methods they decide to use, it will be good to always capture them and make them pay for the crimes they have committed.

The popularity of Bitcoin and blockchain has made more and more people notice Bitcoin. Attention to the blockchain. Of course those criminals will notice Bitcoin.
Start studying Bitcoin, and will launder money through Bitcoin's loopholes. However, their behavior will always be public on the public chain.
It is possible that the country's supervision of Bitcoin will become more and more stringent in the future.

Singapore police say crypto related crime is on the rise across the country citing the fact that crypto is not controlled by the government. In order to keep everything anonymous everyone acts as they wish and the government cannot do anything even if it commits a criminal act in addition the demand for crypto through blockchain technology is increasing at a rate that other companies are joining the crypto, so the government companies are afraid. Because such a high demand for crypto will lead crypto to a more advanced state.

Well same as with fiat currency, right? I mean gee, why does the police made a report about Bitcoin and crypto related crimes? I guess their motive is really to be able to make a report since Bitcoin for them is still an unknown to them so their cybercrimes division wants to be sure they have the capability and the knowhow to detect and investigate cyber crimes just like any other crime. They, want to maybe become proficient in their efforts to curb cyber crimes in Singapore. Hence the numbers and the reporting.

based on my own experience living and work in out around singapore - malaysia - vietnam - thailand - philippines - myanmar etc.. there is a lot of company running a multi level marketing based-business , mgm etc... and saying they are a tech company using blockchain and bitcoin as their technology but it is all bullshit, they are just gather people and collecting their money and then run.
its been there for years... even from 2014 i have witnessed all of those reports but yeah 2018 is the peak where cases getting wild.

it was a public secret.. i can even mentioned those fake scam companies with its stake holders.. they are pretty dumb bout crypto but smart in scamming.

Any strong development has a corollary and if BTC grows in popularity then of course there will be money laundering criminals, because all cryptocurrencies are decentralized. under the control of any organization or individual, so money launderers have paid attention to this form of market. This is also where the fertile ground of many types of criminals are waiting to launder money into legal money.

What's surprising is that they are actively chasing cybercrime which is expected to result from reduction in cyber crimes and crimes committed with some sort of use with crypto or bitcoin but it didn't happen so it's surprising plus crypto just got more popular than ever even though it's already a decade since bitcoin was born.

It's because there's a lot of money involved in cryptocurrency and the number of people who're interested in investing in cryptocurrency steadily increases which became a target for scammers. Admit it or not, illegal crimes such as this already exist in fiats even before the major adoption of cryptocurrency in our society. As the growth for adoption in crypto increases, illegal activities stated above will continue to rise and we will see more things like this in the future

I am feeling this report is biased because if we are able to check then overall crimes are also rising very fluently in many countries, but hatters are joining them with crypto overall it's the least place where criminals are active, but rumours are too much about them in media. Overall crypto growth is rising very quickly so just because of this now most of the hatters using this as negatively otherwise It's nothing serious which is not happening in fiat just ask these are they able to control fiat currency related crimes but are going around the world for very long time.

Report is obviously biased. They are mostly relying on percentage increase rather than absolute increase while talking about the stats. Crypto-related crimes increased from a very low base, and therefore while talking in terms of percentage increase it may look like a big jump. But I am not ignoring the rising incidents. It may not be as bad as they are painting it, but still we can't ignore such incidents. But the way forward is legalization and regulation of the cryptocurrency market. On the other hand, if they try the approach being used in China, there'll be very little success.

This is not only the rise of crypto-related crimes in Singapore, but also the rise of crimes in any country where cryptocurrency is active. Many gambling and scams use crypto for payment or transactions, which makes it impossible for the police to find suspects, because every time Transactions are anonymous!