Blockchain analytics and cryptocurrency security firm CipherTrace claims Finland has become a hotspot for illegal bitcoin scams.
According to the Spring 2020 Cryptocurrency Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Report, Finnish exchanges as a whole ranked first in the highest percentage of criminal bitcoin inflow.
CipherTrace found that 12.01 percent of all bitcoin funds received in the country were tied directly to criminal sources. Finnish exchange LocalBitcoins was implicated as the recipient for the majority of illegal funds.
The report reads,
For the third year in a row, Finnish exchanges ranked #1 in highest percentage of criminal BTC received, with 12.01% of all BTC funds received coming directly from criminal sources. Finland-based LocalBitcoins, one of the largest peer-to-peer marketplaces, received over 99% of these criminal funds.
The CipherTrace report found that Russian exchanges were the second most popular destination for criminal funds, with 5.23% of all cryptocurrency received coming from hacks, ransomware, and other illegal activity.
The security firm’s researchers discovered that that 86.8% of the criminal BTC received from Russian exchanges last year came from Hydra Market, a Russian dark web marketplace.
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