A new cyber-security study from Southern Methodist University has revealed that fraudlent scams, including online ponzi schemes, have stolen around $11m in Bitcoin deposits from innocent cyber-users during the past four years.
Southern Methodist University computer security expert Marie Vasek said: "Our calculation of $11 million is almost certainly at the low-end."
"We found that the most successful scams draw the vast majority of their revenue from a few victims."
During the period between 2011 and 2014, approximately 41 scams were detected, in which fake sites skimmed Bitcoin from 13,000 victims.
Revenues of only 21% of the overall schemes were detectable by researchers, signifying that the amount of Bitcoins originally stolen would be more than $11m.
SMU’s program director Tyler Moore said: "Because the complete history of Bitcoin transactions are made public, we have been able to inspect, for the first time, the money flowing in and out of fraudulent schemes in great detail."
"It’s like having access to all of Bernie Madoff’s books for many of these scams. The amount of fraud being attracted by Bitcoin is a testament to the fact the virtual currency is gaining in legitimacy."
"But scams that successfully hijack funds from depositors may end up scaring away consumers who will fear using Bitcoin for their legitimate digital transactions."
According to blockchain.info, there are about 13.7 million Bitcoins in circulation, with the number of transactions surpassing 100,000 per day.
As part of research, researchers identified three scams including mining investment scams, scam wallets and exchange scams.
