- The US leads global crypto scams, with American founders behind 43% of all fraudulent projects worldwide.
- South Korea and Singapore have the highest failure rates, with over 50% of their crypto projects not surviving.
- Russia tops the list for crypto scams, with 24% of its projects being classified as fraudulent in recent studies.
The cryptocurrency industry is expanding constantly, and it is home to many new ideas as well as scams. In collaboration with Storible, 5Money recently conducted a study to determine which countries are most likely to create scams or fail in 1,500+ crypto projects. The results show that there is a worrying development in the continuously growing market, with some countries being both the creators of scams and the failures of projects.
The United States alone has the highest number of crypto scams; with founders in America accounting for 43% of all the tainted crypto projects in the world. This is mainly because many crypto startups are located in the United States, among which the most famous failures are Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX. The most recent case is FTX whose crypto exchange collapsed in 2022 after misusing billions of dollars belonging to its users, revealing loopholes in the regulation of U.S.-based crypto companies.
Source: 5money
Crypto Scam Hotspots
The US is followed by China and the UK in the list of countries that contribute to global crypto scams, with Chinese developers being involved in 8% of crypto scams, and UK-based developers involved in 7% of scams. These statistics demonstrate the fact that even such developed markets as hacking in the sphere of crypto are still faced with the problem of scams, although a lot of capital has been invested into the development of new solutions.
The US is also home to the highest number of failed crypto projects where one-third of the total unsuccessful crypto endeavors have an American founder. This indicates some problems that most projects encounter as they struggle to make it once they are launched.
China and the United Kingdom are not far behind with 7% of the crypto projects being a failure. Other countries that recorded high failure rates include South Korea and Singapore, two countries which have fast-paced booming blockchain ecosystems but lack the sustainability to support many of their projects.
Scam and Failure Rates in Crypto Markets
Russia leads the index on the percentage of crypto scams with 24% of crypto projects being classified as a scam. Indonesia ranks first at 31%, followed by Israel at 25%, and Switzerland coming in at 22% and China at 20%. Vietnam, one of the countries with the most dynamic growth of blockchain, has 12% of its cryptocurrency projects, which are classified as fraud, which indicates the dangers of developing markets with weak regulation.
South Korea and Singapore are at the head of the list with 59% and 54% of project failures respectively. The United Kingdom, Canada, and the Netherlands also ranks high on the list with over half of the countries’ project failures. Vietnam has 42% of projects that failed and is the sixth worst country for project failure rates, this shows that it is difficult to continue growing long-term crypto projects in the region.
Although Vietnam is considered one of the leading countries in the development of blockchain projects, it also has the same issue as other countries in terms of project sustainability and legalization. The 1.3% crypto scam projects and 2% dead projects classify Vietnam in the top ten for both categories pointing to the development of the country’s crypto industry.
