The most important factor for criminals who commit cybercrime is getting access to the profits of their illegal activities. That’s why money laundering is so crucial to their schemes – it prevents authorities from tracing the criminal funds back to them. However, it’s not an easy task to launder cryptocurrency since every transaction is recorded on the blockchain. But thanks to innovative services, criminals can now make their Bitcoin transactions look clean while keeping the profits of their crimes.
Bitcoin Laundry is a new service that helps cryptocurrency users remain anonymous by mixing their addresses with those of other traders. It offers extremely low fees and allows you to choose how much of your coins you want cleaned. But how does it do this? The idea behind it is that if you send your coins to different addresses, there’s a higher chance that any link between them will be broken. Then, the cleaned coins will be sent to a final address that you specify.
According to research published in a paper1 titled “Bitcoin laundering: Mixed results?”, criminals use bitcoin mixers and exchange services to make their transactions appear clean. Mixers, also known as tumblers, obfuscate the origin and receipt of cryptocurrencies by combining an initial amount with smaller units that combine to equal the original total minus one to three percent (taken as profit by the coin mixer company). Then, the resulting cryptocurrency is transferred to a wallet or exchange. The criminals then transfer this tainted cryptocurrency to their local bank accounts, which are opened for them by money mules.
Cybercriminals can also launder cryptocurrency through other means, such as transferring funds to prepaid cards and using them to buy goods and services online. But the most popular method is by using mixers and exchange services. This makes sense, as these services 비트코인세탁 allow the criminals to disassociate their bitcoins from their crime-related origin and then convert them into spendable currencies.
Interestingly, the researchers found that most of the illicit cryptocurrency laundered through dark web bitcoin laundering services is funneled to a small number of deposit addresses. In fact, 17% of all the crypto laundering through decentralized finance applications, high-risk exchanges, and mining pools in 2021 was done through just four deposit addresses.
In addition, they found that a significant percentage of the illicit funds laundered through these bitcoin mixer and exchange services are withdrawn in fiat currency. In most cases, the criminals receive the cash into their personal bank accounts or through prepaid cards.
This finding is not a surprise, as the researchers observed that most cryptocurrency money laundering services are often used by professional cybercriminals. The paper concludes by examining the reliability of Bitcoin mixers and exchanges on the dark web, including their service-percentages and reputation mechanisms. In addition, the authors conducted a cash-out experiment on five mixer and exchange services to see how effective they are in hiding cybercrime proceeds.
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