Mixer usage sees all-time high thanks to nation-affiliated cybercriminals

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

Cryp­to mix­er usage reached an all-time high in 2022 with a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion from sanc­tioned enti­ties and cyber­crim­i­nals with known state affil­i­a­tions, accord­ing to Chainal­y­sis‘ recent report.

The num­bers show that the val­ue received by mix­ers reached its all-time high of $51.8 mil­lion on April 19, 2022.

30-day mov­ing aver­age of dai­ly val­ue received by mix­ers (via Chainalysis)

As the val­ue obtained by mix­ers wild­ly fluc­tu­ates dai­ly, the report con­sid­ered the 30-day mov­ing averages.

Mix­ers aim at dis­con­nect­ing the cryp­tocur­ren­cies from their depos­i­tors. They work by pool­ing togeth­er all the deposit­ed funds and re-dis­trib­ut­ing at ran­dom. Crim­i­nals often pro­vide their sec­ond wal­let address as the receiv­ing end, and only by pay­ing a small ser­vice fee they dis­con­nect the stolen amounts from the steal­ing wal­let address.

Why so popular?

Mix­ers have been see­ing an increase in vol­ume every quar­ter since the first quar­ter of 2020.

Val­ue received by mix­ers by source (via Chainalysis)

Based on the data, the main rea­son behind the increase in vol­ume seems like the grow­ing share of cen­tral­ized exchanges and DeFi protocols.

How­ev­er, the share of illic­it activ­i­ties has the high­est con­tri­bu­tion to reach­ing an all-time high in vol­ume. The per­cent­age of vol­ume enter­ing the mix­ers through crim­i­nal address­es is 23% in 2022, which has increased from 12% in 2021.

Illicit activities have the highest share

Mix­ers have been devel­oped to pro­vide extra pri­va­cy in cryp­tocur­ren­cy trans­ac­tions. How­ev­er, they also became a pri­ma­ry tool for crypto-laundering.

Share of funds sent to mix­ers by address type (via Chainalysis)

Accord­ing to the num­bers, near­ly 10% of all funds sent to mix­ers come from illic­it address­es, while the law­ful ones are less than 0.3%.

When the 10% illic­it vol­ume con­trib­u­tors are exam­ined close­ly, sanc­tioned enti­ties and stolen funds emerge as the top two categories.

Sanctioned entities

The below chart clear­ly dis­plays a sig­nif­i­cant increase in vol­ume enter­ing the mix­ers from the wal­lets of sanc­tioned enti­ties, espe­cial­ly in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2022.

The quar­ter­ly val­ue sent to mix­ers from illic­it address­es by cat­e­go­ry (via Chainalysis)

The report also exam­ined the mix­er plat­forms these sanc­tioned enti­ties used. The results revealed that the Russ­ian-based dark­net mar­ket Hydra became the most used plat­form, account­ing for more than half (50.4%) of all funds enter­ing the mix­ers from sanc­tioned entities.

Lazarus Group and Blender.io, affil­i­at­ed with the North Kore­an gov­ern­ment, became the sec­ond and third most used plat­form by sanc­tioned enti­ties, respectively.

Stolen funds

Next, the report exam­ines the con­trib­u­tors under the cat­e­go­ry of stolen funds in more detail.

Illic­it cryp­to received by mix­ers by source (via Chainalysis)

The results revealed that cyber­crim­i­nals orga­ni­za­tions with known state affil­i­a­tions had been the lead­ing con­trib­u­tors to the category.

It can be seen that Russ­ian-based cyber­crim­i­nals groups have been sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tors to the cat­e­go­ry since 2018. How­ev­er, it seems like North Korea has improved in the area and sur­passed the Rus­sians’ dominance.

Source link

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *