Cryptocurrency Fraud in UK Rises by 32% to $270m

In one year, the value of financial losses due to cryptocurrency fraud increased by 32%, according to data from the UK Police Action Fraud unit seen by the Financial Times.

From October 2021 to September 2022, losses from cryptocurrency fraudsters’ actions amounted to £226 million, which is significantly more than in the same period a year earlier. The number of reported offences alone exceeded 10,000, increasing by 16%. It means that an average investor could lose more than £22,000.

According to data from UK Finance, a local financial services trade body, cryptocurrency fraudster activity increased significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic when a sizable portion of daily activity shifted to the Internet. Online fraud increased by 8% to £1.3 billion last year, and cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies

By using cryptography, virtual currencies, known as cryptocurrencies, are nearly counterfeit-proof digital currencies that are built on blockchain technology. Comprised of decentralized networks, blockchain technology is not overseen by a central authority.Therefore, cryptocurrencies function in a decentralized nature which theoretically makes them immune to government interference. The term, cryptocurrency derives from the origin of the encryption techniques that are employed to secure the networks which are used to authenticate blockchain technology. Cryptocurrencies can be thought of as systems that accept online payments which are denoted as “tokens.” Tokens are represented as internal ledger entries in blockchain technology while the term crypto is used to depict cryptographic methods and encryption algorithms such as public-private key pairs, various hashing functions, and an elliptical curve. Every cryptocurrency transaction that occurs is logged in a web-based ledger with blockchain technology.These then must be approved by a disparate network of individual nodes (computers that maintain a copy of the ledger). For every new block generated, the block must first be authenticated and confirmed ‘approved’ by each node, which makes forging the transactional history of cryptocurrencies nearly impossible. The World’s First CryptoBitcoin became the first blockchain-based cryptocurrency and to this day is still the most demanded…