Record-breaking crimes related to digital currencies in 2022; 20 billion dollars of dirty money
The data of the latest report by Chinalysis indicates that the value of illegal digital currency transactions will reach a record 20.6 billion dollars in 2022. However, contrary to what many critics believe, transactions related to fraud, money laundering or other crimes appear to constitute a small portion of the total transactions in this area.
On Monday in interview According to CoinDesk, despite significant growth in the value of transactions related to hacking and sanctions evasion, other illegal activities related to digital assets have been on a downward trend.
According to a report by Chinalysis, criminal activities will account for 0.24% of all blockchain transactions in 2022, which is a significant increase from the previous year’s rate of 0.12%. However, the report emphasized that the share of crimes related to digital currencies is still less than one percent of all transactions.
After the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) began cracking down on the platforms in 2021 instead of banning addresses linked to crime, all transactions on these platforms will be considered illegal, Grauer said.
ChinaAlysis has found that with this new form of categorization, a large portion of sanctions-related transactions are from funds deposited into Garantex or similar exchanges after being flagged.
Grantex is a digital currency exchange based in Russia, which, according to this report, has received $1.3 billion in capital since it was sanctioned by the Ministry of Treasury last April until October.
Grauer says the Office of Foreign Assets Control has tried in different ways to limit illegal activity on other cryptocurrency platforms, such as the dark web marketplace Hydra or the decentralized mixer Tornado Cash. The success of these efforts often depends on the type of entity the agency sanctions and whether users in that jurisdiction care about the sanctions imposed on the platforms.
China Analysis has found that the amount of funds obtained from hacking by North Korean organizations increased significantly in 2022. Grauer said North Korean hackers broke the previous year’s record by stealing $1.6 billion worth of digital currency.
He noted that criminals may have exploited vulnerabilities in DeFi protocols to carry out these attacks. Last year, 3.8 billion dollars of digital currency was stolen from protocols active in the field of DeFi, which has increased by about 15% compared to the figure of 3.3 billion dollars last year.
Grauer added:
It is not possible to continue with this level of hacking because it really undermines trust in the ecosystem.