Less crime regarding crypto currencies
The amount of crypto related crimes has plummeted in 2020.

Crimes targeting the cryptocurrency sector fell by more than half in 2020, according to blockchain security firm CipherTrace. Largely due to improved security systems, CipherTrace, a cryptocurrency crime and anti-money laundering report, found that losses from cryptocurrency theft, hacking, and fraud fell 57% to $ 1.9 billion over the past year. In 2019, a blockchain forensics report from CipherTrace said cryptocurrency theft has skyrocketed year over year, with losses from digital currency crime reaching $ 4.4 billion in the first nine months of the year . That was an increase of 150% over the first nine months of 2018. Last year, a Ponzi scheme called WoToken defrauded investors for $ 1.1 billion, which is 58% of the top crime's annual volume. Last November, a Chinese court sentenced five people to up to nine years in prison for their involvement in the WoToken scam that defrauded over 700,000 Chinese citizens. However, CipherTrace saw an increase in crime related to decentralized finance (DeFi) over the past year. Most of these were "rug pulls," a practice of artificially hyping and inflating a token, with the creators and early investors pulling the plug after the pump. Those who get in later are left with great losses. In other words, a crypto pump and dump. "Half of all 2020 crypto hacks were from DeFi logs - a pattern that was practically negligible in all previous years - and nearly 99% of the large volume of fraud in the second half of 2020 came from DeFi logs, the 'rug pulls 'and other exit scams are conducting a pattern eerily reminiscent of the 2017 ICO madness, "the report said. DeFi protocols have many exceptions to the traditional enforcement regimes faced by centralized exchanges, money service providers, and banks. According to Defi Pulse, which is tracking the industry, the total value locked in Defi is currently $ 26.7 billion, up from $ 4 billion last August. In recent years, cryptocurrency has been linked to criminal activities such as ponzi schemes, extortion, theft, and money laundering. And the currency of choice is Bitcoin, which is responsible for 95% of illegal cryptocurrency transactions. Still, Bitcoin addresses with known criminal connections transferred at least $ 3.5 billion of virtual currency in 2020, which is less than 1% of cryptocurrency transactions. The traditional banking system has stricter measures, but large global banks have transacted trillions of dollars in "suspicious" transactions. Last September, BuzzFeed News and the not-for-profit International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released classified US government documents reporting that large banks were processing $ 2 trillion in transactions despite suspicion that they were linked to illegal activity. On the regulatory front, the cryptocurrency sphere has been showered with new legal attention as regulatory and policy bodies ponder how the space should function. Last December, the outgoing Trump administration said it was preparing an ordinance that would remove the anonymity of cryptocurrencies to make it easier to track transactions. The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has proposed a new rule that would require cryptocurrency wallets that are not hosted by financial institutions in the United States to be tied to verified identities. The proposal would require banks and money services companies that trade crypto, including exchanges, to track and report crypto owners using wallets that are not held by a custodian. Under the proposal, crypto companies would have to record and report crypto transactions over $ 10,000, just as banks are required to. However, the Biden administration has declared a freeze on all agency rulemaking until an agent review is made.





