It is easy to overstate how much changes year to year in cryptocurrency fraud. Some of what we track really has shifted meaningfully in 2026. A larger share has not, and the fundamentals that mattered five years ago still do.
Multi network activity as an obfuscation tool
As bridges and additional network layers have become routine in everyday crypto use, we see them used just as routinely to slow down a trace, not because any single hop is especially sophisticated, but because each additional network adds friction and requires a separate set of tools to follow correctly.
Exchanges responding faster than they used to
On the more encouraging side, regulated exchanges have generally become more responsive to well documented legal requests than they were even a couple of years ago, meaningfully improving the odds of a useful outcome once a trace reaches an identifiable service.
Across every year we have tracked this, early and careful evidence preservation still matters more to a case’s outcome than any single new technological development.
What has stayed the same
The scam structures themselves have not changed as much as the marketing around them. A fixed return platform, a relationship built before a financial ask, and brand impersonation remain the three structures behind the overwhelming majority of the losses we review, regardless of what the underlying technology is called this year.