Chainalysis: 55% of illegally obtained cryptocurrencies are laundered through five services

According to Chainalysis, more than half of the cryptocurrencies obtained through scams, ransomware, or used in the darknet markets are deposited on five major services.

According to a report by analyst firm Chainalysis, 55% of all illicitly obtained crypto assets are laundered through just five services using approximately 270 unique deposit addresses.

The researchers concluded that the largest processors of illicitly obtained cryptocurrencies, receiving more than $ 25 million a year, deliberately serve criminals and are unlikely to continue working without them. The identification and prosecution of the owners of these escrow addresses could shut down much of the infrastructure currently used to launder cryptoassets.

Chainalysis works with cryptocurrency exchanges and law enforcement to identify cryptocurrency wallet addresses used for phishing or social media scams, as well as ransomware, darknet market users, and other criminals.

Companies track crypto assets as they move through multiple wallets or exchanges to their final addresses. These addresses are used to identify other users, allowing researchers to gain an incomplete but valuable understanding of the money laundering infrastructure.

Without making any specific accusations, Chainalysis named “embedded services,” including itBit at Paxos, and Changelly at HitBTC, as important elements in the money laundering system. These third-party services use the trading pairs and liquidity of the larger exchange to mask illegal activity within the parent exchange’s shared pool of transactions.

In January, Chainalysis reported that last year the share of cryptocurrency transactions associated with illegal activities dropped markedly – from 2.1% in 2019 to 0.34% in 2020. At the same time, in 2020, criminals laundered $ 34 million worth of crypto assets through DeFi protocols.

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