Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by redsky880 1106 days ago
where are you getting this '99%' figure?
1 comments

The number is clearly an exaggeration, and it's a bit embarrassing that I have to point that out. One of the few benefits of crypto is that it's difficult to trace (although certainly not impossible except for unique cases like XMR), so obviously nobody has the data to attest what percentage of people definitively have fallen victim to scams. However, what is known for certain is that people lost $14 billion to crypto scams last year (globally), with the average amount lost per person likely much higher than many other types of scams, considering the entire US lost $10 billion to all other types of scams last year, and the number of people in the crypto space is a small fraction of the US population. Keep in mind that the two numbers are globally vs the US alone, but I would presume the majority of the $14 billion lost were from US investors. I found more targeted studies that have numbers like 33% of people in crypto have fallen victim to scams, but I can't find the original study so I've omitted referencing it directly.