Betrayed trust: crypto founders who stole investors’ money
As the digital currency world expands, so does its dark side, with billions of dollars falling into the hands of hackers, scammers, and even trusted founders. The crypto industry, known for its lack of clear regulation and wild price swings, once seemed rife with potential scammers looking to steal from the unwary. While steps are being taken to provide regulatory clarity for crypto worldwide, price volatility and theft are still concerning issues. In 2022 alone, data from Chainalysis shows that bad actors made off with more than $3.8 billion in crypto, most of it stolen from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols by North Korea-linked attackers such as the Lazarus Group. The amount was a 15% increase over 2021 when records show hackers and scammers stole about $3.3 billion worth of digital assets. In the first quarter of 2023, 57 cases of crypto theft were reported, with extrapolations of those figures suggesting there could be as many as 228 incidents by the end of the year...