Currency-related crime dropped to a small fraction of total trading volume last year. But some haunted hacks came up when criminals exploited people working in the home during the pandemic.
Last year, illegal activity accounted for 0.34% of the total transaction volume of cryptocurrencies, according to a report by blockchain data firm Chainalysis. That was down from about 2% a year earlier.
“We have seen a significant decrease in the share of total activity related to illegal entities,” Kim Grauer, head of research at Chainalysis, told CNBC. “Ransomware has nevertheless been by far the largest category in terms of business growth, and we are seeing a peak for the dark market operations.”
Ransomware is malicious software that hackers use to infect a computer and then charge a fee to unlock it. That abundance is often paid in bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
This category accounted for only 7% of all cryptocurrencies received by criminals, but increased by 311% year-on-year. Chainalysis has pointed to more people working from home as a new vulnerability for companies – and an opportunity for criminals.
Dark net markets were the second largest crime category, accounting for $ 1.7 billion in cryptocurrency activity – an increase of about 30% from a year earlier. The Dark Web, also known as the Dark Web, is a network that uses the Internet but requires specific software and authorization to access it.
Chain Analysis Crypto Crime Report
Chainalysis
Source: Chainalysis
Criminals have turned to cryptocurrencies like bitcoin for convenience of sending online immediately.
Cryptocurrencies are also pseudonyms. You can see where funds have been sent, making it easy for companies like Chainalysis to track down. But you can not see who sent them.
These features have attracted the attention of regulators who are afraid of Crypto’s potential role in money laundering and terrorist financing.
President Biden’s nominated candidate for treasury, Janet Yellen, mentioned the possibility of abuse in her confirmation hearing this week, which according to analysts weighs the price of bitcoin. The U.S. government needs to “look closely at how it can be used to encourage legal activity,” while limiting its use to malicious and illegal activities, “Yellen said.
Scams still accounted for more than half of all crimes related to the cryptocurrency, but year after year it has dropped significantly.
Grauer of Chainlysis said it was due to increased awareness of events such as the PlusToken Ponzi scheme, which took more than $ 2 billion from victims in 2018.
“People learned a little bit following the ‘get-fast-get-rich-quick’ mentality two years ago,” Grauer said. “It could have caused people to act on some of these very large Ponzi schemes.”
Bitcoin has started as a mainstream investment in Wall Street over the past few months. The world’s largest cryptocurrency fetched more than $ 40,000 in early January, fueled by interest from institutions and retail investors, who can now buy bitcoin through payment companies such as PayPal.
The crypto-currency fell below $ 30,000 on Thursday.