Crypto Crime was abundant in 2024 despite being a historical year for institutional adoption. A report from the Blockchain Chainalysis security firm reveals that the illegal addresses received $ 40 billion.
The $ 40 billion is an estimate that will increase throughout 2025 as more details arise on historical crimes. The illegal cryptography in question can be attributed to scams, malware, fraud or dark network activities.
The 2023 figure ended at $ 46.1 billion, although Chainysis hopes that the total of 2024 exceeds that when all crimes are explained with an estimated total of $ 51.3 billion.
The total also excludes the income of the native crime that is not encrypted, such as drug trafficking or money laundering, where cryptography is used as a means of payment, the report added.
The approval of the Bitcoin Spot ETF in 2024 caused a wave of institutional volume, this reduces the proportion of the volume of cryptosños to the volume of the entire industry, with illicit transactions that represent 0.14% of all cryptographic transactions compared to 0.61% in 2023.
Criminals are also changing their habits when it comes to sending illicit funds; In 2021, about 70% of all illicit transactions involved Bitcoin (BTC), which has now turned to be dominated by Stablcoins. BTC now represents about 20% of all illicit transactions, while the stables occupy the majority with 63%.
Privacy Coin Monero (XMR) is also a remarkable inclusion in the list due to its prevalence in dark net markets, Altcoins represent about 10% of all illicit transactions in total.
It is worth noting that the 2025 figures can be biased to include Ethher (ETH) due to the trick of $ 1.5 billion in February in Bybit, which is the largest robbery of cryptography to date.
