Scams and rug pulls proliferated in the year. Scamming revenue rose 82% to US$7.8 billion worth of stolen cryptocurrency, with more than a third of that total procured from so-called rug pulls, according to Chainalysis. A rug pull is a type of scam in which developers of what seemed like legitimate projects merely set up wallets to take investors’ money and run.
DeFi saw the greatest year-over-year growth -- 1,964% -- for laundering illicit funds, the report showed; mining activity was second at less than 500%. Chainalysis attributes the growth of crime in DeFi to “hype”; outsize returns from tokens like Shiba Inu that drove speculative trading; and the ease with which new DeFi tokens can be created.
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Photo: Bloomberg
