CipherTrace about stolen cryptocurrency in 2020
According to CipherTrace, digital assets worth $ 1.36 billion were stolen from January to May 2020. At the same time, the volume of illegal cryptocurrencies on platforms has fallen.
CipherTrace checked the cryptocurrency exchanges of different countries for the presence of transfers with electronic assets acquired by criminal means. So, Finland’s exchanges are in first place in acquiring gray cryptocurrencies – 12.01%, of which 99% go through the country’s largest LocalBitcoins platform. In second place is the Russian exchange – 5.23%. In third place is the UK stock exchange – 0.69%. But the share of “dirty” cryptocurrency platforms in Germany, Japan and the United States accounts for less than 0.1%.
In 2019, the volume of criminal electronic transactions on platforms decreased by half compared to 2018, when the number of “dirty” assets was only 0.17%. The drop in the number of gray transactions is due to the introduction of strict conditions for the Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering procedures and the adoption of AMLD5 (European Directive against Money Laundering).
But already in 2020, the number of criminal methods and hacker attacks to steal cryptocurrencies increased. Currently, the volume of crypto assets stolen in 2020 amounted to $ 1.36 billion (last year – $ 4.5 billion).
From the analysis of the researchers, it follows that not only the crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but also the Chinese financial electronic pyramid Wotoken contributed to the growth of cryptocurrency crimes. She announced to depositors stunning earnings if they use, as it turned out, fictitious algorithmic software for trading. It was later revealed that Wotoken was associated with the creators of the PlusToken cryptocurrency wallet, who were accused of stealing $ 3 billion of user assets. And the founders of Wotoken appropriated cryptocurrency more than 715 thousand customers, which amounted to more than $ 1 billion.
At the very beginning of the year, CipherTrace, along with some universities, presented a free Defenders League training program to study cases of digital currency fraud. And in the spring, CipherTrace launched the Armada service so that it was possible to filter banking information to identify probably dangerous transactions.
