Increased use of DeFi by criminals
In 2021, criminals laundered $8.6 billion worth of cryptocurrency through decentralized finance (DeFi), a 30% increase over 2020. This was reported on their blog by Chainalysis analysts. Despite the significant increase, the activity of criminals is still lower than in 2019. Then they managed to launder almost $11 billion.
Analysts explain the growth of activity in 2021 by the rise of the entire digital market. At the same time, Chainalysis notes that the figures reflect only the funds received from cryptocurrency crimes. Cybercrime activity like sales on the darknet or ransomware attacks were not taken into account.
Since 2017, cybercriminals have laundered a total of $33 billion in cryptocurrency. Experts note that most of this amount has eventually moved to centralized exchanges. For comparison, according to UN estimates, from $800 billion to $2 trillion in fiat currency is laundered annually, which is 5% of global GDP.
