Fraudulent Whales Hold Up To $25B Worth Of Crypto: Chainalysis

Fraudulent whales hold up to $25 billion worth of crypto according to a new analysis by Chainalysis as we are reading furhter in our latest cryptocurrency news.

About 4% of the crypto whales are criminals and they own about $25 billion worth of digital assets. The blockchain data company Chainalysis claimed that the fraudulent whales represent 3.7% of all crypto whales and those bad actors own over $25 billion worth of digital assets. Cryptocurrencies do have merits and plenty of experts maintain that they represent a financial revolution but Bitcoin and other altcoins have their critics as well and these claim that drug traffickers, money launderers and terrorists use crypto in their illicit activities.

In line with the previous accusations, the New York-based blockchain analysis company Chainalyss identified 4068 criminal crypto whales who possess more than $25 billion worth of digital assets and the company explained that every entity owns over $1 million in crypto. It is worth noting that most whales recieved a small or substantial share of their total balance from illegal addresses and about 1374 got between 10% and 25% of their asses from illegitimate whales while 1351 obtained between 90% and 100%. the illicit funds recieved by criminal whales came from plenty of sources and the Darknet ranked first with 37.7% ranked first while the scams 32.4% are in the second place. The stolen funds, fraud shop, and ransomware completed the top positions.

Chainalysis analyzed the new analysis where these criminals are located and it assigned UTC zones to the 768 whales that those wallets have enough activity to make a strong estimate and about 2,3 and 4 of the zones contained the most wrongdoers. This area includes Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and South Africa. Chainalysis wrote:

“Investigation of criminal whales represents a significant opportunity for government agencies around the world to continue their string of successful seizures and bring to justice the biggest beneficiaries of cryptocurrency-based crime.”

Not long ago, the blockchain company disclosed that the crypto value laundered in 2021 was set at $8.6 billion, or 30% more than 2020. The bad actors transferred about 17% of the assets to Decentralized Finance applications or an increase of 2% since the year before. Chainalysis explained that these numbers account for the funds derived from a crypto native crime like Darknet market sales and ransomware attacks:

“It’s more difficult to measure how much fiat currency derived from off-line crime – traditional drug trafficking, for example – is converted into cryptocurrency to be laundered. However, we know anecdotally this is happening.”