[2019-07-12] $2.28 Billion - Estimated loss caused by Crypto Crimes

[Aveatrex]

I'm shocked to see that this much money has been lost due to crimes  in only 2 years...

The South Korean Justice Ministry estimates that cryptocurrency-related crimes have caused 2.69 trillion won (about $2.28 billion) of financial damage between July 2017 and June 2019.

Continue reading here: Article

For comparison,that's approximately 217k of BTC which is insane.I guess most of these are concerning exchange hacks, which lead to the conclusion that crypto platforms should really step up their game to reduce the losses...

What do you think?

[1715360855]

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[veleten]

I'm shocked to see that this much money has been lost due to crimes  in only 2 years...

The South Korean Justice Ministry estimates that cryptocurrency-related crimes have caused 2.69 trillion won (about $2.28 billion) of financial damage between July 2017 and June 2019.

Continue reading here: Article

For comparison,that's approximately 217k of BTC which is insane.I guess most of these are concerning exchange hacks, which lead to the conclusion that crypto platforms should really step up their game to reduce the losses...

What do you think?

I think it is yet another bullshit article trying to make you believe that cryptocurrencies are the criminals and terrorists safe haven
the figures itself are retarded and are taken from the Korean government estimates of the damage caused
2.28 bil USD , do not make me laugh , this is not even remotely close to not being a ridiculously overblown figure and we are speaking about hundreds if not thousands times more
this is simply not true , period
if you believe that in two years criminals managed to incur damage that equals , roughly ,  the GDP of Great Britain - you have to get your brain checked

[Aveatrex]

-

You are the one who should get his brain checked lol.Just Coincheck lost $530 million from the NEM hack back in 2018, and just in 2018 $1.1 B has been hacked according to this article (Before arguing it's fake again, check it out because they are giving referance to which hacks occured in 2018)
And yes,I believe these are numbers are relatively true,the financial loss is comparable to UK GDP.

[CryptoBry]

There is no argument that hacking has become the greatest threat to many cryptocurrency exchanges and even with all of us who are into cryptocurrency but have not yet decided to buy the hardware wallet. Hacking has then become one of the largest industries in the entire world and with all the resources and talents that hacking organization already established so far, we can expect more and more attempts to hammer on exchanges -- with the potential prize of money so huge. We have to accept that in this internet-connected world we are, this is the biggest risk we can all face. We should be demanding and wishing that newer technologies can be able to stop this threat soon.

[joniboini]

If only people don't store their holdings over there, or if the exchanges (in case of hacking) have enough security protection, then that might not happen at all, or at least the number of loss is not that big.

I'm still hard to believe that a single hack could result in $30 million losses. That's just way big, enough to feed me for centuries.

[Kakmakr]

Black Tuesday was the trigger for the Great Depression and it took place on October 29, 1929. Investors traded a record 16.4 million shares. They lost $14 billion on the New York Stock Exchange, worth $206 billion in 2019 dollars. During the four days of the crash, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 25% and investors lost $30 billion.

Crimes committed as part of governments blood lust and bad decisions is costing traders on stock exchanges and tax payers Billions of Dollars, but that is simply ignored.

Ask the Banks, how much money is stolen through Bank robberies or online fraud with internet Banking and I bet you it will dwarf the $2.28 Billion stolen due to Crypto crimes.    <You will never get a accurate answer, because statistics are hidden from the public> 

[o_e_l_e_o]

Crimes committed as part of governments blood lust and bad decisions is costing traders on stock exchanges and tax payers Billions of Dollars, but that is simply ignored.

Ask the Banks, how much money is stolen through Bank robberies or online fraud with internet Banking and I bet you it will dwarf the $2.28 Billion stolen due to Crypto crimes.

This. Crimes related to crypto and illegal trades made with crypto is a drop in the ocean compared to fiat. Deutsche Bank (one single bank out of the thousands of banks which exist worldwide) is currently in legal action over $20 billion (10 times more than this article refers to) in money laundering. The illegal drug trade has a turnover of $400 billion annually. Credit card fraud alone costs over $8 billion a year in the US alone.

The important point to note, if you follow through from the link in the article, is it states "crimes related to cryptocurrency exchanges have become more frequent". These hacks and losses are primarily surrounding exchanges. Holding your money with any third party service, be that an exchange, web wallet, or whatever, is inherently risky, and this is why. Do yourself a favor and learn how to properly store your own coins to protect yourself from these kind of hacks.

[Betwrong]

~

The South Korean Justice Ministry estimates that cryptocurrency-related crimes have caused 2.69 trillion won (about $2.28 billion) of financial damage between July 2017 and June 2019.

~

Bare numbers mean nothing without comparison. Kakmakr and o_e_l_e_o have made good points above, and I just want to add the following:

[in 2007]The amount of money traded for prostitution was over 14 trillion won, compared to [more] than 24 trillion won in 2002.

As you can see, the amount of money traded for prostitution was almost 10 times higher in 2002 year alone than the financial damage cryptocurrency-related crimes have caused during the 2 last years.

Not trying to say that $2.28 billion is not a big money, but compared to what?

[Lucius]

There is some article few months ago, but with much less amount of money which is labeled as lost / stolen in the area of cryptocurrency. Since this article is just say that "132 cryptocurrency-related criminals and fraudsters had been indicted", do they mean that this is only crimes in South Korea or total in the world?

If they think in total world crypto crimes, then it is possible that the stated amount includes Bitfinex $850 million loss via USDT, and this is still not closed story.

As o_e_l_e_o states in his post, $2.28 billion is huge money, but compared to some other crimes it seems like dust. I always remember case of money laundering via Danske Bank which was one of the biggest scandal in Europe -  estimated damage €200 billion. We can also mention world famous HSBC bank who take money from big criminal organization (deliverd in trucks), and who allow financing of terrorism. They all operate today, and they launder trillions of $ every year, pay some small fine and all is good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danske_Bank_money_laundering_scandal

[davis196]

I think that the amount of cryptocurrencies stolen by online crimes  is highly underestimated.It's way more than 2.28 billion USD and it will only go up in the next few years.
Online crimes are increasing a lot,year after year and cyber security will become more and more expensive.

[hatshepsut93]

This. Crimes related to crypto and illegal trades made with crypto is a drop in the ocean compared to fiat. Deutsche Bank (one single bank out of the thousands of banks which exist worldwide) is currently in legal action over $20 billion (10 times more than this article refers to) in money laundering. The illegal drug trade has a turnover of $400 billion annually. Credit card fraud alone costs over $8 billion a year in the US alone.

This is because crypto itself is a drop in the ocean compared to fiat. What we really should be looking at is the relative numbers illegal activity in both crypto and fiat economy. There's an often cited research that puts Bitcoin's illegal transaction at 1% from the total, if that's true, than Bitcoin is on par or a bit smaller than fiat in terms of illegal activity, which makes sense because money is money and criminals will use anything that suits their needs. However, I'm not an economist and this topic is well-worthy a scientific paper, so don't take my words as an absolute truth.

[Schirer]

You are the one who should get his brain checked lol.Just Coincheck lost $530 million from the NEM hack back in 2018, and just in 2018 $1.1 B has been hacked according to this article (Before arguing it's fake again, check it out because they are giving referance to which hacks occured in 2018)
And yes,I believe these are numbers are relatively true,the financial loss is comparable to UK GDP.

it is not comperable to UK GDP which in year 2017 was 2.62 Trillion USD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_Kingdom)
The article states that 2.28 billion USD has been lost , this is not comparable in any way .

The article refers to report which actually is another article which does not give detailed information how they came up with this number.

[bryant.coleman]

It is always good to see the mainstream media trying hard to paint Bitcoin in a negative light, despite having enough proof at their disposal to rubbish such arguments. Let's look at the annual turnover of some of the illegal businesses.

a. Illegal narcotics trade (Opioids including heroin, cocaine, synthetics including methamphetamine): worth more than $400 billion per year.
b. Counterfeiting: worth $250 billion
c. Illegal arms trade: worth more than $100 billion per year
d. Human trafficking: worth around $32 billion per year
e. Illicit Wildlife Trade: worth more than $10 billion

Now don't tell me that Bitcoin is the culprit behind all this, despite less than $1 billion worth of coins being used for such purposes every year.

[Arkham Knight]

It is always good to see the mainstream media trying hard to paint Bitcoin in a negative light, despite having enough proof at their disposal to rubbish such arguments. Let's look at the annual turnover of some of the illegal businesses.

a. Illegal narcotics trade (Opioids including heroin, cocaine, synthetics including methamphetamine): worth more than $400 billion per year.
b. Counterfeiting: worth $250 billion
c. Illegal arms trade: worth more than $100 billion per year
d. Human trafficking: worth around $32 billion per year
e. Illicit Wildlife Trade: worth more than $10 billion

Now don't tell me that Bitcoin is the culprit behind all this, despite less than $1 billion worth of coins being used for such purposes every year.

I think it is still not fair to compare the billions of money lost from bitcoin to those crimes because first of all, it's not bitcoin doing crimes but it is mostly about exchange hacks and the rest are scams. The counterfeiting of fiat alone is enough to not criticize bitcoin so much with all the negativities they throw on it. Bitcoin is doing better and the later years will prove that the crimes above will be lessen with the blockchain tech.

[cr1776]

You are the one who should get his brain checked lol.Just Coincheck lost $530 million from the NEM hack back in 2018, and just in 2018 $1.1 B has been hacked according to this article (Before arguing it's fake again, check it out because they are giving referance to which hacks occured in 2018)
And yes,I believe these are numbers are relatively true,the financial loss is comparable to UK GDP.

it is not comperable to UK GDP which in year 2017 was 2.62 Trillion USD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_Kingdom)
The article states that 2.28 billion USD has been lost , this is not comparable in any way .

The article refers to report which actually is another article which does not give detailed information how they came up with this number.

And it is even worse - the GDP of the UK was $2.829 Trillion (USD, nominal) and 3.128 trillion PPP for 2019, see link below (1).  That is less than 1/1000 (or less than 0.1%) of the UK GDP.  It is closer to the GDP of St. Lucia or Antigua (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)).

1.  https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2019/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=74&pr.y=5&sy=2018&ey=2019&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=112&s=NGDP_R%2CNGDP_RPCH%2CNGDP%2CNGDPD%2CPPPGDP%2CNGDP_D%2CNGDPRPC%2CNGDPRPPPPC%2CNGDPPC%2CNGDPDPC%2CPPPPC%2CNGAP_NPGDP%2CPPPSH%2CPPPEX%2CNID_NGDP%2CNGSD_NGDP%2CPCPI%2CPCPIPCH%2CPCPIE%2CPCPIEPCH%2CTM_RPCH%2CTMG_RPCH%2CTX_RPCH%2CTXG_RPCH%2CLUR%2CLE%2CLP%2CGGR%2CGGR_NGDP%2CGGX%2CGGX_NGDP%2CGGXCNL%2CGGXCNL_NGDP%2CGGSB%2CGGSB_NPGDP%2CGGXONLB%2CGGXONLB_NGDP%2CGGXWDN%2CGGXWDN_NGDP%2CGGXWDG%2CGGXWDG_NGDP%2CNGDP_FY%2CBCA%2CBCA_NGDPD&grp=0&a=

[bryant.coleman]

I think it is still not fair to compare the billions of money lost from bitcoin to those crimes because first of all, it's not bitcoin doing crimes but it is mostly about exchange hacks and the rest are scams. The counterfeiting of fiat alone is enough to not criticize bitcoin so much with all the negativities they throw on it. Bitcoin is doing better and the later years will prove that the crimes above will be lessen with the blockchain tech.

I was just pointing out the fact that fiat currency is still used for 99.9% of the illegal activities. And this is the case even after 10 years of existence of Bitcoin. A cryptocurrency that is pseudo-anonymous and having more than 100 million users is still not the preferred payment method of the criminals. And that tells a lot about the association of fiat with crime. The media can twist the story as per liking, but the facts remain as such.

And regarding the exchange hacks, how the currency can be blamed for the loss? If someone robs a bank, are you going to blame the bank instead of the robber? Scams exist everywhere and they can be eliminated only if the authorities drop their hostility to cryptocurrency.

The media loves to highlight the negatives of cryptocurrency. But why they are silent on its merits? Fiat currency can be counterfeited (even digital fiat). But Bitcoin can never be  counterfeited. Fiat is not protected from inflation, but Bitcoin is. Why they are silent on these aspects?  

[Aveatrex]

I was just pointing out the fact that fiat currency is still used for 99.9% of the illegal activities. And this is the case even after 10 years of existence of Bitcoin. A cryptocurrency that is pseudo-anonymous and having more than 100 million users is still not the preferred payment method of the criminals.

If cryptocurrency isn't the preferred payment method of criminals,how can you explain that it's the main method used in the Darkweb?

And regarding the exchange hacks, how the currency can be blamed for the loss? If someone robs a bank, are you going to blame the bank instead of the robber?

Not only the robber is blamed,the bank is also blamed for lack of security measures to prevent the rob, similar senario concerning exchanges.

Fiat is not protected from inflation, but Bitcoin is.

Bitcoin isn't protected from volatility either which is far worse than inflation.

[timerland]

Very overblown and worded in a way which doesn't show crypto in a positive light at all. The title's (on cointelegraph) is a really good example of the type of this misrepresentation. When it's worded like "Crypto Crimes Cost $2.28B Since July 2017", when all of these crimes come from exchanges lacking security and being susceptible to hacks. "Crypto Crimes" implies that the money lost was due to the darknet and underground activities, when in fact, all of the money are from exchange hacks.

As said by Kakmakr, these crimes are nothing compared to the crimes committed in fiat. Since most of this money are from exchange hacks, I'd like to see a statistic of how much money banks have lost to similar causes (hacks, crime, robberies).

What we really should take from this is that exchanges aren't spending enough money on security.

[kecha1]

Better think about how much money in the world is lost because of financial crimes not related to crypto

[bryant.coleman]

If cryptocurrency isn't the preferred payment method of criminals,how can you explain that it's the main method used in the Darkweb?

Darkweb represents only a tiny fraction of the contraband trade. Do you really think that the total turnover of dark webs come anyway near that of the Mexican cartels? According to the latest estimates, the combined turnover for all the dark web sites was less than $1 billion in 2018. The annual turnover of second-string Mexican cartels easily amount to a few tens of billions of USD.

Not only the robber is blamed,the bank is also blamed for lack of security measures to prevent the rob, similar senario concerning exchanges.

May be. But no one blames the fiat currency for the robbery.

Bitcoin isn't protected from volatility either which is far worse than inflation.

That depends on the individual preferences. For me, I would prefer a currency that is protected from inflation, versus a currency that is stable.