Tracking Counterfeit Cryptocurrency End-to-end

Bingyu Gao, Haoyu Wang, Pengcheng Xia, Siwei Wu, Yajin Zhou, Xiapu Luo, Gareth Tyson

Research output: Chapter in book / Conference proceedingConference article published in proceeding or bookAcademic researchpeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

With the growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, there is expanding evidence that counterfeit cryptocurrency has also appeared. In this paper, we empirically explore the presence of counterfeit cryptocurrencies on Ethereum and measure their impact. By analyzing over 190K ERC-20 tokens (or cryptocurrencies) on Ethereum, we have identified 2,117 counterfeit tokens that target 94 of the 100 most popular cryptocurrencies. We perform an end-to-end characterization of the counterfeit token ecosystem, including their popularity, creators and holders, fraudulent behaviors and advertising channels. Through this, we have identified two types of scams related to counterfeit tokens and devised techniques to identify such scams. We observe that over 7,104 victims were deceived in these scams, and the overall financial loss sums to a minimum of $17 million (74,271.7 ETH). Our findings demonstrate the urgency to identify counterfeit cryptocurrencies and mitigate this threat.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSIGMETRICS 2021 - Abstract Proceedings of the 2021 ACM SIGMETRICS / International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages33-34
Number of pages2
ISBN (Electronic)9781450380720
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 31 May 2021
Event2021 ACM SIGMETRICS / International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems, SIGMETRICS 2021 - Virtual. Online, China
Duration: 14 Jun 202118 Jun 2021

Publication series

NameSIGMETRICS 2021 - Abstract Proceedings of the 2021 ACM SIGMETRICS / International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems

Conference

Conference2021 ACM SIGMETRICS / International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems, SIGMETRICS 2021
Country/TerritoryChina
CityVirtual. Online
Period14/06/2118/06/21

Keywords

  • blockchain
  • counterfeit cryptocurrency
  • ethereum
  • scam

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computational Theory and Mathematics
  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Software

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