A recent report by Dais at the Toronto Metropolitan University said that one in three Canadian cryptocurrency owners has experienced a scam in one form or another. The report stated that one in 10 citizens of the country aged at least 16 owns digital assets. It adds that this is about 3 million people, one-third of whom said that they have lost funds to cryptocurrency scams.

The study said that the scams reported by the victims are of different types, such as fraudulent cryptocurrency investments, scams targeting cryptocurrency wallets, and rug-pulls, in which fraudsters inflated the value of a digital currency to dump it on investors.

Owners are mostly young, educated males

The study supported by Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst surveyed 2000 Canadians, who are young, university-educated men who earn a high income.

The study also showed that 35% of those who reported losses due to scams are low-income earners who are less educated. 

19% of crypto owners reported that they have been targets of online criminal threats due to their cryptocurrencies. Just 6% of those who do not own cryptocurrencies have experienced such harassment.

Cryptocurrency owners in Canada do not have confidence in the ability of crypto exchanges to keep their coins secure.

A need to address cybersecurity and sociotechnical threats

 André Côté, report co-author, and director of policy and research at Dais, said that there is a lot of needed enlightenment to reduce the risks associated with owning cryptocurrencies. Côté said, 

“Our first report on this topic provides the latest evidence that while federal financial regulators have made commendable efforts to protect Canadian crypto-asset owners, more needs to be done to address the cybersecurity and sociotechnical threats,”

He said that there is a need for policymakers to take a deeper look at the issue with the objective of understanding this group of Canadians who are targets of criminal groups because they hold digital assets.