Stablecoins most preferred crypto for illegal transactions in 2023: report

Stablecoins dominated most of the illicit transaction volume in 2022 and 2023 as cybercriminals sought to make transactions other than using Bitcoin (BTC).

In its latest report on crypto crime, blockchain analytics firm Chinalysis highlights that Bitcoin will be the dominant “cryptocurrency of choice” among criminals from 2018 to 2021. However, in 2022 and 2023, most of the illegal transaction volume was accounted for by Statcoins.

The report notes that the change comes alongside the growth of overall activity around stablecoins, including legitimate transactions. Despite the development, other criminal activities such as darknet market sales and ransomware scams still use BTC.

However, cybercriminals are increasingly targeting stablecoins for fraud and transactions involving unauthorized parties. Chainalysis wrote:

“Sanctioned entities and jurisdictions seized a total transaction volume of $14.9 billion in 2023, which represents 61.5% of the illicit transaction volume we measured that year.”

According to the report, the majority of this money is driven by the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control through crypto services that continue to operate in places where US sanctions do not apply.

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On January 4, blockchain security company CertiK reported that crypto hack revenue will decrease by more than 51% in 2023. This marks a “positive development” in blockchain security, CertiK co-founder Ronghui Gu said.

Chainalysis shared somewhat similar figures in its report, which showed that crypto hack revenue decreased by 54.3%, and crypto fraud profits decreased by 29.2%. As a result, the records also show that the volume of transactions related to illegal addresses decreased in 2023.

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