LAHORE – Artificial intelligence is making cryptocurrency scams cheaper to run and easier to scale, with impersonation fraud rising sharply in 2025. Chainalysis estimates that at least $14 billion flowed into crypto scams during the year.
The figure could eventually exceed $17bn as investigators identify more illicit wallets. The average scam payment also increased significantly. It rose from $782 in 2024 to $2,764 in 2025. Payments linked to impersonation scams recorded particularly strong growth during the year.
AI makes crypto scams more profitable
Chainalysis found a significant difference between scam operations linked to AI service providers and those without visible on-chain links.
AI-linked operations collected an average of $3.2 million each. By comparison, operations without those links collected about $719,000.
AI-linked scams also recorded much higher transaction activity. They averaged 35.1 transfers a day, compared with 3.89 for other operations. That represents roughly nine times more daily transfers and about 4.5 times higher revenue.
TRM Labs separately reported an approximately 500pc increase in AI-enabled scam activity over the past year.
According to the company, generative AI allows criminals to automate several parts of fraud. These include phishing, impersonation and the creation of synthetic identities. As a result, operations that once required larger teams can now reach more victims with fewer resources.
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Deepfakes target cryptocurrency identity checks
Cryptocurrency platforms are also facing growing threats from AI-generated identities and deepfakes.
Research cited by identity-security companies suggests that an AI-generated identity designed to challenge KYC systems can cost less than $20 and take around 30 minutes to prepare.
Criminals can also use injection attacks to feed synthetic video directly into identity-verification systems. This allows them to bypass the need to present a real person through a physical camera.
One 2026 benchmark found that injection attacks defeated basic single-layer liveness checks in 58pc of cases.
Binance Research said cryptocurrency accounts for 88pc of detected deepfake fraud cases globally. It also reported that around 80pc of attacks targeting Binance involve some form of KYC fraud.
Crypto platforms and authorities step up enforcement
The cryptocurrency industry is also using artificial intelligence to strengthen its defences.
Binance said AI has improved the operational efficiency of its KYC processing by up to 100 times. The company also continues to retrain its systems to detect face attacks and other attempts to bypass liveness checks.
Authorities and financial crime units are also targeting the money generated through crypto scams.
Binance Research said Tether had frozen more than $4.4 billion in assets by April 2026. The T3 Financial Crime Unit had also frozen more than $300 million during its first year.
Meanwhile, INTERPOL’s Operation First Light 2026 led to 5,811 arrests across 97 countries and territories. Authorities also intercepted around $293m in illicit assets.
Europol’s Operation Endgame disrupted 326 servers and 142 domains. Authorities recovered 27m stolen credentials and restricted more than €41m, or about $47m, in criminal crypto assets.
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AI changes the scale of crypto fraud
The figures suggest that criminals are not necessarily creating entirely new types of scams.
Instead, artificial intelligence is changing how quickly and cheaply they can operate.
Criminals can use AI to create convincing identities, produce fraudulent content, communicate with victims and automate parts of their operations.
At the same time, cryptocurrency companies and law enforcement agencies are expanding their own use of AI to identify suspicious activity, strengthen identity checks and trace illicit funds.
The growing use of AI on both sides means the fight against cryptocurrency fraud is likely to depend increasingly on how quickly defensive systems can keep pace with increasingly sophisticated scams.
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Key points:
- AI-powered crypto scams are becoming cheaper and easier for criminals to scale.
- Impersonation fraud increased by more than 1,400pc in 2025.
- At least $14 billion flowed into crypto scams during the year, according to Chainalysis.
- AI-linked scam operations collected an average of $3.2 million, compared with $719,000 for other operations.
- Criminals are increasingly using deepfakes, synthetic identities and AI-generated content to bypass identity checks.
- Law enforcement agencies are also using AI and other technologies to detect scams and recover illicit assets.
