Despite the Increasing Token Prices, the Crypto Crimes Are Also Decreasing 

Despite the Increasing Token Prices, the Crypto Crimes Are Also Decreasing

The cost of digital assets has increased considerably this year. The good news for people working in the industry, however, doesn’t stop there: Crypto scammers are also earning less money. According to Chainalysis, a blockchain data company, crime involving cryptocurrencies has decreased by 65% at this point this year in comparison to 2022. The information was based on inflows of digital assets to illegal businesses.

Addresses of illegal entities connected to underground markets or hackers who distribute ransomware are defined by the company. According to the report, outflows to “risky entities” (high-risk marketplaces and mixers, for example) have also decreased by 42%. These services are frequently used by thieves to launder money.

Despite an overall market decline, according to Chainalysis, “illicit crypto volume for transactions is falling significantly faster than genuine crypto deal volume.” While this has been the case thus far in 2023, the firm noted that overall scam revenue has decreased compared with the previous year. “Scams are generally the highest-revenue type of cryptocurrency-based crime,” the company said.

The Increasing Token Price and Crypto Crimes 

It also noted that cryptocurrency scammers had made 77% less money overall than they had until June 2022. This is noteworthy, according to Chainalysis, since this year has seen an increase in the price of digital assets, which typically benefits criminal organizations. In January, the price of a single bitcoin was a little over $17,000; today, it costs $30,500.

According to the research, “normally, positive price moves correspond to more fraud revenue, probably because heightened market euphoria and FOMO make targets more receptive to scammers’ promises. The sharp fall in scams in 2023, however, breaks that long-standing pattern. Ransomware attacks, meanwhile, are increasing despite the decline in frauds; attackers are on track to have its second-biggest year record and have demanded a minimum $449 million as of June.

Although the pattern is consistent with a wider downturn in cryptocurrency transactions, quantities of honest operations have only decreased by 28% during the past year. Global trade has been hampered by US regulatory efforts as well as decreased market liquidity. Large market makers left the Bitcoin marketplaces in the recent quarter, removing $10 million in volatility.

The development of information security services that concentrate on decentralized financing may be to blame for the decrease in crime. Advanced artificial intelligence is being used by Anchain.ai and Cyver.ai to identify and block on-chain routes that attackers have previously used. Furthermore, the popularity of tokenization and the increasing demand for electronic asset custody have increased focus on the asset protection strategies employed by custodians. When more traditional organizations demand secured management of digital information, cybersecurity will only become harder.

According to blockchain analytics company Chainalysis, there will be a dramatic decrease in cryptocurrency crime by 2023. The cybercrime specialist said that crypto outflows to known illegal organisations are down 65% compared with where they’d been at the same point in time in 2022 in its mid-year criminal activity update.

The decrease in average payment size in 2022 might be attributed to heightened law enforcement operations, more decryptor accessibility, and punishments against solutions providing cashout services for extortion gangs, as well as enhanced cybersecurity as well as information backup procedures adopted by large organizations. These changes hindered attackers’ ability to capture large-game animals, and also gave many victims the means to withstand ransomware attacks sans having to pay. 

Given that many corporations are still not paying their bills in 2023, as Davis informed us, this still seems to be the case to some extent. He also said, though, that the increasing tendency toward non-payment may be motivating the developers of ransomware to raise the amount they are demanding in exchange for access to companies that are still prepared to pay ransoms for data.

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About Maria Morgan

Maria Morgan is a full-time cryptocurrency journalist at Coinography. She is graduate in Political Science and Journalism from London, her writing is centered around cryptocurrency news, regulation and policy-making across the glob.

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