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Bitcoin is censorship-resistant. That's why ransomware gangs like it. This very same feature also prevents democratic societies from modifying the Bitcoin protocol to exclude ransomware gangs. Bitcoin may be censorship resistant, but the venues where it is traded are not. Section 311 and other tools that allow for leverage over these venues remain one of the best ways to attack bitcoin-based ransomware.

The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) charged Anatoly Legkodymov, co-founder of the Bitzlato digital asset exchange, with conducting a money transmitting business that transported and transmitted illicit funds and that failed to meet U.S. regulatory safeguards, including anti-money laundering (AML) requirements. The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) alleged that Bitzlato facilitated "illicit transactions for ransomware actors operating in Russia, including Conti, a Ransomware-as-a-Service group that has links to the Government of Russia." Also it said that Binance was among the biggest counterparties that received Bitcoin from Bitzlato between May 2018 and September 2022.

The price of Bitcoin has fallen back into the low $30,000 range amid news that US federal authorities have recovered some of the Bitcoin paid by Colonial Pipeline to resolve a ransomware attack that shut down the East Coast oil pipeline for nearly a week in early May. Colonial paid $4.4 million in Bitcoin to take back control of its systems. Deputy FBI Director Paul Abbate said the bureau seized the money from a Bitcoin wallet that DarkSide ransomware actors used to collect the payment from Colonial Pipeline.

According to Chainalysis, In 2023, illicit addresses sent $22.2 billion worth of cryptocurrency to services, versus the $31.5 billion sent in 2022. Some of this drop may be attributed to an overall decrease in crypto transaction volume. However, the drop in money laundering activity was steeper, at 29.5%, compared to the 14.9% drop in total transaction volume. However, there was a big increase in the volume of funds sent to cross-chain bridges from addresses associated with stolen funds, and a substantial increase in funds sent from ransomware to gambling platforms, and in funds sent to bridges from ransomware wallets.

US federal authorities have recovered some of the Bitcoin paid by Colonial Pipeline to resolve a ransomware attack that shut down the East Coast oil pipeline for nearly a week in early May. Colonial paid $4.4 million in Bitcoin to take back control of its systems.

"SIX MONTHS OF 2019 are on the books already, and certainly there have been six months' worth of data breaches, supply chain manipulations, state-backed hacking campaigns, and harbingers of cyberwar to show for it. But the hallmark of 2019, perhaps, is feeling like the worst is yet to come. Ransomware is an ever-growing threat, corporate and US government security is still a mess, and geopolitical tensions are rising worldwide."

Chainalysis reported that criminal activity represented 0.34% of all 2020 crypto-asset transaction volume (versus 2.1% in 2019). One of the reasons for the decline is due to overall economic activity nearly tripling between 2019 and 2020. Scams made up the majority of such flows at 54% of funds received for illicit activity, followed by darknet markets (35%). Although ransomware accounted for only 7% of all funds received by criminal addresses, it was up 311% from 2019.

A CBDC could be designed so that anyone can get as much anonymous money as they want. But they'd have to pay for this privilege. One way is by charging a hourly fee, or a negative interest rate, on anonymous balances or set a large withdrawal fee, say 5% for anomymity. These revenues might be used by the government to to bolster the budgets of fraud departments, or to compensate victims of ransomware. But an anonymity tax puts regular people and criminals into the same bucket and it subtly ostracizes licit users of anonymous CBDC.

"More than 2,100 computers around the world were infected over the weekend with ransomware that exploited a two-year-old vulnerability in server software made by VMware Inc., according to cybersecurity researchers and authorities."

"Custodia plans to issue the token on Blockstream's Liquid network and possibly also on Ethereum. These are public decentralized networks. Custodia would have no control over the ownership and distribution of such tokens. It would be as if it had issued its own banknotes. The joint regulator statement cited above says that issuing tokens on such networks is "highly likely to be inconsistent with safe and sound banking practices." While regulators perceive crypto as a vehicle for money laundering, terrorist financing and ransomware, and the headlines are dominated by crypto-related frauds, scams and rug pulls, regulated banks are not going to be allowed to issue stablecoins on public networks."

The U.S. Treasury's "Illicit Finance Risk Assessment of Decentralized Finance" report said that ransomware crooks, thieves, scammers and other criminals are "using DeFi services in the process of transferring and laundering their illicit proceeds... [However,] money laundering, proliferation financing, and terrorist financing most commonly occur using fiat currency or other traditional assets as opposed to virtual assets." https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1391

Chainalysis projects that the total volume of illicit crypto transactions for 2024 could surpass $51 billion, of which 63% involved stablecoins. This is part of a broader ecosystem trend in which stablecoins also occupy a sizable percentage of all crypto activity, due to their wide array of practical use cases in a range of markets. The upside from a financial integrity perspective, is that stablecoin issuers can and do freeze funds if they are made aware of their use by illicit actors. For example, Tether has frozen addresses of concern linked to scams, terrorist financing, and sanctions evasion, which can make stablecoins a poor tool for the transfer of value by illicit actors. Nonetheless, despite these ecosystem-wide trends, some forms of crypto crime, such as ransomware and darknet market sales, remain BTC-dominated. https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2025-crypto-crime-report-introduction/