He thought he was logging in to his cryptocurrency account. Then hackers stole his life savings.

A few days before Christmas last year, Philip Martin sat in front of his computer to check his balance. It was the beginning of a nightmare for him.

Martin told NBC News he thought he was typing the address for his exchange, which is the biggest and best-known company for consumers to store their digital money. He says that a bug on the URL that sent him to a fake site prompted him to enter his log-in and password.

The crooks had all the information they needed to steal his life savings. Martin is the latest victim of a wave of hacks and thefts, one that raises questions about whether better regulation is needed.

Martin said that it has been very frustrating and that he has had panic attacks.

Martin said he was able to trace the location of the thieves' transfer of his stolencryptocurrencies, because all transactions are published on a public ledger. He contacted federal and local law enforcement. The FBI field office in Los Angeles told him that his loss was not large enough to merit an investigation.

Due to the dollar amount involved in your complaint, management has determined that it does not rise to our required threshold level and the FBI will not be moving forward with an investigation at this time.

Laura Eimiller, spokeswoman for the FBI's Los Angeles field office, wouldn't comment on a specific case.

She said that education is the key and that they are not going to arrest or prosecute anyone. People should visit IC3.gov to learn about the latest trends.

Martin blames Coinbase, which he says is a secure online platform for buying, selling, transferring, and storingcryptocurrencies.

He said that the exchanges don't mean to say that they're not responsible and that every user is responsible for securing their own device.

A spokesman for the company wouldn't comment on the specific case, but he did say that customers should be wary of phish attempts and never click on an email that isn't from the company's website.

SCAMs, fraud and other crimes can have a significant impact on customers, and we take extensive security measures to ensure our customer accounts remain safe. We educate our customers on how to avoid Cryptocurrencies and report known Cryptocurrencies to law enforcement authorities. All of our customers are encouraged to take important steps to secure their online accounts.

The kind of scam that befell Martin isn't the only way in which consumers have lost money. Several exchanges have been hacked. The most famous of those was the Bitfinex hack in which hackers stole the digital currency worth $4.5 billion. The Justice Department said in February that it had recovered $3.6 billion.

An analyst has counted at least 46 hacks. The value of the losses is difficult to quantify, but it appears to be billions of dollars.

Bitmart promised to use its own money to reimburse client losses in a recent hack.

The threat picture is better than it used to be according to Urzula McCormack, a partner with Hong Kong-based King & Wood Mallesons.

She said that there are areas where people are vulnerable. We have regular hacking risks that need to be guarded against.

In March, President Joe Biden issued an executive order designed to prompt action among government agencies to protect consumers fromcryptocurrencies risks, and dozens of bills are pending in Congress that would regulate them to one degree or another.

Some countries have banned ads for investments in cryptocurrencies, but they were featured prominently in the U.S. during the Super Bowl.

But Martin cautions.

I think there is a lot of potential, but I am hesitant to invest until there is better consumer protection laws.