Criminal crypto whales receive small or extremely large share from illicit sources

February 21, 2022
Infographics

Most criminal whales have received either a small (1.374 criminal whales with 10-25% of their total balance from illicit addresses) or extremely large (1.361 criminal whales with 90-100% of their total balance from illicit addresses) share of their total crypto funds from illicit sources. That’s according to Chainalysis’ Crypto Crime Report 2022, which identified 3.7% of all crypto whales as criminal. A criminal crypto whale is definied as any private wallet holding $1 million or more worth of cryptocurrency which has received 10% or more of its funds from illicit sources. Overall, 4.068 criminal crypto whales are currently holding over $25 billion worth of cryptocurrency.

What is Bitcoin (BTC)?

Bitcoin is a revolutionary new payment network and a new form of electronic money. It’s a digital currency which enables secure and instant financial transactions at dramatically low costs between any two individuals anywhere on the globe. Bitcoin allows its users to transact directly, peer-to-peer, without an intermediary and can be used just like other currencies or assets in exchange for goods or services. Bitcoins are the unit of currency of the Bitcoin payment network. The most used abbreviations for Bitcoin are BTC or XBT.

Bitcoin is the very first cryptocurrency and was founded by an anonymous person or group of individuals, named Satoshi Nakamoto. To this day, Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity and nationality are still unknown. Bitcoin is decentralized. Unlike traditional currencies like the Euro or the US-Dollar, there is no government, institution or other central third party that oversees the issuance and circulation of Bitcoin. That means Bitcoin cannot be censored, manipulated or controlled by a single centralised institution or government. Also, if you store your Bitcoin in a digital, non-custodial wallet, no institution, government or third party is able to lock you out of your funds.

For more information about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies visit our Blockchain FAQ section.

How to I buy Bitcoin (BTC)?

You can buy Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies such as Cardano (ADA) or Ethereum (ETH) on so-called cryptocurrency exchange platforms, like Binance, Kraken or Coinbase.