BTC, ETH, XRP: Crypto Scams Using AI Deepfakes Cost Victims $4.60 Billion

Cryptocurrency scams using artificial intelligence (AI) deepfakes cost consumers and businesses $4.60 billion in 2024, according to a new report co-authored by Bitget.

The amount of money fleeced from crypto users involving AI deepfakes rose 24% year-over-year as criminals increasingly employ sophisticated social engineering tactics. The findings are contained in crypto exchange Bitget’s “Anti-Scam Month Research Report,” which highlights how fraudsters are weaponizing generative AI to fool people.

Deepfakes are being used to promote false investment schemes, fraudulent tokens, and to bypass identity verification systems on crypto exchanges. “In just Q1 2025, authorities dismantled 87 deepfake-related scam operations across Asia,” states the report. In one of the largest operations, Hong Kong police arrested 31 suspects for impersonating crypto executives using AI and defrauding people of $34 million.

The scams are not confined to one or two cryptocurrencies, and can involve all different types of digital assets, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and XRP (XRP).

The Power of AI

The report warns that traditional fraud tactics are now largely obsolete and being quickly replaced by more advanced AI. Classic Ponzi and pyramid schemes are giving way to sophisticated decentralized finance (DeFi) scams that involve gamified dashboards, AI-generated photos, and forged credentials.

According to the report, nearly 40% of crypto frauds in 2024 involved AI. But despite the emergence of AI-enabled fraud, traditional crypto scams also continue to grow. One of the fastest-growing crypto scams revolves around the global expansion of Bitcoin automated teller machines (ATMs). In the U.S., Americans lost $114 million to Bitcoin ATM scams in 2023, a tenfold increase from 2020, says the report.

Is BTC a Buy?

Most Wall Street firms don’t offer ratings or price targets on Bitcoin, so we’ll look instead at its three-month performance. As one can see in the chart below, the price of BTC has risen 27.49% in the last 12 weeks.