A new report shows that cryptocurrencies are still popular in illegal circles. Transactions amounted to several tens of billions of dollars last year.
Since cryptocurrencies began to gain media attention, they have suffered several lawsuits. For some, they are a simple tool for speculation, while others are alerted to the energy consumption necessary for their operation. Its role in illicit financial transactions is also often singled out. A role illustrated by these figures from Chainalysis.
At least 22.2 billion euros in the dark
Blockchain analysis company Chainalysis has released its report on activity in the world of cryptocurrency. And according to its study, in total, during the year 2023, 24.3 billion dollars (or approximately 22.2 billion euros) in cryptocurrencies were sent to illicit addresses.
Figures which are considered by the same source to be far from exhaustive, Chainalysis expecting to find new illicit addresses over time. It had, at the time, in the first version of its study for 2022, identified $20.6 billion in cryptos sent to these addresses, before revising the figure upwards, to $39.6 billion.
Cryptocurrency, a tool for sanctioned entities
In detail, we can observe that the share in these more than 20 billion dollars of cryptocurrencies of certain criminal activities has decreased. Revenues in cryptocurrencies from scams and hacks fell last year, while on the contrary, that of ransomware and transactions on the dark web increased.
Another notable observation is that 61.5% of these transactions, or $14.9 billion (or €13.7 billion), concern addresses of entities and jurisdictions under United States sanction. Finally, a change that is increasingly asserting itself, while Bitcoin until 2021 was the most used digital asset in these worlds of illegality, for two years, it has been stablecoins (cryptocurrencies whose price is backed by the rate of national currencies such as the dollar) which are privileged.
Source : Reuters
6