- Irregular NFT markets received more than $1 million in cryptocurrencies.
- The firm said criminals received a record-breaking $14 billion in cryptocurrency.
Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics business, estimates criminals laundered $8.6 billion (£6.4 billion) in crypto in 2021, an increase of 30% from the previous year. It claims that police might significantly impact criminals’ ability to launder crypto by focusing on the services they use to do so.
For the year 2021, the firm said criminals received a record-breaking $14 billion in cryptocurrency, according to prior estimates. According to the firm, criminals, such as ransomware hackers, malware operators, fraudsters, human traffickers, darknet market participants, and terrorist organizations, have their cryptocurrency wallets tracked by Chainalysis.
Chainalysis determined the amount of crypto “laundered” by tracking flows from addresses linked to criminal behavior. It claims that a small number of businesses – for example, exchanges preferred by criminals – might significantly influence the laundering of cryptocurrencies if closed.
The report notes:
“while billions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency moves from illicit addresses every year, most of it ends up at a surprisingly small group of services, many of which appear purpose-built for money laundering”.
NFT Money Laundering Modest Yet Evident
A couple from New York was arrested this week for conspiring to launder the profits of 119,754 Bitcoins stolen from Bitfinex after a hacker entered the platform’s servers and launched over 2,000 unlawful transactions in 2016.
NFT money laundering activities were determined to be modest but evident by Chainalysis, according to a recent analysis. Irregular NFT markets received more than $1 million in cryptocurrencies in the third quarter of 2021. In the last quarter of the year, that figure was close to $1.4 million.
