Binance stops $10.5B in fraud with AI, but the AI scam profits tell a different story

Binance has blocked $10.5 billion in scam attempts with AI – a number that sounds reassuring until one realizes that it’s less than 2% of Binance’s user base. In the meantime, the competition between criminals and those trying to catch them is uneven – AI scammers are making 4.5x more profit than traditional scammers.

As more evidence emerges that criminals are increasingly using AI, the opposite is also true: billions have already been saved using AI-powered tools.

The largest crypto exchange by trading volume, Binance, said these tools helped more than 5.4 million of its users block $10.5 billion in fraud from the beginning of 2025 through Q1 2026.

In the first quarter of this year alone, the company said it prevented 22.9 million scam and phishing attempts that might have resulted in almost $2 billion in lost funds for its users. To fight these types of criminals, Binance has employed more than 24 AI-driven initiatives and more than 100 models.

"This is further supported by a range of AI-driven defenses across the ecosystem. Computer vision is used to detect fake payment proofs, while real-time language analysis helps surface scam patterns in P2P transactions," the exchange said, adding that AI-driven decision-making now powers 57% of fraud controls.

This is said to have reduced card fraud rates by 60-70% compared to industry benchmarks.

Deepfakes and synthetic identities are also targeting the company, as some users are trying to bypass identity verification tools. On this front, the exchange said AI tools are delivering up to 100x gains in preventing these cases compared to manual processes without AI.

However, the company didn't specify the potential losses its nearly 318 million clients have already suffered due to scammers. Even if a user is defrauded, the stolen funds may still be recoverable. The exchange said it helped recover $12.8 million across 48,000 cases in 2025, 41% more than in 2024.

In either case, Binance concluded that AI is now twice as good at exploitation as at detection, while the costs of AI-powered exploits keep falling by double digits. What's more, AI-enabled scams are said to be 4.5x more profitable than traditional ones, while impersonation cases surged 1,400% in 2025.

As reported by Cybernews, scammers are using various techniques to defraud crypto exchange users.

For example, another major player in the crypto field, Coinbase, saw its clients lose hundreds of millions of dollars after the company disclosed a major cybersecurity incident that exposed sensitive user data, a treasure trove for scammers.

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