Don’t get rugged: DeFi scams go from zero to $129 million in a year to become top financial hack

Criminals are modernizing classic investment scam tactics and bringing them to the world of DeFi where there are no rules or regulations to protect investors. Atlas VPN analyzed financial hacks over the last two-and-a-half years and found that DeFi hacks represent 76% of all major hacks for the first half of 2021. In 2020, that type of hack represented only 25% of the total.

The problem has jumped from basically zero dollars lost to DeFi hacks in 2019 to $129 million in 2020 and $361 million in the first half of this year. In 2020, DeFi hacks took in $129 million of the $516 million lost to hacks that year. So far this year,…