NFT thefts were on average valued at $300,000.
In July 2022, 4,600 NFTs were stolen at a record rate.

In a statement, Elliptic, a London-based Blockchain Analytics firm, said that more than $100 million worth of non-fungible tokens were stolen during the past 12 months. report published Wednesday.

According to the firm the numbers represent NFT thefts reported publicly between July 2021 & July 2022. It is possible that it is higher.

$300k per NFT scam

Scammers made an average of $300,000. per theft during this period. A record 4,600 NFTs were stolen in July 2022. This indicates that NFT frauds are still increasing despite the crypto winter’s impact on the wider market.

Sanctioned Tonado Cash may have been used for processing the NFT money stolen from marketplaces. Elliptic places this figure at approximately 52%.

Elliptic notes in the report that NFT-based platforms helped to launder more $8 million worth of illicit funds since 2017. These amounts, according to Elliptic analytics, account for 0.2% of trading activity that is tracked to known sources.

NFT sales

The report covers the last bull market, when the NFTs sector was at its peak. With only a few hundred million dollars’ worth of sales seen in 2020, last year’s rally – particularly between July and November – pushed sales volumes in the NFT market well over $40 billion for the year.

However, the outlook for 2022 has been a bit different. The bear market contributed to a substantial decline in sales.

But even so, a recent Chainalysis reports that the number of NFT buyers in Q2 of this year was only slightly higher than those seen in Q3 2021 or Q1 2022.