According to a CipherTrace's report, cryptocurrency crime appears to be on the decline.
As you can see, crypto crime currently represents $ 1.4 billion. This is less than half the amount from last year. It is therefore reasonable to assume that crime is falling in this area. We can also notice that hacks and thefts are decreasing. However, a new COVID scam seems to have appeared, so watch out carefully for phishing attempts you may be subjected to.
The global average of direct criminal funds received by exchanges dropped 60% from 2017 to 2019, most of which occurred in the last year with a 47% drop from 2018 to 2019. This trend marks a three-year low for cryptocurrency exchanges around the world, with an average of only 0.17% of funds received by exchanges in 2019 coming directly from criminal sources. As more crypto AML regulations are implemented around the world (including AMLD5 in Europe), many criminals are finding it harder to offload their illicit funds directly to cryptocurrency exchanges—the most common crypto-to-fiat offramp.
Illegal funds also appear to pass more and more through intermediary platforms before arriving on exchange platforms. The crooks indeed seek to conceal as much as possible the origin and the origin of their tokens from their future buyers.
For the third year in a row, Finnish exchanges ranked #1 in highest percentage of criminal BTC received , with 12.01% of all BTC funds received coming directly from criminal sources. Finland-based LocalBitcoins, one of the largest peer-to-peer marketplaces, received over 99% of these criminal funds. In August 2019, Kunal Kalra, aka Shecklemaayne,pled guilty to US federal criminal charges for owning and operating an unlicensed MSB, exchanging nearly $25 million through his LocalBitcoins account and Bitcoin ATM.
It seems that the platform "LocalBitcoins" should be avoided if you do not want to buy bitcoins obtained by unethical and unsavory means.
In conclusion, despite a drop in overall crime, it seems that cryptocurrency criminals tend to improve their technique and method of defrauding.
Thank you for reading, do not hesitate to give me your opinion on this subject in the comments. See you soon and take care !
