Crypto scam losses reached $370.3M in January 2026, CertiK reports

The cryptocurrency industry lost approximately $370.3 million to exploits and scams in January 2026, the highest in nearly 11 months and nearly four times the amount lost in January 2025, CertiK data show. A single social engineering attack accounted for approximately $284 million of the total, with 40 related security incidents recorded in January. On Feb. 22, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams warned of fake search engine ads impersonating Uniswap, with scammers purchasing keywords such as "Uniswap" to push lookalike websites to the top of search results; the fraudulent sites closely mimic the official interface, and once users connect wallets and authorize transactions, funds are immediately drained through signature authorizations rather than protocol-layer vulnerabilities, BlockBeats reports. A user identified as "Ika" on X said their wallet assets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars were lost after clicking a counterfeit link at the top of search results, and a similar interface replication incident was reported in October 2024.