USD 1.36 bln worth of cryptocurrencies stolen so far in 2018

Fraud constituted the majority of virtual currency scams, at 30%, followed by hacking attempts (22%), theft and exit scams (17% each), and phishing (13%).

The biggest recent heist occurred at cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck in January 2018, where hackers made off with almost USD 500 million in virtual tokens. Around the same time, Bitconnect, a cryptocurrency-lending scheme, shut down its operations and vanished, leading to an exit scam with an estimated loss of around USD 250 million. And in February, an Italian crypto exchange called BitGrail reported that it was hit with a hacking attempt that led to a loss of nearly USD 195 million worth of customers virtual tokens.

The average per-day loss attributed to scams stands at around USD 9.1 million per day. If the trend continues, the total amount lost to such schemes would add up to around USD 3.25 billion by the end of the year.