A recent study by Sopra Steria, The global economic impact of disinformation, estimates direct losses of $5.5 billion from this type of scam in 2024.
Chainalysis on-chain data helps contextualise the figure, according to François Volpoët, Managing Director France, Israel and Francophone Africa at Chainalysis. "Our figures place total crypto scams at $9.9 billion in on-chain flows in 2024, and we estimate this could be revised up to $12.4 billion as we identify new fraudulent addresses," he says. "Pig butchering alone accounts for a significant share of this increase, with revenue growth of nearly 40% in 2025 and a rise of more than 200% in the number of deposits."
The sharp contrast between a surge in deposit volumes and a decline in average losses per victim points to a shift in the business model, marked by genuine industrialisation of the scam. Criminal organisations are targeting more victims, faster, for smaller individual amounts but higher overall profitability.
Alexandre Eich Gozzi, Head of Product Management Financial Services at Sopra Steria and Lead of Sopra Crypto Solutions, says that overall, such scams are small-scale, but can have devastating consequences on their victims and on wider trust in crypto investment.
"At the scale of global blockchain volumes today, all fraud and scams represent between 0.3% and 0.5% of transactions," he says. "That is minimal. But the social and reputational impact is very strong. These scams affect individuals who can lose their entire savings. And that is precisely what fuels distrust in the ecosystem."
Generative AI as an accelerant
The sharp rise seen in 2024 is largely explained by the widespread adoption of generative AI tools by criminals looking to commit fraud. Real-time translation, voice deepfakes, synthetic personas and personalised manipulation scripts, which once required weeks of training, now operate at an industrial scale.
"Flows directed towards AI service providers used by fraud actors grew by 1,900% annually between 2021 and 2024," says Volpoët. "In practical terms, generative AI allows criminal organisations to produce convincing content at very low cost and at industrial scale. It is now the main threat to financial institutions in terms of fraud."
This industrialisation is supported by a dedicated network of criminal services. The Cambodian platform Huione Guarantee has been identified by Chainalysis as a one-stop shop for fraudsters, offering services ranging from targeted data sales and hosting services to social network setup and laundering. It has processed nearly $100 billion in cryptocurrency since 2021 and was subject to a FinCEN measure in October 2025 excluding the organisation from the US financial system.
For Eich Gozzi, this is less about technology and more an escalation of long-standing criminal techniques. "Social engineering — such as scams involving senior executives and romance fraud — has always existed. What is changing is the value of cryptocurrencies, the increasing amount of money in the ecosystem, and the availability of tools that enable manipulation at scale. This is not an issue inherent to blockchain technology itself. The protocol remains highly secure."
The myth of anonymity
Long used as a criticism of crypto, the argument of anonymity does not withstand technical scrutiny. Public blockchains are, by design, traceable ledgers and this transparency is precisely what allows investigators to follow financial flows and so help to identify such scams.
"Cryptocurrency paradoxically offers law enforcement a level of traceability that traditional payment systems do not provide," explains Volpoët. "Every transaction is recorded in a public, permanent ledger. Our role is to attribute addresses to identifiable entities (exchanges, mixers, illicit platforms) to reconstruct laundering chains and enable asset seizures," he says.
Recent seizures illustrate the maturity of this approach. In August 2025, cooperation between Chainalysis, OKX, Binance, Tether and several Asia-Pacific authorities enabled the freezing of $47 million in USDT, a dollar-pegged stablecoin widely used in crypto markets, linked to pig butchering operations in Southeast Asia. In June 2025, US Secret Service operations recovered $225 million in USDT, one of the largest crypto seizures ever conducted by the agency.
Eich-Gozzi argues that such traceability is already changing outcomes. "Even in ransom cases, funds can be traced and blocked. In crypto, assets can be frozen immediately once they hit an exchange. The likelihood that the recipient can actually use the funds is much lower than with cash."
Pig butchering as a geopolitical risk?
Beyond opportunistic fraud, the crypto ecosystem has become a strategic target for state actors. North Korea is the most documented example, according to Volpoët. "In 2025, North Korean hackers stole at least $2.02 billion in cryptocurrency, up 51% year-on-year," he says.
"They accounted for 76% of all centralised service compromises. The cumulative total of funds stolen by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) since our records began now stands at $6.75 billion, directly financing the regime's ballistic and nuclear programmes."
Techniques are evolving, enabling fewer attacks but significantly higher individual amounts, infiltration of North Korean IT operators into crypto firms under false identities and long-term social engineering targeting executives. The boundary between cybercrime, laundering and weapons financing is becoming increasingly difficult to separate.
From diagnosis to response: the banking layer
It is in this context that Eich Gozzi positions Sopra Crypto Solutions. His experience at Chainalysis shaped an offering in which compliance is not an additional layer but the core architecture.
"When we designed Sopra Crypto Solutions the aim was to place compliance at the heart of the system, not as a peripheral layer. We are now able to automatically freeze a client account upon receipt of a suspicious transaction, with Chainalysis analysis in under 30 seconds. That may seem standard in traditional banking, but in crypto it is an industrial leap."
The MiCA regulation, a new EU law which regulates crypto-assets and related service and activities, and the Transfer of Funds Regulation introducing the travel rule (which requires identifying information about the originator and beneficiary for crypto transactions), define this new framework. However, operational interpretation remains complex, says Eich Gozzi. "MiCA sets a framework but does not define operational rules. Take a simple example: on Bitcoin, you have a chain of transactions and compliance requires tracing that history. But how far back do you go? One transaction? Thirty? Fifty? The lack of clarity leaves each actor to interpret it as they see fit. For compliance officers, it is a daily puzzle. And that is precisely where the quality of the response is determined."
BPCE: a signal of a European banking shift
On December 8, 2025, BPCE, via its subsidiary Hexarq, opened access to crypto currencies Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and USDC for 2 million retail clients in a pilot phase, with a planned rollout to 12 million customers by the end of 2026. The mutual banking group joins BBVA, Santander Openbank and Raiffeisen among European institutions integrating digital assets into core banking services.
"The entry of major European banks into crypto distribution is excellent news for fraud prevention," says Volpoët. "These institutions apply mature AML standards, have experienced compliance teams and are legally responsible for the flows they process. This represents a massive shift of crypto liquidity into regulated — and therefore traceable — channels."
For Eich Gozzi, the shift reinforces the value of native banking integration. "When we work with a bank, we have compliance officers who are trained and experienced across all areas of finance. They retain the final say. Our role is to provide them with the tools to make decisions based on the right information. True maturity is not full automation; it is freeing up expert time for the cases that truly require it."
"Pig butchering", meaning "fattening and then slaughtering the pig", refers to frauds in which scammers build a personal or professional relationship with their victim over several weeks or months before steering them towards a scam, often a fake crypto investment platform.