Also, the fraudsters found the online payments business fairly early on, before there were a lot of real customers. In the late 90s, many merchants had as many fraud attempts as actual transactions, and a few fraudsters working through a box of stolen credit cards could take a small merchant to the cleaners. Now that online payments are so large, and there is a finite number of sophisticated fraudsters, fraud as a percentage is lower.
It makes me wonder if the same dynamic is at work with cryptocurrencies now. Fraudsters found and adopted them early, because if your goal is to commit fraud, having a currency not under the control of the banking system is a pretty critical attribute. But now that the mainstream world is aware of them and people are actively researching what they might be good for, that may not hold true forever.
