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Hong Kong Investors Lost $50M from Crypto Scams in 2022

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Hong Kong Investors Lost $50M from Crypto Scams in 2022

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The worrying rise in these scams may be because more and more people in Hong Kong are interested in cryptocurrencies. A recent study found that this country is best prepared to deal with Cryptocurrency Market. In the second half of 2021, there will be 105% more scams involving cryptocurrency than in the first half.

The South China Morning Post says there were 10,613 cyber attacks in Hong Kong between the beginning and the end of the second month. Compared to the same period in 2021, the number of scams that used cryptocurrencies went up by 105%, to 798.

Thieves stole $21 million from people and businesses in Hong Kong that dealt with digital assets in the first half of 2021. But they took HK $387.9 million, about $50 million, in the second half of 2021.

Fan, a woman, was hurt because of this crime. She is 30 years old and runs a shop in the area where people can trade money. Someone she didn’t know sent her a message saying they were in charge of a digital asset platform. She got the message through WhatsApp. This message was sent to her a few months ago. She spent about $280,000 worth of Tether when she fell for the thief’s trick.

Not long after that, though, the thief told Fan to move the money to a bitcoin wallet that might not be safe. After the con artist stopped talking to her, she couldn’t get to her money or property.

The Hong Kong police looked into the situation further and found that thefts of digital assets were one of the top three types of thefts in the country in the first half of 2022. The other two were making fake job offers and shopping online without permission.

How Hong Kong handles, cryptocurrency is getting better.

In Hong Kong, there are a lot of scams that involve cryptocurrencies. People, there might be more interested in digital assets than they used to be. A survey done at the start of this month found that the special administrative area of China is the country that is most ready to use cryptocurrencies.

Getting first place was the result of several things interacting with each other, like how the government feels about the business, how many bitcoin ATMs are available, and how many people are interested in the business per person.

The United States, which has the largest economy in the world, came in second, and Switzerland, the financial centre of Europe, came in third. There are fake websites and apps that claim to be safe ways to buy, sell, and store cryptocurrency.

The best-performing trading sites and apps are exact copies of the originals. Too bad they look a lot like the real ones, and some of them show up high in Google search results, making it hard to spot the danger.

Investors can “buy” bitcoin through these fake websites and apps and even use fake charts to see how their money is growing. Several cryptocurrency services let users withdraw small amounts of money to build trust and show that they can be trusted. But when the investors try to get all of their money back, they will find that it has already been stolen. If you are a beginner, engage in Bitcoin trading confidently with Bitcoin smart.

Legal Recourse?

If you look at the decisions and judgments that the Hong Kong Courts have made about cryptocurrencies, you can see that if you don’t know who the scammers are and the money can’t be found in Hong Kong, it can be very hard to get help from the Hong Kong Courts or law enforcement agencies, like the Police, because they don’t have the power to do so.

This is because Hong Kong courts don’t have the power to look into cryptocurrencies or punish people who use them. Compared to other money disputes, it’s hard to fight over crypto transactions. Crypto assets sent to a different wallet address are hard to find.

Even if we find them, they might already be in another country, so the Hong Kong police might not be able to help. If you fall for a crypto scam, you can best contact the authorities in your area as soon as possible and try to get the scammer’s account frozen. You can keep your assets in your home country or Hong Kong.

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