Chainalysis estimated crypto scams and fraud stole up to US$17 billion in 2025, citing a sharp rise in impersonation and AI-enabled scams.
Chainalysis estimates that as much as US$17 billion was stolen in crypto scams and fraud during 2025, as impersonation tactics and AI enablement increased the scale and efficiency of scam operations.
Scammers received at least US$14 billion on-chain in 2025, up from the US$9.9 billion initially reported for 2024, which it later recalculated to US$12 billion. Based on historical patterns, Chainalysis said the 2025 total could exceed US$17 billion as additional illicit wallet addresses are identified.
The average scam payment increased from US$782 in 2024 to US$2,764 in 2025, a 253% rise year on year. It also reported a surge in impersonation scams, which it estimated grew more than 1,400% year on year, with the average severity of payments to impersonation clusters increasing by more than 600%.
It added that traditional scam categories are becoming less distinct as fraudsters blend impersonation, social engineering, and technical wallet-focused tactics, while high-yield investment programmes and pig butchering remain dominant by volume.
Chainalysis highlighted major operations becoming increasingly industrialised, citing sophisticated infrastructure such as phishing-as-a-service tooling, AI-generated deepfakes, and professional money laundering networks.
Moreover, AI-linked scams were materially more profitable, reporting that scams with on-chain links to AI vendors extracted an average of US$3.2 million per operation, compared with US$719,000 for those without such links.
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