The Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau are warning American consumers about the rise of cryptocurrency scams.

According to a Pew Research study published in November of 2021, over 53 million Americans, or 16% of the total population said they have personally invested in or traded Bitcoin or Ether. A growing number of those individuals are men between the ages of 16 and 29 years old.

The FTC reported that that cryptocurrency scams were the second highest grossing scam with reported loss of over 750 million dollars.

Stephanie Garland of the Better Business Bureau has this advice. “Just be careful. Again, bitcoin ATM’s if were going to talk about bitcoin exchanges, if were going to talk about Defy, decentralized finance. Just keep in mind there’s a lot of fancy terminology that’s being thrown out there and again if you don’t know a ton about it, don’t invest in it.”

The percentage of individuals who say they’ve invested in cryptocurrency doubles for men between the ages of 18 to 29, at 31%. Better Business Scam Tracker data shows that cryptocurrency scams most commonly originate on social media.