Scammers have been trying to leverage the fears over the current pandemic to dupe people. They are trying to lure people to download malicious applications, donate to fake charities, or purport to sell coronavirus fears. However, the pandemic seems to have led to a steep fall in the revenues of cryptocurrency scammers.

On April 10, Chainalysis released data showing that the average value of transactions received by the wallets of known scams reduced by 30 percent last month. Besides, the cryptocurrency market crash that happened last month seems to have contributed to the reduction.

The aggregated daily value of transfers to wallets owned by scammers was around $10k between Mar. 13 and Mar. 31. However, according to the report, the value declined by 61 percent over two weeks after then. Since then, the value taken in by scams has increased from close to $5k to about $7k.

As indicated in the data, concerns regarding scams related to the current pandemic have been overblown, and most of recently scammed cryptocurrency has been through Ponzi schemes — standing for more than 95 percent of the aggregated sums taken in by cryptocurrency scams in 2019.

Chainalysis noted that there is a little upturn in email scams and the current pandemic has provided nascent narratives that scammers can use in tricking people to provide access to their wallet or send cryptocurrency under false pretenses.

For instance, in the past week, Chainalysis reported an email scam that involved the impersonation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to solicit donations for research into COVID-19 treatments.

The company also noted that baleful blackmail schemes capitalizing on the pandemic have emerged. Such blackmail schemes claim to be from people confirmed to have COVID-19. Scammers then request for ransom in cryptocurrency assets with the threat of spreading the virus to the email recipient’s friends and family.