While many believe that the crypto bear market season is a time to build, scammers always think of it as something else. And according to blockchain analysis company Chainalysis, they seem to adapt often to market conditions, whether it’s bear or bull season.
In a webinar focused on crypto crimes affecting consumers and investors, Eric Jardine, head of cybercrimes research at Chainalysis, revealed Some insights point to the adaptation of scammers as market conditions change.
Chainalysis Reveals Scammers Blend With Every Market Condition
According to Jardine in the webinar, some scammers give up in a bear market; others are adapted as some of the plans used in this illegal activity differ from the usual style. Jardine said:
One of the new innovations in this year’s report is classifying fraud into types. And there, what we discovered is that not all scams behave the same way in the context of a bear market.
According to Jardine’s explanation in the Webiner, crypto investors are still very scared and cautious because of the consequences of the Terra Collapse, which made them lose millions. So, scammers switched strategies to adapt and preyed on investors’ fears.
Jardine explained that bad actors turn to other methods of scamming, including gifts and “romance scams.” Cybercrime experts add:
It is suggestive here that there is an adaptation on the part of the scammers and market conditions make the investment scam unprofitable; they can change tactics to other scams that play on different emotions.
Jardine further noted that scammers not only “play the same script over and over again” as one of the effective stop schemes but also work. changes based on market conditions.
Targeting Mostly DeFi
Meanwhile, scammers appear more interested in exploitation developing a decentralized financial market (DeFi) than any other ecosystem in the crypto sector. according to data from DeFi Llama, more than $200 million has been stolen from several DeFi platforms in the market in 2023 alone.
March still had the highest total value hacked, with more than $200 million siphoned from DeFi platforms; February was the highest at $30.6 million, and January was the lowest at just $8.6 million.
Furthermore, with bad actors’ use new methods of exploitation of the overall crypto marketassurances that fraud in the sector can be ended quickly are still uncertain.
The global crypto market has a capitalization of more than $1 trillion. As of this writing, the global crypto market capitalization stands at $1.2 trillion, down 0.2% over the last 24 hours.
Featured images from Unsplash, Charts from TradingView