Despite cryptocurrency markets being trapped in a severe bearish recession, scams and hacks in Web3 were on fire for the entirety of 2022. A number of top-tier centralized cryptocurrency heavyweights also collapsed due to poor risk management and insider manipulations.
As the crypto segment approaches New Year, U.Today recaps the most dangerous crypto scams, their roots, designs and the losses they caused. We have also prepared a short review of the most frequent crypto scams in social media that target millions of users daily.
Crypto scams and hacks of 2022: Quick facts
According to numerous cybersec reports, in the first 11 months of 2022, hackers and scammers managed to steal an unprecedented amount of $4.2 billion in cryptocurrency, which is 37% more than in 2021, when key cryptos were 2x-3x more expensive.
- The largest attacks were executed against cross-chain protocols — Axie Infinity’s bridge mechanism Ronin and the multi-protocol ecosystem Wormhole.
- The collapses of the Terra (LUNA) ecosystem, its major DeFi Anchor Protocol (ANC) and the USD-pegged stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) contributed to the Q2-Q4, 2022, phase of the bearish recession.
- The drama around the now-defunct crypto exchange FTX and the associated trading firm Alameda Research was the largest centralized service collapse across 2022.
- Despite the largest hacks being widely discussed in the media, the vast majority of crypto scams are organized via old methods: fake airdrops, malicious “recovery…
