Chainalysis Names Major Users Of Bitcoin Mixers In 2022

Using cryptocurrency mixers in 2022 has doubled compared to last year. This is stated in the report of the analytical company Chainalysis.

In April, the 30-day moving average reached an all-time high of $51.8 million. According to experts, the most active users of mixers this year were cybercriminals and those under government sanctions.

“Illegal addresses account for 23% of funds sent to mixers in 2022, up from 12% in 2021,” says Chainalysis.

Analysts recalled many legitimate reasons for using mixers, including trading cryptocurrencies under a repressive government or anonymizing legitimate but confidential transactions.

“However, the core functionality of such services, combined with the fact that they rarely request KYC information, makes them attractive to cybercriminals,” the researchers added.

Mixer activities in the US are classified as money transfers under the Bank Secrecy Act. Such transactions must be registered with FinCEN and implement an anti-money laundering program. However, Chainalysis is not aware of any currently KYC/AML compliant mixers.

Most funds from mixers come from centralized exchanges, protocols, and DeFi addresses associated with sanctioned countries, the dark web, and hackers such as the North Korean Lazarus Group.

At the same time, analysts do not exclude that the popularity of such services in the future may decrease due to the ability of analytical tools to demix certain transactions and see the source of funds.