According to Crypto Markets Today, Bitcoin ends the penultimate week of (awful) 2022 on a low note

 In the turbulent history of the blockchain business, 2022 is probably going to go down as one of the worst. However, it's been a great year for con artists who scour digital asset markets for unsuspecting victims or even easy pickings from knowledgeable crypto traders.

This post first appeared in Crypto Markets Today, a daily newsletter from CoinDesk that focuses on the day's events in the cryptocurrency markets. To receive it daily in your inbox, subscribe.

According to a recent analysis by blockchain risk monitoring company Solidus Labs, scammers used over 117,000 scam tokens between January 1 and December 1, 2022, a 41% rise from the entire year 2021.

The investigation also found that 12% of all BNB Chain tokens are allegedly scams, while 8% of all Ethereum tokens are programmed to do rug pulls.

Many of the con artists behind these tokens, according to Solidus Labs, use crypto-to-fiat swaps to both seed their con games and to launder their money.

The report stated: "During the time period we studied, these fraudsters deposited and withdrew a combined $11 billion worth of ETH to or from 153 different centralized finance [CeFi] exchanges, taking advantage of the fact that more than 99% of their malicious tokens have evaded detection under traditional approaches to scam identification."

Based on a count by Solidus Labs, the number of scam tokens released in 2022 raises the total since September 2020 to above 200,000. Due to rug pull tokens, around 2 million investors have lost money.

The most valuable cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC), was recently trading at $16,800 and had a sideways 24-hour movement. As investors absorbed lower-than-expected consumer expenditure statistics, equity markets ended the week slightly higher. The S&P 500 ended the day up 0.59%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite increased by 0.21%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by 0.54%.

Ether (ETH): Trading at about $1,218 per coin, ETH is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

current prices

Market Index for CoinDesk (CMI)

796.52

+1.9 ▲ 0.2%

Bitcoin (BTC) (BTC)

$16,804

+3.5 ▲ 0.0%

Ethereum (ETH)

$1,220

+4.7 ▲ 0.4%

S&P 500 closing each day

3,844.82

+22.4 ▲ 0.6%

Gold

$1,805

+18.4 ▲ 1.0%

Treasury 10-Year Yield

3.75%

▲ 0.1

BTC/ETH pricing is based on CoinDesk indices, while gold is priced at the COMEX.Prices as of around 4 p.m. ET

Strong economic data is bad news for bitcoin bulls, according to crypto market analysis.

Thanks to Glenn Williams Jr.

Our opinions on the bitcoin chart haven't altered much from a week ago. Relative Strength Index (RSI) readings for momentum show that it is mostly stationary and in a pretty neutral area.

Previous trade activity revealed significant price agreement between $16,500 and $17,000.Prices can stay at that level for a long time when there is this level of consensus. This is made worse by the volume reduction typical of year-end trade.

As of right now, Bitcoin is trading rather closely to its 20-day moving average and is set to stay there. Given Ether's constant association with bitcoin, its chart suggests a situation that is essentially comparable to that of bitcoin.