3 ms·

The $75 billion number comes from a study available on SSRN that did an analysis of data from Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Tron: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c

by which 3y ago

The $75 billion number comes from a study available on SSRN that did an analysis of data from Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Tron: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4742235 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4742235. The study did not just look at reported victims, they basically started with a large sample of victim addresses and from there tried to derive the scammers' addresses and victim payments that were not reported using a handful of heuristics. You're right that it's over multiple years but even according to the study about 3/4 of the losses were from 2021-2022 if you look at Figure 9. At 50% of GDP there would be serious economic distortion that would be reflected in statistics somewhere. There would probably at the very least be a massive countrywide construction boom, and not just of fenced compounds. I'm aware of how the scam works - I'm not denying it's huge, I just think those numbers are implausibly large.

manquer 3y ago
> 75 billion number comes from a study available on SSRN I am aware, I got the date range from page 2 of the study. 50% number came from the John Oliver segment [3] in which he refers to this UNODC report[4] (page 2 ). > "Research carried out by UNODC to understand the illicit financial flows (IFFs) in the Mekong region suggests that the scam industry in one country in the region may be generating between USD7.5 and USD12.5 billion, which is half this country’s gross domestic product " > least be a massive countrywide construction boom Why should there be one? These countries are only base of operations, the operators are likely neither local nor spending the money in these countries. The scammers - the ones doing the talking are also victims, UN OHCR reports their numbers in hundreds of thousands [1][2]. There are lot of illicit money flowing through tiny regions with favorable governance like say Cayman islands or BVI it doesn't reflect in the local economy all that much. There is of course more than just money moving through here , there are also tens of thousands people working to do this but in most countries in this region few hundred thousand people are not significant and they are not paid much if at all. Both report cite internal analysis, I am not saying UN sources can not be wrong, they of course can. However in the absence of strong counter data point I would trust it. [1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/08/hundreds-thousands-trafficked-work-online-scammers-se-asia-says-un-report https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/08/hundreds-tho... [2] https://bangkok.ohchr.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/ONLINE-SCAM-OPERATIONS-2582023.pdf https://bangkok.ohchr.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/ONLINE-... [3] https://youtu.be/pLPpl2ISKTg?si=gHl2EtJBM4bstOOG https://youtu.be/pLPpl2ISKTg?si=gHl2EtJBM4bstOOG [4] https://www.unodc.org/roseap/uploads/documents/Publications/2023/TiP_for_FC_Policy_Report.pdf https://www.unodc.org/roseap/uploads/documents/Publications/...

by which 3y ago

manquer 3y ago

> 75 billion number comes from a study available on SSRN I am aware, I got the date range from page 2 of the study. 50% number came from the John Oliver segment [3] in which he refers to this UNODC report[4] (page 2 ). > "Research carried out by UNODC to understand the illicit financial flows (IFFs) in the Mekong region suggests that the scam industry in one country in the region may be generating between USD7.5 and USD12.5 billion, which is half this country’s gross domestic product " > least be a massive countrywide construction boom Why should there be one? These countries are only base of operations, the operators are likely neither local nor spending the money in these countries. The scammers - the ones doing the talking are also victims, UN OHCR reports their numbers in hundreds of thousands [1][2]. There are lot of illicit money flowing through tiny regions with favorable governance like say Cayman islands or BVI it doesn't reflect in the local economy all that much. There is of course more than just money moving through here , there are also tens of thousands people working to do this but in most countries in this region few hundred thousand people are not significant and they are not paid much if at all. Both report cite internal analysis, I am not saying UN sources can not be wrong, they of course can. However in the absence of strong counter data point I would trust it. [1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/08/hundreds-thousands-trafficked-work-online-scammers-se-asia-says-un-report https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/08/hundreds-tho... [2] https://bangkok.ohchr.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/ONLINE-SCAM-OPERATIONS-2582023.pdf https://bangkok.ohchr.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/ONLINE-... [3] https://youtu.be/pLPpl2ISKTg?si=gHl2EtJBM4bstOOG https://youtu.be/pLPpl2ISKTg?si=gHl2EtJBM4bstOOG [4] https://www.unodc.org/roseap/uploads/documents/Publications/2023/TiP_for_FC_Policy_Report.pdf https://www.unodc.org/roseap/uploads/documents/Publications/...