Crypto Crime Doubled in 2019, but Still Under 1% of Transactions

It’s a new decade with an old problem for law enforcement officials: How do you stop cybercriminals from stealing billions of dollars in cryptocurrency and using it for illicit purposes? These kinds of criminal activities range from selling illicit drugs, firearms, documents, identities and ransom schemes, to flat out stealing assets — more than $40 billion was noted as fraudulent in the first nine months of 2019, according to a Chainalysis report. 

The report highlights that illicit activity doubled from 0.04% in 2018 to 0.08% in 2019. While this percentage is still small, some in the crypto community note that it may not properly reflect true illegal activities. Dean Karakitsos, co-founder and CEO of Bloxy, a blockchain analytics company, discussed the latest findings with Cointelegraph:

“The Crypto Crime Report does not determine an evident method on how it calculates the size of the darknet markets in terms of users. Assumptions support that darknet, in general, is a…