"Pump-and-Dump Schemes Make Crypto Fraudsters $240m"

According to security researchers at Chainalysis, market manipulators may have made over $240m last year by artificially inflating the value of Ethereum tokens.  Chainalysis investigated the 370,000 tokens launched on Ethereum between January and December 2023, 168,600 of which were available to trade on at least one decentralized exchange (DEX).  The researchers claimed that in any given month last year, fewer than 14% of all tokens launched achieved more than $300 of DEX liquidity in the subsequent month, and fewer than 6% of tokens launched in 2023 are “currently above that threshold.”  The researchers noted that while this can be partly explained by the fact that it is currently a tough marketplace to make money from, some of this activity may be fraudulent.  The researchers looked for tokens that satisfied three criteria linked to pump-and-dump scheme activity and found that (24%) of Ethereum tokens and 54% of those listed on a DEX met the criteria to suggest it was linked to a pump-and-dump scheme.  Although this only accounted for 1.3% of the total trade volume on Ethereum DEXes, it may have garnered market fraudsters as much as $242m in profits.  The researchers noted that despite the high headline figure, individual tokens subject to this market manipulation produced an average of just $2600 in profit.  

Infosecurity Magazine reports: "Pump-and-Dump Schemes Make Crypto Fraudsters $240m"