Coronavirus Strikes At Crypto Scammer’s Revenue, Drops It By 33%

There are a great many things that the coronavirus pandemic has done to the world as a whole, and very little of it is good. It seems Chainalysis, a crypto research firm, found one of the rare silver linings in this global crisis. According to research, the forensics firm published on Friday, the profits made through cryptocurrency-related scams have suffered a considerable drop when compared to the start of the year.

Increased Volumes, Less Revenue

Through the use of a seven-day moving average, the estimated revenue that scammers have earned has dropped down to less than $300,00 in the start of April this year. This comes from the middle of January’s numbers being at a saddening $800,000. This massive drop in revenue is almost entirely due to the massive market crash that occurred in March of this year.

The numbers genuinely get interesting when the volume of scams get accounted for. The researchers at Chainalysis originally predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic would make the general public less susceptible to scams. The reality was quite the opposite, with Chainalysis recording no drop in the number of people being affected.

In fact, the number of individual transfers, that is, payments to these scammers, managed to achieve a year-to-date high at the start of April. Human nature mandates ignorance through fear, and, strangely, Chainalysis managed to think otherwise.

$100 Billion Market Cap Loss Affecting Scammers As Well

The conclusion that Chainalysis had subsequently made is that the massive sell-off event within the crypto industry, sparked by the coronavirus, managed to bleed into the revenue of crypto scammers. With the loss of $100 billion in total market cap, according to CoinGecko, the crypto industry managed to have scammers lose money, even if they’re scamming even more people.

If it weren’t for the grim nature of these events, the irony would’ve been appreciable to a large segment of the crypto industry.

Chainalysis stated in its report that the firm is convinced that scammers across the globe have been receiving the same amount of crypto by the same number of victims every month. Due to the fact that the crypto industry practically halved itself in value, that crypto is worth less than it once was due to the massive drop in prices.

New Tools, No Money

Chainalysis pointed out that scammers have a new arsenal of material to use for phishing and blackmail scams with the new COVID-19 outbreak. Even so, the firm stated that the drop in price has drastically reduced the revenue for those, with Ponzi schemes and investment scams suffering in particular.