Since 2019, almost $100 billion has been sent from wallets associated with illegal activities to various exchange services for laundering. This is evidenced by data from a new report from Chainalysis.
These analytics services include centralized crypto exchanges, decentralized finance protocols (DeFi), mixers, gambling resources and bridges.
The largest amount of such transactions—over $30 billion—was recorded in 2022. Chainalysis experts associate it with transactions involving services under sanctions, such as the Russian exchange Garantex.
Analysts noted that the majority of all illegal transactions are carried out through stablecoins. In their opinion, this may be due to the general increase in popularity of so-called stable coins.
However, their use also adds an “element of risk” for money launderers: issuers of such assets can freeze funds, Chainalysis pointed out.
For example, this is often reported in Circle and Tether, the companies that issue two of the most popular stablecoins on the market. The latter reported that it had frozen approximately 1,600 addresses containing funds worth about 1.5 billion USDT.
Number of wallets moving illicit funds by asset type. Source: Chainalysis
Among the most popular types of services used for money laundering, analysts identified mixers.
In parallel with the growing activity in the market as a whole in 2024, it has also begun to resume in the mixer segment. The greatest growth in use was recorded by the WasabiWallet, JoinMarket and Tornado Cash projects.
At the same time, experts emphasized that despite the fact that the main goal of such services is to increase confidentiality, not all transactions processed by them are related to illegal activities.
In addition, analysts noted coins like Monero and Zcash, which are focused on ensuring privacy, thereby making it difficult to track transactions with them, experts said. The number of transactions using Monero began to grow, summarized in Chainalysis.
Also, more and more often, attackers are turning to various cross-chain bridges to hide the origin of illegally obtained funds.
At the same time, more than half of illegal assets end up on centralized exchanges. Attackers turn to these platforms to launder funds because of their high liquidity, ease of converting cryptocurrencies into fiat, and integration with traditional financial services, Chainalysis explained.
“However, the marked downward trend in the volume of funds flowing into centralized exchanges—from nearly $2 billion per month at its peak to approximately $780 million per month—indicates the increasing effectiveness of platforms' anti-money laundering programs,” the report said.
