Over 60% of all scams are related to digital currencies: Austrian regulator
Business
The Austrian financial watchdog has revealed that cryptocurrency-related scams have shot up in the Central European country. They accounted for close to two-thirds of all financial scams in the past year, the regulator according to authorities.
The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) stated that it saw a record in whistle-blower reports of potential fraud in 2020. As Bloomberg reports, digital currencies were the main focus of most reports. Over 60% of all financial fraud in Austria last year was tied to digital currencies.
FMA spokesperson Klaus Grubelnik said that scammers have mainly targeted social media users. They promoted their scams on WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram and TikTok, he said, and this made them more difficult to stop for the regulator. With digital currencies being global, investigations are also more complicated as they span across jurisdictions.