As the cryptocurrency industry continues to grow in size and number, the number of scams is also increasing proportionally in the industry. So far, many cyber-hacks as well as other kinds of exploits, and fraudulent schemes have taken place in the crypto-industry.

Every now and then, the cryptocurrency community in a different part of the world is falling victim to a cyber hack or a fraudulent scheme. This time, the cryptocurrency community in Australia has fallen prey to scammers.

As Australian locals grow more interested in the cryptocurrency industry, they are now investing in cryptocurrencies at every opportunity they can get. This is the reason several investment scams are now active in the Australian crypto market.

Surprisingly, due to the lack of knowledge of Australian locals around cryptocurrencies, they are more prone to crypto-investment scams than other countries that are used to cryptocurrencies.

Recently, a firm named Scamwatch has shared alarming data around scams that have taken place in the cryptocurrency industry. The firm has revealed that the investors’ community in Australia has lost over AU$70 million to such investment scams. At the time of writing, the AU$70 million translates to $50.5 million.

The firm has revealed that such a tremendous amount of loss to crypto-investment scams has been observed in the first six months of 2021. The scams related to cryptocurrencies have been very high in Australia. The data shared by Scamwatch shows that more than 50% of the investors taking part in such investment scams have lost their funds.

This means that majority of the cryptocurrency investors that the scammers targeted had a very small amount of knowledge and information around cryptocurrencies. This is the reason why they ended up investing in cryptocurrencies without doing any investigation and lost their funds to it.

Scamwatch has gathered information around the investment scams for cryptocurrencies through the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). In the data, Scamwatch has revealed that since the beginning of 2021, more than 53.4% of the increase has been recorded for crypto-investment complaints.

According to data, it is being speculated that the total money lost to investment scams would be around $101 million by the end of 2021. The firm has reported that so far in the running year, a total of 4,763 complaints surrounding crypto-investment scams have been reported.

Delia Rickard, the deputy chair at the ACCC, provided more detailed information around the number of scam complaints filed by the Australian investors. Rickard stated that out of the total 4,763 complaints, 2,240 of them were related to cryptocurrency scams that involved Bitcoin (BTC).

According to research, the Bitcoin investment scams in Australia have already crossed the $18.5 million figure. This is a really high figure as compared to the year 2020, where total scams involving Bitcoin in Australia amounted to $12.8 million.