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Chainalysis said that crypto wallets linked to scams received $9.9 billion in cryptocurrency in 2024, according to its initial estimates

Boonchai Wedmakawand | Moment | Getty Images

Crypto fraud revenue is estimated to have hit record levels last year amid a surge in so-called romance scams as cybercriminals leverage artificial intelligence and become more organized, blockchain research firm Chainalysis warns.

In a report released Thursday, the firm said that crypto wallets linked to scams received $9.9 billion in cryptocurrency in 2024, according to its initial estimates. It predicts 2024’s figure to grow to a record of $12.4 billion as Chainalysis identifies more scam wallets. 

Chainalysis added that its yearly estimates of scam activity have risen by an average of 24% between annual reporting periods since 2020. 

According to its 2024 report, a leading reason for the uptick in scam revenue was an increase in the prevalence of romance scams, commonly known as “pig butchering.”

Pig butchering is a type of investing or romance scam in which a fraudster builds relationships with victims via social media or dating apps, intending to con them out of money through a sham investment opportunity. 

The name “pig butchering” comes from the idea that scammers must first “fatten up” the victims with flattery and fabricated bonds before “butchering,” or stealing their money.

More victims sent to slaughter 

In 2024, pig butchering revenue grew nearly 40% year over year, with the number of deposits to pig butchering scams growing nearly 210% over the same period, according to Chainalysis. 

The firm said that those differing growth rates indicated an expansion of the victim pool, prioritizing more victims in exchange for smaller payments. 

While pig butchering scams predominantly originate from large scam compounds in Southeast Asia, there are signs that such scam centers have begun to become more geographically dispersed, the report stated. 

Last December, Nigeria’s anti-graft agency announced the arrest of 792 people in a raid on a building, where the suspects were believed to be running romance scams that targeted people mostly from Europe and the Americas, according to Reuters.

Romance scams often rely on human trafficking victims to carry out fraud. An investigation by ProPublica in 2022 outlined how Chinese criminal syndicates were trafficking victims to centers in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, forcing them to perform cyberfraud under threat of violence. 

While those scam compounds are often known for running pig butchering scams, they also act as havens for other types of frauds that can be carried out via the internet, according to Eric Heintz, a global analyst at International Justice Mission, who is cited in the Chainalysis report. 

“It’s not uncommon to have multiple criminal groups operating within the same compound focusing on different scams,” he added. 

Scam ecosystem ‘professionalizes’

The dynamic of multiple criminal groups operating within a compound has also materialized online through the creation of illicit crypto marketplaces and networks, according to Chainalysis. 

Primarily, this trend has been driven by Huione Guarantee, an online forum and peer-to-peer marketplace Chainalysis says operates as a “one-stop-shop” for illicit actors looking for the technology, infrastructure and resources to conduct scams. 

The Chinese-language platform is connected to Huione Group, a Cambodian conglomerate that offers legitimate services such as overseas remittances, insurance and, in the past, even luxury tourism offerings. 

According to Chainalysis, Huione Guarantee’s activity on blockchains indicates that it’s heavily used to support the pig butchering industry and for illicit crypto-based trading of scam technology products and services. 

One of the main services that can be found on the platform is money laundering, which scammers use to conceal their illicit activity, according to Chainalysis data.  

Meanwhile, some of the illicit products found on the site include targeted data lists, web hosting services, social media accounts and AI software. In 2024, Huione scam technology vendors received at least $375.9 million in cryptocurrency. 

Since 2021, Huione Guarantee and vendors advertising through its platforms have processed $70 billion in crypto transactions.

“In short, Huione Guarantee has driven and enabled a scam ecosystem that is massive, growing, and interconnected,” the firm said in its report. 

Huione Group did not respond to a CNBC inquiry.

Artificial intelligence facilitates scams

In 2024, some of the most successful vendors on the Huione platform were AI service providers, who saw revenue grow by 1,900% year over year, as per Chainalysis data. 

This growth indicates an explosion in the use of generative AI technology to facilitate crypto scams, which often entails scammers using the tech to impersonate others or generate realistic content that fool victims into making phony investments.

Chainalysis’s report said there are dozens of software vendors hosted on Huione Guarantee that sell this type of scam AI software. 

According to Elad Fouks, head of fraud products at Chainalysis and co-founder of fraud-detection app Alterya, who is quoted in the report, generative AI can be used to amplify and scale up crypto fraud and crimes. 

“GenAI enables the generation of realistic fake content, including websites and listings, to power investment scams, purchase scams, and more, making these attacks more convincing and harder to detect,” Fouks said. 

Some Huione vendors are even advertising “face-changing services” for $200 worth of cryptocurrency. 

Since OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched in 2022 and saw its popularity grow, there have been a growing number of cases of large firms losing millions to deepfake scams. Such scams use generative AI to create synthetic and fake identities and voices that allow fraudsters to impersonate real people and bypass identity verification controls

Chainalysis says that the potential of AI technology to scale crypto scams exponentially further adds to the challenges associated with combating those crimes. 

Tackling crypto scams at scale will require sustained efforts from government agencies, regulators and organizations, the firm said.

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Nvidia says U.S. government will allow it to resume H20 AI chip sales to China

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Nvidia says U.S. government will allow it to resume H20 AI chip sales to China

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attends a roundtable discussion at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 11, 2025.

Sarah Meyssonnier | Reuters

Nvidia announced Tuesday that it hopes to resume sales of its H20 general processing units to clients in China, saying that the U.S. government had assured the company would be granted licenses.

Nvidia’s sales of the H20 chips, which had been designed specifically to keep them out of export controls on China, were halted in April.

“The U.S. government has assured NVIDIA that licenses will be granted, and NVIDIA hopes to start deliveries soon,” the company said in a statement.

This comes against the backdrop of a preliminary trade deal between Washington and Beijing last month that sought China to resume rare earth exports and the U.S. to relax tech export controls.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in recent months has ramped up his lobbying against export controls, arguing that they inhibited American tech leadership. In May, Huang said chip restrictions had already cut Nvidia’s China market share nearly in half.

Huang also announced a new “fully compliant” GPU, NVIDIA RTX PRO, saying it was ideal for smart factories and logistics.

The potential change in U.S. stance follows a meeting between Huang and U.S. President Donald Trump last week.

In his meeting with Trump and U.S. policymakers, Huang had reaffirmed Nvidia’s support for the administration’s job creation and onshoring efforts, as well as the aim for America to lead in global AI, the company said.

Meanwhile, in Beijing, it was confirmed that Huang has met with government and industry officials to discuss the benefits of AI and ways for researchers to advance safe and secure AI for the benefit of all. 

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Cognition to buy AI startup Windsurf days after Google poached CEO in $2.4 billion licensing deal

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Cognition to buy AI startup Windsurf days after Google poached CEO in .4 billion licensing deal

In this photo illustration, a man seen holding a smartphone with the logo of US artificial intelligence company Cognition AI Inc. in front of website.

Timon Schneider | SOPA Images | Sipa USA | AP

Artificial intelligence startup Cognition announced it’s acquiring Windsurf, the AI coding company that lost its CEO and several other senior employees to Google just days earlier.

Cognition said on Monday that it will purchase Windsurf’s intellectual property, product, trademark, brand and talent, but didn’t disclose terms of the deal. It’s the latest development in an AI talent war, as companies like Meta, Google and OpenAI fiercely compete for top engineers and researchers.

OpenAI had been in talks to acquire Windsurf for about $3 billion in April, but the deal fell apart, and Google said on Friday that it hired Windsurf’s co-founder and CEO Varun Mohan. Google is paying $2.4 billion in licensing fees and for compensation, as CNBC previously reported.

“Every new employee of Cognition will be treated the same way as existing employees: with transparency, fairness, and deep respect for their abilities and value,” Cognition CEO Scott Wu wrote in a memo to employees on Monday. “After today, our efforts will be as a united and aligned team. There’s only one boat and we’re all in it together.”

Cognition didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Windsurf directed CNBC to Cognition.

Cognition is best known for its AI coding agent named Devin, which is designed to help engineers build software faster. As of March, the startup had raised hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation of close to $4 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Both companies are backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Other investors in Windsurf include Greenoaks, Kleiner Perkins and General Catalyst.

“I’m overwhelmed with excitement and optimism, but most of all, gratitude,” Jeff Wang, the interim CEO of Windsurf, wrote in a post on X on Monday. “Trying times reveal character, and I couldn’t be prouder of how every single person at Windsurf showed up these last three days for each other and for our users.”

Wu said that the acquisition ensures all Windsurf employees are “treated with respect and well taken care of in this transaction.” All employees will participate financially in the deal, have vesting cliffs waived for their work to date and receive fully accelerated vesting for their, according to the memo.

“There’s never been a more exciting time to build,” Wu wrote.

WATCH: Google snatches Windsurf CEO after OpenAI deal dissolves

Google snatches Windsurf CEO after OpenAI deal dissolves

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Musk’s xAI faces European scrutiny over Grok’s ‘horrific’ antisemitic posts

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Musk's xAI faces European scrutiny over Grok's 'horrific' antisemitic posts

The Grok logo is being displayed on a smartphone with Xai visible in the background in this photo illustration on April 1, 2024. 

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

The European Union on Monday called in representatives from Elon Musk‘s xAI after the company’s social network X, and chatbot Grok, generated and spread anti-semitic hate speech, including praise for Adolf Hitler, last week.

A spokesperson for the European Commission told CNBC via e-mail that a technical meeting will take place on Tuesday.

xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sandro Gozi, a member of Italy’s parliament and member of the Renew Europe group, last week urged the Commission to hold a formal inquiry.

“The case raises serious concerns about compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA) as well as the governance of generative AI in the Union’s digital space,” Gozi wrote.

X was already under a Commission probe for possible violations of the DSA.

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Grok also generated and spread offensive posts about political leaders in Poland and Turkey, including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

Over the weekend, xAI posted a statement apologizing for the hateful content.

“First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced. … After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot,” the company said in the statement.

Musk and his xAI team launched a new version of Grok Wednesday night amid the backlash. Musk called it “the smartest AI in the world.”

xAI works with other businesses run and largely owned by Musk, including Tesla, the publicly traded automaker, and SpaceX, the U.S. aerospace and defense contractor.

Despite Grok’s recent outburst of hate speech, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded xAI a $200 million contract to develop AI. Anthropic, Google and OpenAI also received AI contracts.

CNBC’s April Roach contributed to this article.

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