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Crypto crime isn’t just hackers and scams anymore, it’s organized. Think business models, infrastructure, service providers. Criminal networks are using crypto to scale, outsource, and diversify. An example that stood out: Huione Guarantee - a marketplace that’s handled $70 billion in transactions is being used to run everything from scam operations to laundering and fraud.
On paper, crypto crime fell to $40.9 billion in 2024. But that’s just the current tally, these numbers always get revised upward as more illicit addresses are identified. Based on how previous years played out, 2024 might end up being a record-breaker, likely topping $51 billion.
Ransomware gangs managed to pull over $800 million, but that’s actually a 35% drop. Law enforcement stepped up, and more victims are refusing to pay. The ecosystem is shifting: smaller, fragmented groups are replacing the big players, and most ransom payments are now in the $150k–$250k range. Better backups and incident response are making a real difference.
Scammers are using AI, deepfakes, and hyper-targeted phishing. Pig butchering scams (long-term relationship cons that end in investment fraud) grew nearly 40% last year. Sextortion scams also went up, and crypto ATM fraud is becoming a serious problem, especially for older users.
Bitcoin isn’t the default anymore. Stablecoins now account for 63% of all illicit crypto transactions. Why? Because they’re fast, widely accepted, and still hard to trace in many cases, though issuers like Tether have started freezing bad actors’ wallets. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is still common in ransomware and darknet markets, and Monero is on the rise where anonymity is key.
Even after years of takedowns, darknet markets pulled in $2 billion in 2024. Kraken DNM overtook Mega as the top player, and Abacus Market is growing fast, especially in western markets. Vendors are selling fake prescription drugs, buying pill press machines online and other equipment, and relying more on privacy coins to stay under the radar.
Market manipulation is still rampant. Suspected wash trading hit $2.57 billion across DEXs. Over 74,000 tokens launched last year showed signs of being pump-and-dump schemes. Some even used paid bots (like Volume.li) to fake liquidity and trading activity.
In short..
Crypto crime isn’t fading and is actually evolving. It's now more organized, more technical and more professional. But blockchain still leaves a trail. As long as the data’s on-chain, there’s a path to follow, and that’s what keeps tipping the balance back toward enforcement.
As someone who’s diving deeper into blockchain investigations, reports like this are a huge motivator. Chainalysis's report didn't just make me understand what’s happening, it pushed me to connect the dots, understand how the big actors operate, and stay sharp on how the space is shifting. Every page was a reminder of how much there is to learn, and why it’s worth keeping up !
Read the full report here.
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