The crypto market isn’t new to whales. But “criminal whales” is a brand new notion that has started circulating recently. The market was taken aback after a recent report disclosed the amount of crypto they were holding.
As per data compiled by the blockchain analytics platform, Chainalysis there were approximately 4068 criminal whales in the market. They accounted for about 4% of the whale population in the crypto industry. The combined value of these whales was a whopping $25 billion in cryptocurrency.
But why do they get the title “criminal whales?” It was determined that about 10% of funds in private wallets that hold more than $1 million or more worth of cryptocurrencies came from illegitimate addresses. The report dissected more than 4,000 private wallets with illicit funds.
The report read,
“An interesting pattern emerges when we break down all criminal whales by the share of their total funds that have illicit origins: Most criminal whales received either a relatively small or extremely large share of their total balance from illicit addresses.”
The source of amassing illicit funds was dispersed across an array of arrangements. Most of these criminal whales got their money from the darknet market, which ranked first on the list. Scams, stolen funds, fraud shops, and ransomware were the next items on the list.
The crypto market has long been linked to the dark web. Despite growing into a prominent industry, some parts of it still seemed to be lingering in the streets of the dark web.
Where are these crypto criminal whales from?
Additionally, the latest report was able to pinpoint the criminal whales’ time zone. The majority of these whales were discovered in Russian cities like Moscow as well as St.Petersburg, as per the crypto analytics firm. The firm hinted that they could potentially be in Saudi Arabia, South Africa, or Iran.
Governments across the globe have frequently condemned the crypto-verse, implying that it was a tool for unlawful activity. Unlike fiat, however, the latest analysis demonstrates that all crypto-based criminal activity can be tracked on the blockchain.