$17 Billion Stolen in One Year: The State of Crypto Crime with Chainalysis

**Eric Jardine** (0:00)
I think there's probably new people entering the space, which gives an expanded victim pool. I think as a lucrative global industry, if you view it that way, scammers are also probably multiplying, and that would mean that there's more people trying to scam others, unfortunately, in the space.

**Sam Ewen** (0:23)
One of the key narratives about crypto is that it is filled with illicit activity and crime. The fact is, less than 1% of all crypto activity is nefarious. So the reality is 99% is legitimate people doing legitimate things on blockchain rails. But we still have to address the fact that there are a lot of people who are victims or targets of scams in the crypto space. There's a lot of social engineering that's going on. Many of us are inundated through our messaging apps, through our social channels, often through our phones themselves, with people requesting things from us, which frankly seem a little suspect. I'm not usually sure that the attractive woman saying hey, how did we meet again? Is actually a person that I did meet versus someone who at some point is trying to separate me from some funds often on crypto rails. So we decided to have Eric Jardine, head of research at Chainalysis, on to discuss their recent crypto crime report and just give us a sense of where are we at in the state of crypto crime.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:23)
Markets move fast, crypto moves faster. From the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, CoinDesk's public keys tracks the money, markets and moves shaping digital assets.

**Sam Ewen** (1:39)
Welcome back to Gen C. We are here with Eric Jardine. Eric is head of research at Chainalysis. We have had Chainalysis on the show before to talk about a wide variety of topics. But I really wanted to dive in with Eric specifically on a new report that they've put out on sort of the crypto scams of 2025 and into 2026
Chainalysis has some of the best insight on what's happening within this industry. And I want to get Eric's POV on this. So Eric, first of all, welcome to Gen C. Great to see you.

**Eric Jardine** (2:08)
Well, thank you very much for having me.

**Sam Ewen** (2:10)
I just want to dive in. Again, I know Chainalysis does a ton of different work with a lot of different clients.
But I was fascinated to read this crypto crime report that you guys just put out. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you guys have estimated that in 2025, almost $17 billion was stolen in crypto scams. Is that true?

**Eric Jardine** (2:28)
That's right. So at the time that we did the measurement, it was around 14 billion. And based on historical trends, we always expect those numbers to increase over time as we come to learn more about what wallets on chain are associated with scammers.
And so based on history, we suggested that the top dot number once all is said and done is going to be north of 17 billion.

**Sam Ewen** (2:49)
And just to set the stage for us, is this that there are more people trying to scam? Is it just the scams themselves are bigger or they just being more effective?

**Eric Jardine** (2:59)
I think you probably have a little mixture of all three of those things happening at once. So for instance, we've pretty routinely found that the ebb and flow of the crypto market overall is positively correlated with the amount of value scammed. I think about this as sort of a new entrant phenomenon to a degree. So if crypto is in a boom cycle, in a bull cycle, new entrants will enter into the space. They may be comparatively less familiar with crypto currencies. They may be therefore more likely to fall victim to, say, for example, a giveaway scam promising like a doubling of your crypto if you send it on chain, something like that. And we did have for most of 2025 a relatively boomish year until October. And so from that standpoint, I think there's probably new people entering the space, which gives an expanded victim pool. I think as a lucrative global industry, if you view it that way, scammers are also probably multiplying. And that would mean that there's more people trying to scam others, unfortunately, in the space.
And so I think it's a little mixture of both. There's more people trying to scam. There's more people who may fall victim to scams. And when you combine all that together, you end up with these large, multi-billion dollar totals like we're seeing.

**Sam Ewen** (4:13)
And in the report, you guys mentioned that impersonation scams grew over 1400% year over year.