Ireland – January 9, 2020 – Aspiring Crowd Marketing Limited has released its research findings on the extent of crypto related fraud and malpractices in the industry. According to Aspiring, total losses due to crypto-currency related scams over the last five years accumulate up to a staggering $21.5 billion. The figure only represents reported and recorded losses. The report does not include untraceable scams, and thus the total expected losses are close to $30 billion.
The largest share in the scam pie involve networking marketing (MLM), accounting for a total of $13.25 billion. This amount was lost by retail investors in Ponzi schemes sold as crypto investments. According to Aspiring experts, this is not a surprise, as MLM relies on word of mouth, with people spreading the word about insanely high returns and promoting it as low risk.
Detailing the modus operandi of such schemes, the report points to large sums paid out as commissions, rewarding those who bring new investors to the scheme. On average around 50% is paid out, which leaves the scheme operators with a stunning profit of 6-7 billion dollars. These schemes are rarely investigated, which the authors of this report find strange, considering the amounts involved, and the fact that the operators are also prospective tax evaders.
The next large category comprised ICO related scams, which accounted for $2.3 billion, based on estimates for 2017 and 2018. ICO is a term used when new crypto related projects raise their initial funding, in similar ways to crowd funding. As per the report, about 80% of the ICOs in 2017 were scams or projects raising money for fake business ideas, but they received only 11% of the total funding. Still, the loss amounted to over 2 billion dollars.
Aspiring report also noted the rise of hackers with more people owning crypto currencies. The average person often has very little knowledge about the security required to safely store cryptocurrencies. As per the report, the hackers are estimated to have stolen $1.7 billion in 2018, and by end of 2019, around $4.26 billion. A total of 5.9 billion dollars has been lost over 2 years, says the report.
Aspiring authors believe there is no sign of MLM crypto scams slowing down. One encouraging occurrence is that governments are beginning to crackdown on some of the bigger scams, and the perpetrators are facing prosecution. For the ICO market, there is less activity than there was back in 2017-18, and with people being more careful, this category is expected to slowly die out. The authors of the report urge the public to keep a keen eye out for hackers, as they suggest that what the society has witnessed is only the tip of the iceberg.
About the author
To raise awareness around scams and bad business ethics in general, Aspiring has launched the campaign #2020makeadifference where they ask people to share things which will have a positive impact for 2020, and only promote businesses they are proud of. Aspiring was founded by John Hegrenes in early 2019 with a vision to create a fair and transparent financial model based around sharing. We refer to this as the real sharing economy.
For more information, please visit: https://2020makeadifference.com/ and https://aspiring.world/
For detailed data used to create this report use the media contact outlets shared below.
Media Contact
Company Name: Aspiring Crowd Marketing Limited
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Country: Ireland
Website: https://aspiring.world/