Sadly, 2022 was a great year for scam tokens

According to a blockchain risk monitoring firm, cybercriminals created more than 350 scam tokens daily in 2022. The study, which looked at the period between January and the end of November, states that this has been the year with the highest number of Rug Pull tokens.

In 2020, only 1,548 scam tokens hit the market throughout the year, according to the Solidus Lab report. However, in 2021 the number was 83,368. For 2022 the number of scam tokens closed at 117,629, representing an increase of 41% compared to the previous year.

Furthermore, the preferred networks for cybercriminals to deploy their scam tokens in 2022 were the BNB Chain and Ethereum (ETH). Thus, 12% of fraudulent tokens were BEP-20 built on the BNB blockchain, while 8% were Ethereum ERC-20 tokens.

Some 1,93 million investors have fallen victim to Rug Pull since September 2020, Solidus Lab estimates. In this type of exit scam, a team creates a token, drives up its price before extracting all of its value, and leaves the project before its price goes to zero.

Analysts believe scam tokens have affected more people through 2022 than the ravages of FTX, BlockFi, Mt. Goxoch Terra-Luna combined.

Similarly, among the most notable scams of 2022, the Squid Game (SQUID) token stands out, which took $3.3 million and grew 45,000% in a matter of days. Unfortunately, the token’s creators fled with the investor funds, and their identity has not been revealed so far.

The scam method used with SQUID is the so-called “honeypot,” a type of smart kontrakt that does not allow token buyers to resell it.

122 million malicious files were distributed in 2022

However, scam tokens were not the only popular fraud in 2022. According to Kaspersky, cybercriminals distribute around 400,000 malicious files daily, an increase of 5% compared to 2021.

Dessutom, ransomware increased by 181% this year, accounting for 9,500 episodes per day. Likewise, Windows was the main target of attacks once again. Thus, an average of 320,000 malicious files were directed at this operating system, 85% of the total.

So, whether it’s scam tokens you faced in 2022, ransomware, or malicious files, you can put these simple steps into practice to protect your investments and equipment from cyber-criminals. Likewise, you can always turn to platforms like Alfacash that meticulously take care of which tokens to list to guarantee the safety of their investors.

Wanna trade BTC, ETH, and other tokens? You can do it säkert på Alfacash! And don’t forget we’re talking about this and many other things on our social media.

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