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@cryptadamist Serious question - how much of that $1t is just straight money laundering, as opposed to scams/theft ? And I know there's plenty of that too.

@cryptadamist I don't immerse myself in this domain, but there are 3 major categories of corrupto-currency to me :
1 - Just money laundry for drug deals, tax evasion, bribery, sex trafficing.
2 - Monetizing ransomeware attacks
3 - Just stupid people who clicked "buy some crypto, it will make you rich - give us $100, or your life savings".
I don't care much about category 3.

@jab01701mid i think the claim here is that this is $1 trillion in scams, which often fall into category 3 but not always.

for instance it's possible for a fake trading app to pretend you are trading Apple stock. the crypto (Tether) is just used to get your money from your hands to the investment fraudsters.

that said it does all kind of rely on the idea that you can get "secret" information that will let you beat the market. this is the story of all fraud since forever.

would also say the issue is yes, these people suck, but history is clear that if you let this stuff go unchecked you get the great depression. fraud of the same type was absolutely rampant during the 1920s.

@cryptadamist I'm just having trouble with the order-of-magnitude of the fraud.
$1bn I would believe. Even $10bn.
But $1t ? Just scams ? People don't have that much money. They can't even buy eggs.
Something is off to me.
I have not read the article, but it must be that they are putting most of CAT1 and CAT2 into CAT3.

@jab01701mid i hear you but the official FBI number of reported investment frauds for 2023 or 2024 (i forget but it was published recently) was $5-6 billion.

most people do not report getting scammed. the best estimates are that only 10-25% of people report, so that means $20-60 billion in one year, just from the USA.

expand that europe and china, which both have massive issues w/the same problem and are v. roughly the same size, and you're looking at maybe $50-200 billion.

then add in the fact that the scams are more effective in poor parts of the world like Africa and South America, even if you're working w/a much smaller capital base, and sum it up over the last 5 years, and you see the number does in fact make sense...

https://cannabiccino.substack.com/p/75-billion-crypto-earned-by-pig-butchering

@jab01701mid also consider that the US government estimates hundreds of billions of dollars in losses to fraud of the covid relief funding.

i know it all sounds crazy but the numbers do, in fact, make sense (within an order of magnitude - maybe it's only $100bn not $1tn for the number google cites, but both are fucking nuts).

@alatartheblue it's a very believable number to me, speaking as someone who has been following this stuff incredibly closely for years.

https://universeodon.com/@cryptadamist/114105862825666350

@cryptadamist

I believe you about the number. It’s just crazy.

@alatartheblue it's legitimately world destroying