One of the biggest points used by naysayers against crypto is that it can easily be used to facilitate crime. A new report has now buttressed that argument a bit more. In an official blog post about money laundering in cryptocurrency, Chainalysis says that $2.8 billion has been tied to criminal activity in 2019.
The report from the blockchain analysis firm also mentions that the majority of the assets were sent to exchange platforms, with Binance (27.5%) and Huobi (24.7%) being the top 2 respectively.
“While exchanges have always been a popular off-ramp for illicit cryptocurrency, they’ve taken in a steadily growing share since the beginning of 2019. Over the course of the entire year, we traced $2.8 billion in Bitcoin that moved from criminal entities to exchanges.”
The report also contained more specifics. It says that 75% of all the illicit funds that passed through Huobi and Binance, were received by these “highest-receiving accounts.” Also, the reports say that the two exchanges had a total of 300,000 different accounts receive illicit Bitcoin.
Chainalysis also adds an explanation for how this could be possible. The report suggests that most of the big receiving accounts are probably over-the-counter (OTC) brokers. For these platforms, the hoops that need to be jumped are a lot lower, making illicit activity a bit easier through them.
Chainalysis agave an insight into Ether last year, when it declared that a third of all Ether in existence was owned by 376 individuals.
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