Crypto crime is down 65% overall
The data is outside of the blockchain analytics firm. chainanalysis and their new report that finds all the categories of cryptocurrency crimes that it's not ransomware has dropped in the first half of 2023.
Scams, hacks, fraudulent shops, and revenue from the darknet market have declined. Together, all crime categories have experienced a cumulative 65% decrease in revenue losses compared to this time last year.
Scams in particular have plummeted, with a staggering $3.3 billion decrease from last year. The firm explains that this is partly due to the "exit scam" of two "large-scale scams": VidiLook and Chia Tai Tianqing Pharmaceutical Financial Management. These groups have cashed out, leaving far fewer dollars scammed overall.
Why is the ransomware active?
But ransomware is getting stronger: pound for pound, cumulative ransomware revenue in 2023 equals 90% of all ransomware revenue in 2022, and we're only halfway through the year.
Chainalysis points to two reasons that, taken together, help explain the upward trend in crypto-ransomware:
โOn the one hand, the big game, that is, the targeting of ransomware attackers against large and wealthy organizations, seems to have picked up after a pause in 2022. At the same time, the number of small successful attacks has also grown. . Both trends are evident in the chart below, which shows how the distribution of ransomware payment sizes has changed since 2020."
In other words, crypto is affected on two fronts: big attacks are getting bigger and smaller attacks are increasing in number.
