Mercuryo's Ashna Vaghela warned that AI crypto scams are evolving faster than traditional security systems.
Chainalysis estimated crypto scams received at least $14 billion in 2025 as average victim payments surged 253%.
Scams and major infrastructure hacks may have reinforced negative sentiment during Bitcoin's downturn.
Crypto fraudsters are using generative AI to create synthetic identities, clone trusted brands, and produce real-time deepfake communications faster than traditional security systems can respond, Mercuryo Chief Customer Officer Ashna Vaghela has warned.
In an interview with CCN, Vaghela said the threat had shifted toward personalized attacks designed to manipulate consumers into approving transactions themselves.
The warning comes as Bitcoin's price decline continues to heighten uncertainty for consumers, with geopolitical tensions weighing on crypto and other risk assets despite sustained institutional investor demand.
Vaghela said AI-powered phishing and deepfake attacks were among the most common threats currently affecting crypto users.
Unlike conventional cyberattacks, which often exploit software vulnerabilities, many emerging scams target human behavior.
Vaghela said this allowed criminals to adapt their methods more quickly than companies could update static security systems.
"These human-centric threats evolve faster than software patch cycles because they exploit behavioral vulnerabilities rather than code bugs," she said.
Over the past 12 months, the threat landscape has undergone a "definitive tactical shift," with retail-focused fraud becoming both more common and harder to identify, the Mercuryo CCO said.
She warned that payment providers relying on older fraud-detection systems could fail to identify synthetic identities.
"What worries me most going forward is the hyper-velocity and mutability of these adversarial tactics," Vaghela said.
"Financial infrastructure providers run the risk of failing silently if they rely on legacy fraud tools that cannot detect real-time synthetic identity threats."
To counter the growing threat without making crypto payments more difficult to use, Vaghela said security would need to become largely invisible to consumers.
That would mean embedding risk controls into transaction flows rather than repeatedly requiring users to complete additional verification steps.
"By running these automated micro-checks invisibly, we can block deepfakes or synthetic identities at the fiat-to-crypto gateway without disrupting the one-tap payment experience users expect," Vaghela said.
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