Cryptographic crime was widespread in 2024 although a historic year for institutional adoption. A report by the Security Company Blockchain Chainalysis reveals that $ 40 billion was received by illegal addresses.
The $ 40 billion is an estimate that will increase throughout 2025 while more details on historical crimes emerge. The illicit crypto in question can be attributed to scams, malware, fraud or dark net activities.
The figure of 2023 ended at $ 46.1 billion, although the chain analyzes that the total of 2024 exceeds this when all the crime is recorded with an estimated total of $ 51.3 billion.
The total also excludes income from non -crypto indigenous crime such as drug trafficking or money laundering, where crypto is used as a means of payment, added the report.
The approval of the Bitcoin Spot ETF in 2024 caused an institutional volume wave, which lowers the ratio of the volume of cryptographic crime to the volume of the industry, illicit transactions representing 0.14% of all cryptographic transactions against 0.61% in 2023.
Criminals also modify their habits when it comes to sending illicit funds; In 2021, around 70% of all illicit transactions involved Bitcoin (BTC), which has now overturned to be dominated by the stablecoins. BTC now represents around 20% of all illicit transactions while the Stablecoins occupy the majority with 63%.
Privacy Coin Monero (XMR) is also a significant inclusion on the list due to its prevalence on dark net markets, altcoins represent approximately 10% of all illicit transactions in total.
It should be noted that the figures of 2025 can be biased to include ETHER (ETH) due to the hacking of $ 1.5 billion in February on Bybit, which is the largest flight of crypto to date.
