Common Crypto Scams and How to Protect Your Funds in 2026

Crypto scams are surging worldwide, from pig butchering to fake trading platforms and deepfakes, draining victims while fraud teams struggle to keep up.

Online Scams have become a leading and highly lucrative form of crime worldwide, both within and beyond the cryptocurrency industry. The impact is obvious. The flood of scams is wearing people down and making them less trusting, while cybersecurity researchers and fraud investigators are struggling to keep up and protect users. At the same time, compliance teams face increasing pressure to identify criminals, especially those linked to money laundering.

Although cryptocurrencies represent genuine innovations with tremendous benefits, they also pose harms and offer opportunities for malicious actors. Cryptocurrencies eliminate traditional intermediaries – i.e., banks, payment processors, and brokers – by enabling direct, peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions, but sometimes the middleman is good.

Threat actors, through sophisticated psychological manipulation, convince victims to commit increasingly larger sums of money towards ventures ...