New Data Released On Crypto Crime Threats; Wallet Provider Warns Of New Scam – Fin Tech

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis published two recent blog
posts providing details on cryptocurrency crime trends. According
to one of the blog posts, in 2022, “illicit transaction volume
rose for the second consecutive year, hitting an all-time high of
$20.1 billion” with 44 percent of illicit transaction volume
in 2022 coming from activity associated with sanctioned entities.
Among other things, the blog post notes the following:
“[t]ransaction volumes fell across all of the other, more
conventional categories of cryptocurrency-related crime, with the
exception of stolen funds, which rose 7% year-over-year”;
“[o]verall, the share of all cryptocurrency activity
associated with illicit activity has risen for the first time since
2019, from 0.12% in 2021 to 0.24% in 2022”; and “illicit
activity in cryptocurrency remains a small share of overall volume
at less than 1%.”

A second Chainalysis blog post discusses “how the U.S.
government’s crypto-related sanctions strategy has evolved over
time, examine[s] the types of entities that it has sanctioned so
far, and analyze[s] the impact of those sanctions on the entities
themselves and the wider crypto crime ecosystem.” Among other
things, the blog post provides a table that displays “the
individuals and entities with cryptocurrency nexuses sanctioned in
the U.S. in 2022, along with the reason OFAC sanctioned
them.”

According to recent reports, the provider of MetaMask, a popular
Ethereum self-custodial wallet provider, recently issued a warning
to MetaMask users of an “‘address poisoning scam,’
where attackers ‘poison’ transaction histories by sending
users tokens worth $0 to their wallets.” The scammers
reportedly use wallet addresses that match the first and last
characters of the victim’s wallet address to lure victims into
sending cryptocurrencies to the wrong “copycat” address.
The scam apparently targets MetaMask users who have gotten into the
habit of copying their wallet address from their transaction
history. MetaMask users are reportedly cautioned to check every
single character of wallet addresses before initiating
transactions.

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