[Blockchain Today Correspondent Han Ji-hye] Blockchain data platform company chainalysis.com (Korea Branch Manager Baek Yong-gi) announced on the 23rd that ‘Money Laundering’, a part of the ‘2022 Virtual Asset Crime Report’ analyzing virtual asset crimes.
According to the report, cybercriminals laundered $8.6 billion in virtual assets in 2021, and the proportion of money laundering using the DeFi protocol is increasing.
The amount of virtual assets laundered by cybercriminals was $8.6 billion in 2021, up 30% from the previous year. Additionally, Chainalysis analyzed that cybercriminals have laundered more than $33 billion in virtual assets since 2017, with most of the funds moving to centralized exchanges. Meanwhile, the proportion of funds received by centralized exchanges out of the total funds sent from illegal addresses remained at 47% in 2021, and the proportion received by the DeFi protocol increased from 2% in 2020 to 17% in 2021. DeFi Protocol received a total of $900 million, an increase of 1,964% over the previous year.
Theft and scams account for a large proportion of virtual asset-based crimes in 2021, with different money laundering strategies. The amount sent by addresses related to theft to the DeFi platform amounted to $750 million, less than half of the total stolen damage, and the proportion of mixers also increased significantly. On the other hand, scammers sent most of their funds to centralized exchanges.
According to Chainalysis, money laundering activity is still active in 2021 after 2020. In terms of service deposit addresses, 583 addresses received more than $1 million in illegal virtual assets in 2021, with a total of less than $2.5 billion, deposit addresses accounting for 54% of all funds transferred from illegal addresses. The concentration of money laundering also differed according to the type of cybercrime. Among them, it was found that criminal activity in the scam and darknet markets is less concentrated than other types of crime, which may be due to the low concentration of the type of criminal activity itself, and that funds are being distributed to more money laundering deposit addresses. can In addition, the concentration of money laundering also changed depending on the asset type of Bitcoin, Ethereum, stablecoin, and altcoin.
On the other hand, Chainalysis analyzed the money laundering process using the DeFi protocol through the case of the Spartan Protocol hack, and also analyzed the process of laundering drug funds with Bitcoin and the investigation process through the case of the UK.
Baek Yong-ki, head of Chainalysis Korea, said, “Through the examples of actively using blockchain analysis in existing investigation methods, such as understanding the role of virtual assets and understanding money laundering techniques, all criminal investigators are aware of the importance of understanding virtual assets and blockchain analysis. I need to know about it,” he said.
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