In 2025, the crypto industry faced an unprecedented surge in crimes related to identity impersonation. According to estimates by analysts and cybersecurity companies, the number of such incidents increased by approximately 1400% over the year, while the average damage per victim rose by more than 600%. In effect, this is no longer about isolated episodes but about a systemic threat that affects both retail investors and large companies.
The main attack vector is the imitation of well-known crypto exchanges, investment platforms, analytical services, and public figures. Scammers create fake social media accounts, counterfeit websites with almost perfect design, and copies of official emails and notifications. Spoofed domains are often used, differing from the real ones by just a single letter, as well as advertising campaigns that lead users to phishing pages.
Classic social engineering received a technological boost in 2025. Whereas criminals previously relied on template emails and crude scripts, today they use AI to generate personalized messages, mimic the communication style of specific individuals and companies, and analyze the public activity of the victim. As a result, an email or message looks extremely convincing, with accurate wording, references to current events, and even links to real blockchain transactions.
A separate area involves impersonation of well-known influencers, project founders, and exchange support representatives. Through hacked or fake accounts, victims are offered “exclusive” investment opportunities, access to private sales, urgent account verification, or wallet recovery. Time pressure is one of the key tools: people are made to believe they have only a few minutes, otherwise their funds will be blocked or lost.
Artificial intelligence has made these schemes not only more convincing but also highly scalable. Automated bots can conduct thousands of conversations simultaneously, adapting to victims’ responses, while deepfake technologies enable fake voice messages and video calls on behalf of “familiar” people or company representatives. What seemed like science fiction just a few years ago has become routine for criminal groups in 2025.
Against this backdrop, total losses from all types of crypto fraud in 2025 are estimated at around $17 billion. A substantial portion of this amount comes specifically from impersonation schemes, as they most often result in direct and rapid transfers of funds to scammers with no possibility of reversal. In blockchain systems, this is an irreversible process: sent tokens or cryptocurrencies are practically impossible to recover.
Experts note that the growth of such crimes undermines trust in the market as a whole and accelerates regulatory pressure. In response, the industry is strengthening protective measures: mandatory multi-factor authentication is being implemented, crypto exchanges are more actively educating users about risks, and analytics companies are developing tools to track fraudulent addresses. However, the most vulnerable element remains the human factor.
In 2025, identity impersonation in crypto has definitively ceased to be a niche issue. It has become one of the key threats to the market, alongside hacks and smart contract vulnerabilities. And as practice shows, the smarter technologies become, the more important basic security rules and healthy skepticism are. In crypto, as in life, free cheese is still found in a mousetrap — it just looks more expensive and more convincing now.
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