The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has ranked cryptocurrency as the second riskiest scam behind employment-related fraud.
The BBB, a non-profit organization that evaluates business and charities on behalf of consumers, published the 2019 edition of its Scam Tracker Report. According to the organization, cryptocurrency was the second riskiest scam on the market, falling only behind employment fraud in terms of their aggregate “risk index.”
Cryptocurrencies were originally added as a category to the Scam Tracker report in 2018 following an uptick in complaints. The BBB claims crypto-related scams jumped from a “small subsection” of investment fraud to become one of the riskiest pitfalls facing the market.
The report found that cryptocurrency tied romance scams for the highest median dollars lost at $3,000, up from $900 in 2018. Nearly one-third of the scams involved the purchase of cryptocurrencies as a form of payment for goods and services, with 23.4 percent involving an investment opportunity. The BBB found that 31% of reported cryptocurrency financial losses involved the Chinese exchange C2CX.
Despite accounting for the highest median financial loss, the total number of cryptocurrency-related reports made to the BBB was 273, compared to 9,050 online-purchasing scams.
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