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Dogecoin Icon Coin: Cryptocurrency theft is up seven percent, according to Chainalysis
Photo: DADO RUVIC / REUTERS
Despite all the price losses and scandals of the past few months, Bitcoin & Co are very popular with criminals.
In the past year, illegal transactions totaling $20.1 billion (18.7 billion euros) were processed via cryptocurrencies, according to a study published on Thursday by the industry service Chainalysis.
Although activities involving cyber currencies declined overall in the past year, this is the second increase in a row and thus a new record.
According to the study, doing business with people or companies on international sanctions lists increased more than 100,000 times and accounted for around 44 percent of the illegal activities recorded.
In this area, the lion's share goes to the Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex, which had been sanctioned by the US for the Russian attack on Ukraine.
Apparently, the use of the trading platform by Russians is the reason for this.
Because of the US ban, Chainalysis classifies all customer accounts as illegal.
Garantex could not initially be reached for a comment on this topic.
Cryptocurrency theft increased by 7 percent in 2022, the study authors wrote.
Fraud, blackmail by hackers (ransomware) and terrorist financing, on the other hand, have declined.
This had also been observed in previous phases with falling cryptocurrency prices.
Businesses in Darknet trading places also made up a significant part of the illegal transactions.
Accounting fraud by crypto companies is not counted
Crimes such as accounting fraud by crypto companies were not taken into account in the study.
According to the analysts' blog post, some believe that crypto companies should be viewed as criminal enterprises.
But Chainalysis wants to focus on what is verifiable »on-chain«, i.e. what happens on blockchains.
Bitcoin payments for drug deals are also excluded from the report.
In addition, the volume of 20.1 billion dollars is probably rather low.
After all, the value for 2021 was subsequently increased from $14 billion to $18 billion because some frauds were only discovered later.
However, Chainalysis emphasizes that the illegal activities recorded continued to account for less than one percent of the total cryptocurrency trading volume, more precisely: only 0.24 percent.
pbe/Reuters