Cybercriminals Laundered $8.6 Billion Worth of Cryptocurrency in 2021 (therecord.media) 31
Cybercriminal gangs laundered an estimated $8.6 billion worth of cryptocurrency last year, in 2021, a 30% rise from the previous year, according to a Chainalysis report published today. From a report: The company said it arrived at the number by tracking transactions linked to cybercriminal activity across different cryptocurrency blockchains. This included tracking addresses linked to activity such as darknet market sales, online scams, cryptocurrency platform hacks, and ransomware attacks. "Overall, cybercriminals have laundered over $33 billion worth of cryptocurrency since 2017, with most of the total over time moving to centralized exchanges. For comparison, the UN Office of Drugs and Crime estimates that between $800 billion and $2 trillion of fiat currency is laundered each year -- as much as 5% of global GDP," Chainalysis said. In most cases, cybercrime groups sent funds to centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, from where they converted the stolen funds into real-world fiat currency. Almost 47% of all stolen cryptocurrency was laundered through traditional exchanges, Chainalysis said.
TFTFY (Score:5, Insightful)
Cryptocurrency facilitated $8.6 Billion Worth of cybercrime in 2021
A gross understatement (Score:2, Flamebait)
Note that Chainalysis is a blockchain company with a vested interest in downplaying criminal activity in cryptocurrencies/NFTs, so this is akin to getting your global warming news from an oil company.
Also, even with their extremely conservative definition of criminal activity, they found that it doubled from 2020 to 2021:
https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]
Re:A gross understatement (Score:4, Funny)
Re: A gross understatement (Score:2)
There is a sucker born every day but this quote fails to take into account exponentially growth...
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headline is incorrect, should read:
Cryptocurrency facilitated $8.6 Billion Worth of cybercrime in 2021
You are assuming that all of the proceeds of cybercrime were laundered already. You are also assuming that all of the apparently legitimate transactions really are legitimate. E.g. the Ecuador president bought a load of cryptocurrency with his country's money. If he sells it later and gives the money back, then it was fine, even if there are big losses. If he has a plan and later skips the country and takes the bitcoin with him then that was cybercrime, we just didn't know it at the time. It's also possible
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An even more correct headling would be:
Cybercriminals laundered $8.6 billion via cryptocurrency.
Since all crypto is denominated in dollars, they were using crypto to launder the money.
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headline is incorrect, should read:
Cryptocurrency facilitated $8.6 Billion Worth of cybercrime in 2021
Pretty much. Still small-time tough, but the damage these assholes do is far, far larger.
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headline is incorrect, should read:
Cryptocurrency facilitated $8.6 Billion Worth of cybercrime in 2021
I suspect that figure is at least 10 if not 100 times lower than it really is, and it is more efficient and involves less cost and easier than most other money laundering methods, many of which the law has caught up with.
Casinos used to be popular regulation has caught up https://www.smh.com.au/nationa... [smh.com.au] . Rental businesses (video stores in particular) were great as the stock was technically endless and at the time small transactions meant a lot of cash (new technology wiped them out).
Currently developer
Compare that figure to banks. (Score:2, Informative)
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And fined for is not the same as the amount transacted - as to if that makes the case for traditional banking better or worse not sure but you are not example comparing apples-to-apples here.
Also whats the denominator here in terms of total transaction value - that is also kind of important in terms of comparison.
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Banks in 2019 were fined around 10 billion in anti-money laundering regulation violations.
That are the fines. That indicated the damage is significantly smaller.
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To keep things in persepctive that article points out that is calculated from "In January 2020, there were reportedly 1.7 million lost or stolen packages per day in the US, which resulted in losses worth $25 million on an average. Particularly, during holiday seasons, with the surge of deliveries, more packages go missing." which got it's data from a CNBC article talking about stolen packages [cnbc.com] (not those that Fedex lost, but total nationwide) which got it's information from a C+R Research article which is [crresearch.com]
Re:To put in into perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't understand. Like Tesla, there can be no criticism of crypto. None. It is the be all and end all of everything. It rules the world.
It's like when someone mentions Tesla vehicles continuing to slam into parked emergency vehicles [cnn.com]. Immediately a fan boy will come in and do, "Squirrel!". Can't have any bad news about god Musk.
In the current situation, "Squirrel!" was used in a vain attempt to show some type of correlation between people going out of their way to launder money via crypto, and disinterested parties taking packages from porches or FedEx losing packages during delivery (or delivering to the wrong location). Clearly the two are so similar it had to be mentioned.
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Did you even read my post? I'm sure you didn't because I laid out several glaring issues with crypto which instantly invalidates your criticism or day I say "posturing" because there's no valid criticism per se.
I can't say anything about Tesla, I'm not a US citizen, I don't have enough money to afford a Tesla, nor I even need a car. Even buying a car without ever driving it, means you've contributed tons of CO2 which I will relinquish gladly.
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Someone really wants to paint crypto as a heaven for criminals despite the fact that fiat money is overwhelmingly used for things illegal.
With fiat currency, the illegal activity isn't providing a value floor. People are always going to need fiat to pay their existing financial obligations, whether that be for car loans, mortgages or the oft-mentioned taxes, so criminal activity isn't what keeps the dollar from dropping to zero.
Cryptocurrency, on the other hand, is a traded intangible asset that you have to sell to someone else to get any real value out of it. It absolutely could drop to zero if the demand completely vanished. But there's
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Yeah, the US dollar is the only fiat currency in the world and it's not as if it hasn't lost close to 95% of its value over the past 100 years.
Yeah, and other currencies haven't magically turned into piles of paper as seen even in ostensibly developed countries such as Russia where 1 dol
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For money, increasing in value, from about $15 per bitcoin when I first became aware of it, to $36,000 now, is even worse than going down in value.
Would you sign a contract for something priced in bitcoin? Back then 1 bitcoin per month would have been a reasonable price for cellphone contract. Now it definitely wouldn’t be.
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This is a valid concern and I'm going to dispute it. Think of Bitcoin as stocks, they are also not normally used for trading (of goods), they are being traded. And, yes, it's Bitcoin's major shortcoming.
Never ever I've said or implied that Bitcoin is money. Bitcoin is an independent asset, which is currently kind of in a grey area which means it has wild swings in its valuation and it's not completely within the law. Governments are not interested in any crypto becoming actual money because that means los
"That we know of" (Score:3)
Seems to be explicitly missing from the summary and the article. It's only somewhat implied..
2 Things (Score:2, Insightful)
First, money laundering isn't unique to cryptocurrency.
Second, if we could just end the War on Drugs, I wonder how much less money laundering there would be because of that? Certainly seems like it would be better to focus on things like child exploration or human trafficking.
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Probably undercounted, but understandable (Score:2)
Laundering is, after all, one of the clearest, easiest use cases. All upside, little down. To think it wouldn't be used for it would be very naive.
A sense of proportion (Score:2, Informative)
From TFA:
So 1% of laundering is done via cryptocurrency.
Different kind of money laundering (Score:1)
Crypto is simply stolen from the victims in massive amounts and then converted to a normal currency. That is a different kind of money laundering.
I
how can there be any crypto crime? (Score:2)
I guess the answer is the same as to why banks help drug dealers... someone makes money on the transactions. The primacy of Profit over people and laws - how truly capitalist.
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