Crypto scam losses soared in U.S., fell in rest of world

Cryptocurrency losses in the United States spiked dramatically last year, while the rest of the world saw an almost as dramatic fall.

A recent study released by cybersecurity company SurfShark found that, between 2021 and 2022, losses from cryptocurrency scams in the U.S. grew by 88%, from $1.2 billion to $2.3 billion. This comes from major increases on a state-by-state basis. Few states saw losses decrease from year to year, only Alaska (-30%), Mississippi (-60%), North Dakota (-31%), Oklahoma (-58%) and Vermont (-83%).

Many other states saw significant increases, with South Dakota sporting a growth rate of 8,261% (this is not a typo) leading the pack by several orders of magnitude. New Mexico, the state that saw the next highest increase, had losses grow 653%, followed by Delaware, which saw losses grow 595%. SurfShark noted that overall 28 states had increases of 90% or more.

In terms of total losses, topping the list was California at $572,581,744; followed by Florida at $213,744,150; Texas at $180,983,946; and New York at $153,005,623. Nationwide, the average per-victim loss was around $86,000.

SurfShark found that, despite the sharp increase in losses, the total number of victims has actually gone down compared to the previous year (around 28,000 to about 26,000), meaning that fewer people are losing much more money. This may possibly be due to fraudsters more frequently utilizing custodial accounts held at financial institutions for cryptocurrency exchanges, or having victims send funds directly to cryptocurrency platforms where funds are quickly disbursed.

"Criminals prefer cryptocurrencies not only because of their relative anonymity," explains Aleksandr Valentij, Chief Information Security Officer at Surfshark, "If the victim realizes they've been scammed, crypto transfers cannot be reversed like bank transfers, and the money is lost forever, especially if it goes through a cryptocurrency tumbler or is 'washed' in any other way. This is particularly convenient for scammers, and combined with the inflated interest in crypto we have at the moment, it creates a perfect environment for crypto scams." 

In contrast with the U.S., crypto scam losses actually fell in the rest of the world, amounting to a twofold decrease from $373 million in 2021 to $179 million in 2022. The average loss per victim fell from $63,731 to $46,858.

While one's immediate reaction might be that this is because there are more crypto users in the U.S., this is not necessarily the case. A report from Chainanalysis showed that, in 2022, Vietnam was actually the No. 1 user of cryptocurrencies in the world, followed by the Philippines, then Ukraine, then India and, at number five, the U.S.

Asked about why the U.S. has seen such a surge when the rest of the world did not, a spokesperson from Surfshark said:

"The surge in crypto scam losses in the US may have been due to two reasons: first, the US was second in the world by total cybercrime according to the FBI. Second, the US is among the top countries in the world when it comes to crypto ownership (https://triple-a.io/crypto-ownership-data/). It's difficult to say for sure, but these two factors may have naturally resulted in such a surge in crypto scam losses in the US compared to the rest of the world."