Cryptocurrency troubles remain despite their rise — here's how to protect yourself

financialpost.com:

A lot of investors have shunned cryptocurrencies and for good reason. After all, who wants to invest in something that is made up, has no real use other than to help commit crimes and is as unstable as a chair with two legs.

That said, investors who got in during the early days of, say, bitcoin or Elon Musk’s joke, dogecoin, have made plenty of money and aren’t afraid to brag about it. So much so that even diehard conservative investors are at least giving cryptocoins another look, especially since Canadian securities regulators and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission are putting tougher rules in place to help protect the innocent.

Despite that new oversight, cryptocurrency fraud and illicit activity are still prevalent, leaving investors with questions about the safety of putting any of their money into the industry’s hands.

“The decentralized and pseudonymous nature of many cryptocurrencies makes it challenging to trace fraudulent activities back to their perpetrators,” says Tony Anscombe, chief security evangelist at ESET Canada Inc., a Thornhill, Ont.-based cybersecurity firm. “Transactions on the blockchain, unlike traditional banking, are often irreversible, which provides the fraudsters with a certainty of monetizing their crime.”

Here, he offers his take on why cryptocurrency fraud is so prevalent and how investors and consumers alike can protect themselves.

Q: Why is cryptocurrency fraud so rife?

A: The absence of regulatory oversight in the cryptocurrency space leaves investors susceptible to various scams and fraudulent schemes. The lack of a central authority to monitor and regulate transactions also contributes to the prevalence of fraud, as there are fewer safeguards in place to protect