Money laundering through cryptocurrencies is nothing new, as evidenced by the latest statistics.
Although we have only recently written that criminal activity with cash is still higher than crime related to cryptocurrency, this topic is still relevant.
Evidence that cryptocurrencies are still one of the popular ways for criminals to clean dirty money is the latest study by Chainalysis, which has come up with some interesting findings.
The first finding is that mainstream exchanges are the primary destination of illicit cryptocurrency.
The share of all illicit cryptocurrency received by exchanges grew in 2020.
Another monitored indicator is the geographical distribution, which showed the countries with the largest volume of cryptocurrencies from illegal addresses where the US took first place, followed by Russia, China, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
However, it is more interesting to watch where the illegal cryptocurrencies come from.
The most distinctive country in this case was Russia, which in the first category, ie Darknet markets, excels in a disproportionately high share. Analysts attribute this mainly to Hydra, which is the world’s largest darknet market by revenue and serves exclusively Russia and other Russian-speaking countries in Eastern Europe.
Another country that has an unusually high share of funds from a specific crime is China in the category of Ransomware and Stolen funds, followed by the US, which dominated the Scams category.
Read also: North Korea is funding the development of nuclear weapons from stolen cryptocurrencies
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