Every way money goes, ranked by what it costs

Most writing about this subject ranks dangers by drama. Exit scams and law enforcement get the attention, and the things that actually empty accounts are dull enough that nobody writes them up. This table is ordered the other way round: how often something happens, multiplied by how much it takes. The result puts a forgotten balance above almost everything people worry about.

The table

Twelve entries. The number on the left is the rank, the label on the right is the expected cost band. Each page shows the reasoning, because the ranking is a judgement rather than a measurement and you should be able to disagree with it.

12How money goesTwelve entries, ordered by how often multiplied by how much.Section 01A balance left behindNo attacker involved. The most frequent loss in the whole subject.Very high 02Credentials typed on a copyA copied login page. Cheapest attack there is and the most common.Very high 03Payment sent outside escrowThe only entry here with no process of any kind afterwards.Very high 04An old address that answers againReaches the readers who have been doing this longest.High 05A password reused somewhere elseNobody targeted you. A list from an unrelated breach did.High 06An order that never arrivedUsually recoverable, and most of the outcome is decided before you file.Medium 07A wallet phrase handed overRare, total, and nothing legitimate has ever asked for one.Total 08A dispute filed too earlyA winnable case spent badly. Entirely self inflicted.Medium 09An address swapped on your own machineThe one entry the signature check cannot reach.Medium 10Locked out of your own accountUsually boring, occasionally permanent, and decided at setup.Medium 11Credentials read by a gatewayNot malice. The mechanism reads everything you send.Medium 12An identity linked to another oneNo money moves. It ranks last and it cannot be undone.Unbounded

Why this order surprises people

The top three have something in common: none of them involve anybody clever. A balance left on a platform has no attacker at all. Credentials typed on a copied page require nothing more sophisticated than copying a page. A payment sent outside escrow needs one plausible sentence.

The exotic threats people argue about sit lower not because they are impossible, but because they are rare, and rare multiplied by large is often smaller than common multiplied by medium. That is the entire method, and it is set out in full on the method page.

What these numbers are notNothing here is a measured statistic. These are ranked judgements with the reasoning printed on each page. Anybody publishing precise percentages for this subject is inventing them.

What stops most of it

Six habits cover the whole table. Not one per entry, which is the useful part: the same small set of behaviours sits underneath almost every row.

6What stops itSix habits between them cover the whole table.Section AVerify on arrivalUnder a minute, and it settles what nothing else can.Every session BKeep no balanceCloses rank one entirely, and costs nothing at all.Free CUnique credentialsUniqueness is the property. Strength was never the issue.Ten minutes DRead the middleForgeries match the ends. Substitutions replace everything.Five seconds ERefuse urgencySits underneath most of the table. A clock is the answer.A day of patience FSize ordersChanges what a failure costs rather than how often it happens.Worse unit price

What this site is

A reference written for readers, in six languages, each written for how people actually search in that language rather than translated from the English. The three addresses at the top of every page are published rather than monitored. This site measures nothing and states no availability figure, because a number it could not back would be worse than none.

It carries no advertising, takes no money from any market and has nothing to sell. Worth stating plainly, because the usual business model for a site covering this ground is to be paid by the thing it covers.

Questions people ask

Which of the three addresses should I use?

Any of them. They reach the same market. Whether the one you reached is genuine is a separate question, answered by checking on arrival.

Where do the rankings come from?

Judgement, with the reasoning on every page and the method written out in full. Not from a dataset, because no honest dataset exists for this.

Is this the market itself?

No. This is a reference site. It cannot recover an account, refund an order or act on your behalf in any way.

Nexus addresses