Research from the University of Queensland suggests that educating the public about crypto scams in Australia should shift from individuals to “trusted independent sources.”

The study found the most effective way to mitigate the risk of crypto scams is to enhance the quality of online financial education provided by “reliable” sources.

Scams involving the asset class have impacted people from all socioeconomic levels, and their effectiveness comes down to people making decisions based on poor-quality information, the university’s research found.

UQ suggested that the two most “at risk” groups of people from scams were those from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds and those with a university education that were financially literate, Levon Blue, a UQ associate professor, said in a statement on Sunday.

The common reason people from these groups fell for scams was that they would make decisions based on poor information, UQ said.

“The number one place people learned about cryptocurrency was social media,” Blue said.

That’s proven problematic for users in the past who have fallen for scams or false endorsements involving crypto, particularly on social media platform X.

There have been a number of high-profile crypto scams this year involving the platform and celebrity accounts, with hackers gaining access to shill meme coins usually based on Solana.

Australia has one of the highest cryptocurrency adoption rates, and it’s still growing. More than one quarter (25.6%) of Australians own some form of crypto, according to Statista, making it one of the leading nations in the developed world for crypto ownership.

With that level of ownership, scams can potentially threaten a broad cross-section of society, and AUD $171 million ($114 million) was lost in the country last year, according to the university’s research.

“Our findings suggest that online financial education from trusted independent sources is urgently needed to help combat scams and to keep Australians and their crypto assets safe,” Blue said.

Technologies such as AI are making it more difficult to assess the quality of information on social media.

In April, ABC Australia reported on how deep fake clips of well-known personalities are being played on social media to give people confidence in the content and sign up for the platforms the celebrity appears to be endorsing.

Another concern is that the regulatory bodies are not helping Australians protect themselves from risk.

Late last year, The Guardian highlighted the Australian Securities and Investment Commission was often slow and had a “skill shortage” in crypto knowledge, meaning that while overseas regulators were flagging high-provide crypto initiatives as “suspected pyramid schemes,” those operations were running as legitimate and high-profile businesses in Australia.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair