A year of steep declines in crypto markets brought another unwanted element – a dramatic increase in scams including “rug pulls.”Read MoreCoinDesk
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The year 2022 is likely to go down as one of the worst ever in the blockchain industry’s volatile history. But for scammers trolling digital-asset markets for suckers or even easy pickings from savvy crypto traders, it’s been a banner year.
This article originally appeared in Crypto Markets Today, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter diving into what happened in today’s crypto markets. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.
A new report from blockchain risk monitoring firm Solidus Labs shows that fraudsters deployed over 117,000 scam tokens from Jan. 1 to Dec. 1, 2022, a 41% increase over the full 2021.
The study also revealed that 8% of all Ethereum tokens are programmed to execute rug pulls, while 12% of all BNB Chain tokens are alleged to be scams.
According to Solidus Labs, many of the scammers behind these tokens use crypto-to-fiat exchanges to both seed their scams and launder their proceeds.
“These fraudsters – benefiting from the fact that more than 99% of their malicious tokens have evaded detection under traditional approaches to scam identification – deposited and withdrew a combined $11 billion worth of ETH to/from 153 different centralized finance [CeFi] exchanges during the time period we studied,” the report read.
The scam tokens deployed in 2022 brings the total since September 2020 to more than 200,000, based on the tally by Solidus Labs. Almost 2 million investors have lost funds to rug pull tokens.
Bitcoin (BTC): The largest cryptocurrency by market value was recently trading at $16,800 and moving sideways in the 24 hours. Equities markets wrapped up the week with slight gains as investors processed cooler-than-expected consumer spending data. The S&P 500 closed up 0.59%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.54%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was up 0.21%.
Ether (ETH): The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization followed BTC’s trajectory, trading at around $1,218.
S&P 500 daily close
3,844.82
+22.4 ? 0.6%
Gold
$1,805
+18.4 ? 1.0%
Treasury Yield 10 Years
3.75%
? 0.1
BTC/ETH prices per CoinDesk Indices; gold is COMEX spot price. Prices as of about 4 p.m. ET
By Glenn Williams Jr.
Our thoughts on bitcoin’s chart are relatively unchanged from our thoughts a week ago. Momentum is fairly stagnant, with its Relative Strength Index (RSI) reading remaining in fairly neutral territory.
Past trading activity shows significant price agreement between $16,500 and $17,000. When agreement exists to this extent, prices can remain at that level for an extended period of time. This is compounded by the decline in volume that is emblematic of year end trading.
Bitcoin is currently trading fairly tightly to its 20-day moving average, and appears poised to remain there for the time being. Ether’s chart implies an almost identical situation, which is unsurprising given its persistently tight correlation with bitcoin.
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