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Chainalysis data shows that 4,068 criminal whales (roughly 4% of all whales) move more than $25 billion worth of cryptocurrency between them.
The blockchain analytics firm defines criminal whales as any private wallet that holds more than $1 million worth of crypto with over 10% of the funds received from illicit addresses tied to activity such as scams, fraud and malware.
The data is from the “Criminal Balances” section of the Crypto Crime Report that explores criminal activity on the blockchain over 2021 and early 2022. The wide-ranging report also covers topics such as Ransomware, Malware, Darknet markets and NFT related crime.
Overall, chain analysis has identified 4,068 criminal whales holding over $25 billion in cryptocurrency. Criminal whales account for 3.7 per cent of all cryptocurrency whales, meaning private wallets containing more than $1 million in cryptocurrency," the report states.
The data showed that 1,374 whales received between 10% and 25% of their balance from malicious sources, whereas 1,361 had between 90% and 100%. those with balances between 25% and 90% of illicit funds totalled 1,333 criminal whales.
Whereas stolen funds dominate overall criminal balances, darknet markets are the largest source of illicit money sent to criminal whales, followed by scams and stolen funds in third place," the report said.
Related: Chainalysis report finds most NFT wash traders unprofitable
Illegal transaction activity.
In terms of illicit transactions, the report found that addresses for criminals received more than $14 billion in 2021, a staggering 79% increase from the $7.8 million registered in 2020.
The lion's share of last year's $14 billion figure was attributed to the scam, which rose 82% year-over-year to $7.8 billion. Decentralized finance (defy) carpet draws in particular were highlighted as a key source of fraud at $2.8 billion:
"note that about 90% of the total value lost through carpet withdrawals in 2021 can be attributed to a fraudulent centralized exchange, thodex, that the ceo disappeared shortly after the swap prevented users from withdrawing funds."
Theft also rose 516% to $3.2 billion in illicit transactions, with the parades area again a concern.
On the upside, chainalysis noted that total transactions in us dollars in 2021 totalled about $15.8 trillion, with illicit addresses amounting to only 0.15% of this figure, from 0.34 % the year before.
'Crime is becoming an ever smaller part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The ability of law enforcement to address cryptocurrency-based crime is also evolving. We've seen a lot of examples of that throughout 2021, from the cftc in charge of several investment scams, fbi takeover of the prolific revil strain of ransomware, ofac sanctions against suex and chatex", indicates the report.
