Crypto exchange platforms, investors and clients have suffered a total of $4.3 billion net worth of financial damage caused by cyber criminals.

Blockchain cybersecurity firm CipherTrace issued an AML report and reported by Cointelegraph on August 12.

Per the report, thefts, scams, along with numerous types of funds misappropriation by crypto holders, as well as trading platforms, have unintentionally contributed $4.3 billion to the hackers’ accounts in 2019.

In the first months of the 2019 business year, hackers have illegally secured $124 million from crypto firms, making up nearly one-third of the total $480 million of the whole year.

The case that individually caused the biggest loss is the  PlusToken scheme, which fraudulently acquired $2.9 million from investors.

Bitcoin has seemed to be the most common digital currency employed by hackers in their criminal acts, which specifically facilitate the transactions of illegal drugs, weapons, as well as cyber and banking credentials. 

Other digital coins, nominally Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Monero (XMR), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Dogecoin (DOGE) are still widely used. 

“The results show that privacy coins are barely used in dark markets and at dark vendor sites (e.g. only 4% of instances involve Monero (XMR). Instead, Bitcoin remains the coin of the realm in this shady world, with BTC used in 76% of dark market cases and ETC used in only 7% of instances.”

As for ransomware and malware, Bitcoin is involved in 98% of the reported case, whereas the figure for Ether only stands at 1%.