According to Chainalysis, romance scam activity — also known as pig butchering — has grown 85 times since 2020. This is on the back of the growing global scam economy, which saw US$1.02 trillion being scammed globally between August 2022 and August 2023, with victims in Singapore losing the most money on average.
While the total amount of cryptocurrency stolen through scams fell 29.2% y-o-y to US$4.6 billion ($6.19 billion) in 2023, romance related crypto scams doubled in revenue y-o-y, according to crypto forensics firm Chainalysis.
This finding is part of Chainalysis’ yearly crypto crime report, which details the data and research behind crypto crimes over a year. Earlier chapters of the 2024 report found that cybercriminals stole about US$1.1 billion worth of crypto through ransomware attacks in 2023, while North Korean-linked hacks of cryptocurrency platforms rose to a record high in 2023.
