According to the Chainalysis report, in 2019, almost $2.8 billion in bitcoins were stolen from different exchanges all over the world. The majority of funds were laundered through exchanges like Binance and Huobi. The analysis firm further revealed in its report that over $600 million in bitcoins were spent on darknet markets alone in Q4 of 2019.
Total darknet market sales grew by 70% in 2019.
The new research by Chainalysis shows that after a small decline in 2018, total darknet market sales grew 70% in 2019 to over $790 million worth of cryptocurrency. This is the first time sales have surpassed $600 million. Than report further notes that for the time since 2015, darknet markets increased their share of overall incoming crypto transactions doubling from 0.04% in 2018 to 0.08% in 2019.
Illicit transactions account for just 1% of all BTC transactions.
Even though law enforcement has been quite active in catching darknet criminals who engage in numbers of cybercrimes, the darknet market has seen a growth. The officials all around the world have used bitcoin being used in darknet as a major excuse to regulate the cryptocurrency, but only one percent of all bitcoin transactions were related to illicit activities in 2019.
