Crypto market saw $20 billion worth of illicit transactions last year

It seems like the world of crypto investing continues to be looked at with trepidation and caution after the FTX scandal.

Those that fell hard during this period most certainly had to look at the cryptocurrency with eyes wide open.

According to AltIndex.com, the crypto industry saw $20.6 billion (around R390.53 billion) worth of illicit transactions last year alone.

The research goes on to add that even though there has been a "market downturn", illegal or illicit crypto engagement has increased by another year.

There seems to be no slowing down, and government mechanisms to curb these activities are failing.

It should be noted that the research also saw close to $70 billion (around R1.32 trillion) worth of illicit transactions in the last five years.

Based on their evaluation, these transactions have been tied to:

– stolen funds

– scams

– ransomware

– human trafficking

– terrorism financing

– dark net markets

WHAT IS LAW ENFORCEMENT DOING?

AltIndex.com argues that there have been some significant actions to address these illicit transactions.

In 2018, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury "sanctioned" the first cryptocurrency-related transgression.

According to Chainalysis data, "two Iranian nationals that were associated with the SamSam ransomware were sanctioned.

"Over the next two years, most of the addresses included as sanctions identifiers were personal wallet addresses owned by individuals, with an average of two addresses per crypto-related designation in 2018, four in 2019, and nine in 2020", noted AltIndex.com.

“However, that changed in 2021, after OFAC began to designate entire crypto services instead of individuals. As a result, the average number of addresses per sanctioned entity jumped to 35 in 2022, with some designations containing more than a hundred crypto addresses as identifiers”.

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