Crypto money laundering and theft tops £3.4 BILLION this year | City & Business | Financ…

CipherTrace’s Q3 Anti Money Laundering (AML) report highlights that cybercrime amounts to the same figure as the GDP of Azerbaijan and accounts for two per cent of the market cap of all cryptocurrencies. However, the report also notes that, during the third quarter of 2019, crypto crime shrank for the first time in two years. Although, the figures are set against two huge anomalies earlier this year – the $192m collapse of QuadrigaCX and the PlusToken scam which accounted for $2.9bn.

The impact of criminal activity on the market has often been believed to be negligible, but many analysts are now subscribed to the theory that the PlusToken scam is responsible for BTC’s current low.

During Q3 2019, cybercrime shrank massively with $9m losses attributed to Ponzi schemes and “inside jobs” while $6.5m was stolen from exchanges.

“This total of $15.5 million represents the smallest number of cryptocurrency crimes of any quarter in the past several years,” the report adds.

The…