In 2023, there was a 29% decrease in the amount of money laundered through cryptocurrency exchanges, as per a Chainalysis research.
According to the data, which was received on Thursday, there was a $9.3 billion decline in those illicit funds from $31.5 billion in 2022 to $22.2 billion in 2023.
The blockchain research platform observed that the decline might be explained by a general decline in the volume of cryptocurrency transactions, both legal and illegal.
Chainalysis observed that over the past five years, monies transmitted from unlawful addresses have primarily ended up at centralised exchanges, at a rather consistent pace.
“Over time, the role of illicit services has shrunk, while the share of illicit funds going to DeFi protocols has grown.
“We attribute this primarily to the overall growth of DeFi generally during the period, but must also note that DeFi’s inherent transparency generally makes it a poor choice for obfuscating the movement of funds,” it said.
The firm indicated that the 2023 trend closely resembled 2022 regarding the breakdown of service types used for money laundering.
However, it added that there was a slight decrease in the share of illicit funds directed to illicit service types, accompanied by an increase in funds moving towards gambling services and bridge protocols.
“If we zoom in to look at how specific types of crypto criminals laundered money, we can see that there was a significant change in some areas. Most notably, we saw a huge increase in the volume of funds sent to cross-chain bridges from addresses associated with stolen funds.
“We also observed a substantial increase in funds sent from ransomware to gambling platforms, and in funds sent to bridges from ransomware wallets,” it added.
Further, Chainalysis said 109 exchange deposit addresses received over $10m worth of illicit cryptocurrency each, and collectively, they received $3.4bn in illicit cryptocurrency in 2023.
“While that still represents significant concentration, in 2022, only 40 addresses received over $10m in illicit crypto, for a collective total of just under $2.0bn.
