Hong Kong/Tokyo — Here’s another reason to be leery of the initial coin offerings (ICOs) being done at a staggering pace in the cryptocurrency world: there’s a one-in-10 chance you’ll end up a victim of theft. Phishing scams have helped push up criminal losses to about $225m in 2017, according to Chainalysis, a New York-based firm that analyses transactions and provides anti-money-laundering software. In such scams, investors are tricked into sending money to internet addresses pretending to be funding sites for digital token offerings related to the ethereum blockchain technology. More than 30,000 people have fallen prey to ethereum-related cyber crime, losing an average of $7,500 each, with ICOs amassing about $1.6bn in proceeds this year, Chainalysis estimates. "It’s a huge amount of money to generate in such a short period of time," said Jonathan Levin, co-founder of Chainalysis, whose software and database are used by some of the largest bitcoin companies and US law enforcement...
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