AI scams in crypto are skyrocketing, warns the CFTC

The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) warns against the increase in scams fraudulently using artificial intelligence (AI) to attract crypto investors with the promise of extraordinary returns.

More Sophisticated Crypto Scams

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has recently sounded the alarm about the proliferation of scams related to artificial intelligence (AI) in the crypto sector.

Ruthless con artists are exploiting the growing popularity of AI and crypto to bait their victims. They claim to possess revolutionary trading algorithms and bots capable of generating incredible profits under any circumstances.

“With the increasing use of AI in our daily lives, scammers claim it can generate huge returns through robots, automated trading algorithms, crypto asset arbitrage algorithms, and other AI-assisted technologies,” the CFTC states.

These charlatans especially take advantage of the public’s ignorance about the true limitations of AI. Thus, they cultivate the illusion that this technology can predict the future and consistently outperform the markets, whether traditional or crypto.

Losses Amounting to Billions

However, as sophisticated as they are, AIs do not allow for the production of fantastic profits or to predict market fluctuations with certainty. The scammers’ promises are therefore pure lies, aimed only at extorting money from their victims before fleeing.

And the scam is operating at full throttle. Amplified by social media, these false promises of easy profits have already resulted in losses totaling billions of dollars, according to the CFTC. In 2021 alone, scams based on false AI promises caused the equivalent of $1.7 billion in Bitcoin to vanish.

In the face of this scourge, the CFTC is therefore calling on investors to exercise the utmost caution. Dealing with a technology still poorly understood, the miraculous promises regarding AI often conceal scammers ready to do anything to enrich themselves fraudulently. Caution must therefore remain the order of the day.