Let me set the stage for you, friends: In the year of the Lord 2024, these fine gentlefolk at Bitget, SlowMist, and Elliptic counted up just how much money got bamboozled away from honest folks via crypto scams. The sum? Why, a crisp $4.6 billion—yes, that’s with a “B”, and it ain’t Monopoly money, neither. That’s a 24% boost from last year, which just proves crime’s the only business that never has a bad quarter.
What’s behind this thunderous fleecing? Why, it’s the rascally magic of deepfake AI—a contraption so clever it can make a possum look like a raccoon, or worse, your Aunt Sally look like Elon Musk pitching you moon coins on the internet.
The Motherlode of Swindles
Seems nearly every second high-dollar crypto grift in 2024 involved deepfakes. These tricksters whipped up lifelike videos of tech tycoons—Elon Musk again, because who else—hawking snake oil investments all over social media. In Hong Kong, lawmen nabbed 31 hoodlums running an outfit that pocketed $34 million while impersonating crypto bigwigs. It must have been the only corporate Zoom call where everyone was actually a hallucination.
The swindlers, being resourceful as crows, also used AI to wriggle past those never-ending “Know Your Customer” roadblocks, fake service chats, and gin up dashboards that looked mighty official until your wallet cried for help. Zoom meetings, ordinarily about as exciting as stale cornbread, became the new watering hole for crooks—heaven help the poor soul who clicked the wrong “Join” link.
Meanwhile, social engineering—fancy talk for “convincing you to hand over your life savings with a smile”—is fatter than ever. AI-powered bots dangle the lure of easy money: codes, schemes, and interfaces so slick, you’ll wonder if even your grandpa could get rich. Spoiler: only the scammer gets rich. Toss in poisoned job offers, messages full of poison links, and the classic “address poisoning” (with apologies to all real apothecaries), and you’ve got yourself a whole menu of trickery.
And don’t forget the Ponzi schemes, which, like cockroaches and reality TV, refuse to die. The newest version? “Legit” DeFi, NFTs, and GameFi shenanigans. Need an example? Try the flashy JPEX scandal in Hong Kong—celebrity endorsements, billboards, promises of “stable returns.” Turns out the only thing stable was the criminal record it earned after bilking over 2,600 folks out of $213 million. The only thing “decentralized” here was the sense of shame.
Last year, a blockchain sleuth called ZachXBT rolled up the rug (literally) on various scams, including Leaper Finance and Zebra Lending. These enterprises were “audited,” which here means “we made up the paperwork,” and ran off with folks’ cash the minute the imaginary money clocked a high score.
The difference these days? Scammers now use “social fission” (which I assume means blowing things up with group chats), gamified recruitment, and get this—more fake identities than a riverboat gambler on the run.
Wrangling the Outlaws
To ride herd on this mess, Bitget & Co. started up an Anti-Scam Hub. This little dogie aims to track bad money, gum up the phishing holes, and unmask the bad eggs—unless, of course, the eggs are also AI-generated. One Elliptic researcher, Arda Akartuna, said their team arms themselves with the latest tech in this wild west arms race. It’s “scale or be scalped,” as grandma used to say (before she lost her savings to the blockchain).
There’s also a $300 million “Protection Fund” being stashed away for victim support, which ought to buy a lot of virtual bandages—or at least a few therapy sessions with your local AI chatbot.
If you’re thinking of investing in crypto this year, remember—if the fella asking for your money looks like Elon Musk but is moving like a sock puppet, maybe don’t send that Bitcoin. And if you do, at least demand a souvenir… maybe an NFT of your own gullibility.
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2025-06-14 19:44