Give and Take: An End-To-End Investigation of Giveaway Scam Conversion Rates

TL;DR

This paper investigates cryptocurrency giveaway scams by analyzing data from social media, livestreams, and blockchains, revealing their scale, success rate, and total earnings to inform effective interventions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive end-to-end analysis of giveaway scam operations, combining multi-platform data to quantify their reach, conversion rates, and total financial impact.

Findings

1 in 1000 scam tweets results in a victim transfer

4 in 100,000 livestream views lead to a victim

Scammers extracted approximately $4.62 million during the study period

Abstract

Scams -- fraudulent schemes designed to swindle money from victims -- have existed for as long as recorded history. However, the Internet's combination of low communication cost, global reach, and functional anonymity has allowed scam volumes to reach new heights. Designing effective interventions requires first understanding the context: how scammers reach potential victims, the earnings they make, and any potential bottlenecks for durable interventions. In this short paper, we focus on these questions in the context of cryptocurrency giveaway scams, where victims are tricked into irreversibly transferring funds to scammers under the pretense of even greater returns. Combining data from Twitter, YouTube and Twitch livestreams, landing pages, and cryptocurrency blockchains, we measure how giveaway scams operate at scale. We find that 1 in 1000 scam tweets, and 4 in 100,000 livestream views, net a victim, and that scammers managed to extract nearly \$4.62 million from just hundreds of victims during our measurement window.