UK Government’s Fraud Strategy Paints Crypto as ‘Growing Risk’

The UK government has published its Fraud Strategy 2026 to 2029 document, highlighting the “growing risk” posed by cryptocurrency.

The report’s authors noted that cryptocurrency is now part of “routine activity” in day-to-day life, alongside social media, telecommunications and digital payments. But, it argued, emerging technologies will “continue to shape” the threat posed by fraud, pointing to crypto’s role in facilitating investment fraud.

The policy paper framed fraud as a system-wide threat and said that delivery will rely on stronger coordination across government, police, private-sector platforms, and civil society. It also pointed to operational measures including a new public-private Online Crime Centre, an expanded “Stop! Think Fraud” campaign, and the rollout of the Report Fraud service as part of the state response.

While the strategy page does not center crypto as a standalone chapter in its summary text, blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis said digital-asset flows are now too large to treat as peripheral. In comments shared with Decrypt, Jordan Wain, UK Public Policy Lead at Chainalysis, said that globally in 2025, “up to $17 billion in crypto was transferred to addresses associated with scams and fraud,” adding that industrialized scam networks are increasingly using AI-enabled social engineering and pig-butchering tactics.

Wain said the UK has “long been leading by example” on fraud policy and argued that the latest strategy can go further by hard-wiring blockchain analytics into existing fraud-sharing frameworks spanning banks, fintechs, telecoms, online platforms, and crypto firms. He added that crypto’s transparency creates a “powerful flywheel of fraud disruption,” affording investigators visibility into financial flows that is often harder to achieve in traditional finance.

Nevertheless, while Chainalysis pointed to crypto’s transparency as giving investigators “visibility that traditional finance often lacks,” the conversation around crypto privacy tools is increasingly gaining traction, with the U.S. Treasury this week conceding that coin mixers such as the previously sanctioned Tornado Cash can serve lawful privacy purposes.

Crypto fraud around the world

A central pressure point highlighted by the report is geography: with roughly three-quarters of fraud against UK individuals and businesses described by Chainalysis as originating from, or being facilitated from, overseas, Wain said the strategy should be treated as a “transnational security challenge” rather than a purely domestic consumer-crime initiative.

The report highlighted the cross-border nature of cryptocurrency, with “poly-criminal” fraud operations incorporating human trafficking, money laundering and organized crime spreading beyond hubs such as Southeast Asia to South America and even Europe.

So-called “scam compounds” have become a growing issue across Southeast Asia, with Amnesty International warning that mass escapes of coerced workers have created a “humanitarian crisis” in Cambodia. In September 2025, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 19 entities across Burma and Cambodia, while last month the cross-agency Scam Center Strike Force, established in November 2026, announced that crypto seizures and freezes had reached $580 million.