Criminals held $11bn (£8.1bn) worth of crypto with known illicit sources last year, compared to just $3bn at the end of 2020, new data has shown.

According to Chainalysis, stolen funds accounted for 93% of all criminal balances at $9.8bn in 2021, with darknet market funds coming in at $448m, followed by scams at $192m, fraud shops at $66m, and ransomware at $30m.

Chainalysis also identified in its crypto crime report that more than 4,000 criminal whales hold a total of $25bn worth of cryptocurrency as a group.

The company defined a criminal whale as any private wallet holding $1m or more worth of cryptocurrency that has received more than 10% of its funds from illicit addresses.

As the pandemic raged on and forced more online transactions and investments, cryptocurrency-based crime hit a new all-time high last year. Illicit addresses received a total of $14bn, up by 79% from $7.8bn the previous year.

However, illicit activity’s share of cryptocurrency transaction volume has never been lower, at 0.15%, the report revealed.

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Chainalysis tracked a minimum $44.2bn worth of cryptocurrency sent to NFT-related smart contracts last year, up from just $106 million in 2020, while cybercriminals laundered $8.6bn worth of cryptocurrency, a 30% rise going by the amount of money sent from illegal addresses to addresses hosted by services.

The number of North Korean-linked hacks jumped from four in 2020 to seven in 2021, and the value extracted from these hacks grew by 40%.

Meanwhile, Russian cybercriminals set the pace for ransomware with roughly 74% of ransomware revenue in 2021. This was more than $400m worth of cryptocurrency.

Chainalysis identified just over $602m worth of crypto ransomware payments in 2021.

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It comes after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) seized $2.3m worth of cryptocurrency from the DarkSide ransomware operators responsible for the attack on Colonial Pipeline, and London’s Metropolitan Police Service made the UK’s largest ever seizure of cryptocurrency. It took £180m worth from a suspected money launderer.

Earlier on Wednesday the Financial Stability Board (FSB) warned the rapid rise of crypto-asset markets could impact global financial stability.

It said that the fast evolving sector may reach a point where it threatens stability due to its scale, structural vulnerabilities, and increasing interconnectedness with the traditional financial system. It called for “timely and pre-emptive evaluation of possible policy responses”.

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