Chainalysis Report: Crypto Crime Doubled in 2022

Criminal transactions have doubled in crypto space in 2022. The US analysis company Chainalysis keeps that in one current report Celebration. Accordingly, the volume of illegal transfers rose from 0.12 percent to 0.24 percent. New total volume: 20.1 billion US dollars.

The record value is surprising, because Chainalysis generally recorded a decline in relevant criminal categories such as terrorist financing, scams or ransomware. Only thefts would have increased again by 7 percent compared to 2021. Chainalysis attributes the general decline to the poor market situation, among other things. The bears would have made investors “more pessimistic” about price promises.

Nevertheless, criminal activities increased again for the first time since 2019, the company continues. Chainalysis sees the reason in the increase in sanction violations. They accounted for 44 percent of all illegal transactions. Compared to the previous year, this results in an increase of (attention) more than 10 million percent. Violations of sanctions thus almost alone contributed to the increase in the total value.

According to Chainalysis, the Russian crypto exchange Garantex will account for the majority of the sanctions-related transactions. OFAC, an extension of the US Treasury Department, sets the Service blacklisted in April 2022.

2022 a sanction year

It should come as no surprise that these sanction violations account for the majority of illegal activities in 2022. Regulators tried to prevent criminal activities in the crypto space, sometimes with massive interventions. On the one hand with bans against the mixing service providers Tornado Cash and Blender.io, which were enforced as a measure against the North Korean hacker group Lazarus. Secondly, the imposition of sanctions against Russia as a result of the attack on Ukraine. For example, in October the EU issued a blanket ban on crypto providers for providing services to Russian users.

The numbers may be frightening at first glance. Nevertheless, the criminal extent seems small compared to fiat currencies. When it comes to money laundering alone, there is a massive discrepancy between the two worlds. In 2021, Chainalysis estimated that around 8.6 billion US dollars were transferred into the legal economic cycle via Bitcoin and Co. At the same time, the Office for the Fight against Drugs and Crime, headquartered in Vienna, figures in one approxicht the annual worldwide money laundering volume to two to five percent of the global gross domestic product. That means between $800 billion and $2 trillion is laundered in a year. More about this here.