en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_scam
1 correction found
The damage caused by exit scams is estimated to exceed $4.3 billion in 2019.
The $4.3 billion figure was for broader crypto crime/scam losses in 2019, not exit scams alone. Contemporary reporting on the same estimates put exit-scam losses at about $3.1 billion, with the rest coming from other categories such as misappropriated funds and Ponzi schemes.
Full reasoning
This sentence appears to overstate what the underlying 2019 estimates said.
Contemporaneous reporting on CipherTrace's 2019 Q2 AML report distinguished exit scams from other illicit-loss categories: CoinDesk wrote that CipherTrace said 2019 might be the "Year of the Exit Scam," with $3.1 billion stolen through exits and another $874 million in misappropriated funds, while total losses from illicit activity were almost $4.3 billion. In other words, the near-$4.3 billion total was not an exit-scam-only figure.
A separate Chainalysis summary likewise says scammers bilked roughly $4.3 billion in 2019 overall, and that the vast majority of that amount came from two large-scale Ponzi schemes. That also contradicts the article's wording, because it assigns the full $4.3+ billion specifically to exit scams.
So the article conflates a broader 2019 crypto-scam/loss estimate with exit scams specifically. The supported figure for exit scams in those 2019 summaries was about $3.1 billion, not more than $4.3 billion.
2 sources
- Exit Scams Swindled $3.1 Billion From Crypto Investors in 2019: Report
CoinDesk reported that CipherTrace said 2019 may be the "Year of the Exit Scam," with "$3.1 billion stolen through exits and another $874 million in misappropriated funds" and that "investors, users, and exchanges have lost almost $4.3 billion from illicit activity year to date."
- The Chainalysis Crypto Crime Report is Here. Download to Learn Why 2019 Was the Year of the Ponzi Scheme.
Chainalysis wrote that in 2019, "Scammers bilked roughly $4.3 billion worth of cryptocurrency from millions of victims" and that "The vast majority of that $4.3 billion went to just two large-scale Ponzi schemes."