In the wake of recent hyperactive fluctuations, the market for cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens is believed to have exploded to more than $3 trillion held by over 300 million people worldwide.
However, the current size of the market represents only a fraction of how much has been lost over recent years, according to at least one noted industry analyst. Recent findings suggest that “a whopping $25 trillion and counting has been lost to cryptocurrency and NFT rug pulls and scams to date,” according to a recent posting by Rebecca Moody, head of data research for Comparitech.
“As our cryptocurrency and NFT heist trackers have found, crypto is a lucrative business for hackers,” Moody pointed out. “These trackers don’t account for insider jobs and scams, such as Ponzi schemes, however.”
Hence, the researcher has created new tracking systems to count so-called “rug pulls” and scams, which are typically not included in this loss accounting.
Rug pulls incorporate losses within “both newly founded crypto tokens or NFTs, whereby the founders pull out before the project is fully built as well as exit scams from longer-running and more established projects,” according to Moody, who outlined her appraisal in a blog post earlier this month and updated it Aug. 24. The $25 trillion loss estimate also covers scams that are driven by…
