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Chainalysis mid-year crypto crime update titled “Illicit Activity Falls With Rest of Market, With Some Notable Exceptions” was released on Tuesday. The report shows that in the first half of this year, illicit crypto volumes have dropped significantly at only 65% of what it was during the same period of last year.
Total scam revenues totalled $1.6 billion and according to the blockchain data analytics firm this number being down suggests that “fewer people than ever are falling for cryptocurrency scams.”
Overall, “illicit volumes are down just 15% year over year, compared to 36% for legitimate volumes,” Chainalysis wrote.
Chainalysis also noted that the absolute numbers of individual transfers to scams has reached a four-year low so far in 2022.
Chainalysis added:
“Those numbers suggest that fewer people than ever are falling for cryptocurrency scams. One reason for this could be that with asset prices falling, cryptocurrency scams are less enticing to potential victims.”
The analytics firm said that darknet market revenue has also tanked this year, being 43% lower than where it was through July in 2021.
Nevertheless, the blockchain analytics firm reports that when it comes to hacking and stolen funds, criminal activity has increased in 2022:
“Through July 2022, $1.9 billion worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen in hacks of services, compared to just under $1.2 billion at the same point in 2021.”
Unfortunately, Chainalysis expects this illicit activity not to diminish on a short-term basis, noting that:
“This trend doesn’t appear set to reverse any time soon, with a $190 million hack of cross-chain bridge Nomad and $5 million hack of several Solana wallets already occurring in the first week of August. Much of this can be attributed to the stunning rise in funds stolen from DefF [decentralized finance] protocols, a trend that began in 2021.”