Pig Butchering Scams Steal $3.6B in 2024: Reports

In 2024, crypto users experienced heavy losses due to butchering scams, with a whopping amount of $3.6 billion stolen mainly through Ethereum. In this type of scam, fraudsters gain the confidence of the victims by stating that there will be immense returns from fake crypto investments and running away with the money. 

The number of cyber threats experienced this year has increased to 40% compared to last year, which reflects that there is a requirement for the crypto space for better security and awareness against fraudsters.

The most significant fraud of the year was the case of pig butchering scams, which resulted in losses of $3.6 billion alone on the Ethereum blockchain. The scams have been a thorn in the side of the crypto community, as they continue to grow despite attempts to combat them. 

Altogether, the report by Cyvers, a leading Web 3 security firm, tracked over 150,000 addresses and more than 800,000 transactions involved in these scams.

Besides pig butchering, access control incidents have been the most significant contributor to crypto losses in 2024. These incidents, which amount to about 41.6% of the total fraud cases, accounted for a whopping 81% of the financial losses.

Cyber threats have increased to the point that 2024 has become the year with the most crypto fraud cases to date. In total, losses exceeded $2.3 billion in 165 major incidents, a 40% increase over 2023. Yet, it remains 37% less than the record losses in 2022.

Around $1.3 billion was recovered from the $3.6 billion losses this year as per reports from Recovery and Bug Bounty services, and ZachXBT helped it recover. In 2024 Q1, 53 hacks, and scams incidents were reported, and the highest funds loss was $760 million in Q3.

In 2024, many huge hacks happened, from which this are some of the top hacks happened:

• WazirX Hack
• Radiant Capital attack
• DMM Exchange Hack
• Bing X exploits