In 2021, people lost more than $1 billion to cryptocurrency scams. That’s more than 60 times what they reported losing in 2018, according to a new report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
And almost half of that money? Was lost to scams that “started with an ad, post, or message on a social media platform,” the FTC says.
The majority of people encountering crypto scams on social media did so on a platform owned by Meta. The FTC’s data shows that 32% of people who fell prey to a crypto scam last year originally found it because of a post on Instagram. A further 26% of victims encountered scams on Facebook, and another 9% did so on WhatsApp, the messaging platform Meta bought for $19 billion in 2014.
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The next most popular place for crypto scammers to reel in victims was Telegram, an anonymity-geared messenger that prides itself on being anti-censorship and is popular with right-wing political figures.
The FTC’s report says that in 2021, crypto scams accounted for one out of every four dollars lost to fraud overall. Over the course of the year, more than 46,000 people fell victim to crypto scams, with the average loss per person hovering around $2,600.
Most of the money lost was lost to Bitcoin scams (70%), with runners up Tether (10%) and Ether (9%).
Just what are people losing this money on? The FTC says $575 million of the $1+ billion lost went to “bogus investment opportunities.”
