Bitcoin Forum

At least 870,000 bitcoins are associated with illegal activities. This is about $ 10 billion.

• Darknet marketplaces - 585,000 BTC.
• Stolen bitcoins - 204,000 BTC.
• Scam project organizers - 98,000 BTC.
• Other illegal activities 3,000 BTC.

https://i.imgur.com/HUUhFuP.png
https://markets.chainalysis.com/#risk-illicit-placement

One day, all these bitcoins will somehow hit the market.  :-\

It's very possible that our coins are already mixed with illegal coins those were marked on the addresses. You never know.

Does this worry you much?
It doesn't for me.

When we deal with cash, we do not know the source of that cash whether it came from an illegal or legal source one hand before me. I think the Bitcoin hatters are very active to plant the seeds in our head some day we will be in trouble. There will be time when we will not have these centralized exchanges with centralized fiat, there will be a time when we will not have any centralized financial system. Wait for those days.

PS: I am not encouraging those illegal Bitcoin traders by any means. I just think that nothing can stop Bitcoin.

I wonder what the site defines as illicit/illegal activities. What laws(in relation to countries transaction origins?) are they based on? And how did they really determine this? Did they factor in the deflationary nature of Bitcoin? 1 BTC in 2010 would be worth alot more today... When did this research take place, by the way?
Can thesame method be used to determine how much of physical/digital fiat currencies and precious metals are used for illegal activities... maybe from 2015 till now? Just want to know if the research is reliable and can be repeated with good results. Also to  compare the illicit transactions to other currencies and determine how bad things  are.

So what?
There is no doubt many more 10's of billions of dollars in fiat associated with illegal activities.
Fun Fact: At least in the West, check any large random sample of paper currency and there will be traces of cocaine on much of it. Does anyone worry about that? No.

There is no doubt that trillions of dollars and fiat currency will be used for illegal activities but there is no evidence trail for fiat transaction but that is not the case with bitcoin, it is an evidence trail and every transaction every made is available for anyone to track and if you are holding coins that are marked as illegal then you might get into trouble in the future, right now no one cares about the coins we are receiving but that might not be the case in the future.

Does this amount even matter in this world? where Fiat currency is used for all illegal activities. It does not bother me neither it should bother anyone here as it is a very small amount compared to what is stored in Swiss Banks.

Some of them already hit the market these are some of them https://twitter.com/whale_alert/status/1287807444006117376?s=20
https://twitter.com/whale_alert/status/1287807441275629568?s=20 I'm very sure many must have been mixed are sold in exchange as well. Stolen coin are becoming rampant daily and people are making use of bitcoin as escape route for this illicit scam

If you have any Bitcoin then the chances are extremely high you have some that was either stolen from someone or earned selling 'shit'. Silk Road and similar will have had hundreds of thousands of coins passing through and they don't disappear like magic, they keep on circulating.

As long as you don't end with a toxic brand on your forehead it is what it is.

I think the questions above are important to consider as there's no clear transparency about how these BTCs have been categorised a illegal crypto. I have no doubt that a large amount of crypto came into circulation from illegal activities but this is not the point. The specifics we need to focus on is the flexibility crypto provides for each and everyone of us, and the independency from third parties.

For instance, right now because of the pandemic citizens from certain countries cannot longer access their own cash from their own banks because the government doesn't allow them to. So we should be grateful that we now have crypto where this level of restriction isn't possible.

There were many similar markets like that second silk road and sheep marketplace that was hacked and many many more that exist to this day.

I could argue that more than 50% of all coins in existence were once used for something illegal even if this illegal thing was tax evasion. I really don't care just as I don't wash my cash when I get it :D  Some of the cash you use every day was probably used to buy drugs or prostitutes. Does it change anything?

Chainalysis seems to have put up some arbitrary figure backed by no proof for cross-verification. Where does one check the addresses, they believe, belong to Darknet marketplaces / Stolen bitcoins / Scam project organizers / Other illegal activities? There is no way to check whether any address ever transacted with their suspect list either. It seems, this report is just a marketing gimmick to attract deep pocket customers.

Exactly as you said, in real and physical market, peolle exchanges both stolen and salary paid money together, who cares? So far as it provides liquidity and fast execution, who cares? There's is an African proverb saying, " even if money comes in dirty bags, you must welcome it". This had never been a bother in me, and never mind OP.

The numbers could be totally made up, but I'm sure they have ways and means they're not going to tell us, however there's no denying a large amount of coinage has been exchanged for questionable things over the years.

If your coins are not straight from the miner the likelihood is extremely high we all have a little piece of them.

True. But, how does Chainalysis know whether the coin is actually dirty or has a travel history from a service similar to the one in your signature?

That's their trade and they're unlikely to tell you how they know. They could of course be making it all up. It's not as if some tubby sheriff is going to know better.

But there are plenty of cases of moronic dark market traders sending coins straight to exchanges. And those Twitter hackers posted an address with previous transactions to exchanges. The criminally minded are just as lazy and stupid as the rest of us.

Even the more careful can blow it all with one slip.

That 900K illegal BTC can't be destroyed though as long as its owned by someone and will send it to someone else, its just right there and will keep circulating and may even get our clean from a centralized exchange one day.  Its the fiat bills are far dangerous, it doesn't have traces of cocaine but also coronavirus. They might wanna sanitize them all first before looking into BTC.

I am worried about the fact that these shadow bitcoins can enter the market at the most inopportune moment and in one way or another affect the movement of the bitcoin price.
Of course, this is unlikely, because we do not know the full picture of who exactly owns all these bitcoin, most likely scattered groups of people.
Otherwise, I agree, there is essentially nothing to worry about.

These are all confirmed? I wonder how this site gathers the data to that they really know that the Bitcoin is used in relation to criminals. This is not a small amount of Bitcoin. but compared to the whole supply of BTC, it may be only several percentages. however, it will also influence the market flows if it hits the market. But, the questions are:
1. Does anybody know where are now those Bitcoins? Only hold in their wallet? on the Bitcoin mixers? Or already traded in the market?
2. If it is still kept on their wallet, will they open it and trade it on the market at the same time? I think no because they are different networking and they may have different stages or ways to spend the BTC.
3. DO they always influence the market if they spend the BTC on the market? I think that they may not have a big influence on the market because they are small compared to the whole supply of the BTC. Moreover, the circulating supply of BTC so far is around 18,445,150 BTC. I think that they will also not trade it at the same market to make a big difference.
Well, this is only my opinion because those criminals are not correlated at all. they have different networking. We also do not know whether they have been trading those amounts or not. So, never be panic about this, but stay calm and also watch out.

There is more in cash transactions but they don't have record, only estimation of how much drugs and other illegal activities were involved during their seized. I agree with them that it's also the same with cash, we don't know the actual source of it.

How about use those bitcoin for good purpose,

The thing here is that, because bitcoin has accountability some people seem to think that stained bitcoin might stain the chain, but I think your argument is great, in the sense that, just because cash isn't as accountable as btc, doesn't mean we can't make the same argument for it, if we as humans really cared about people misusing our means of exchanging goods, we'd take down 90% of all US dollars because there's cocaine traces in that many bills.

If that doesn't stop the USD, believe me it won't stop bitcoin either, this accountability will instead help bring justice, more so than cash ever did anyway

This is why bitcoin was tag as scam.because of these people using bitcoin as a means for their scam activities. No wonder why government did not approve bitcoin due to the feature that is not compatible to the government system and at the same high risk for the community consumption. Aside from that abuses may going to happen but hoping that one day these abuses will stop and ways will be determine how to do it.

Point is?

Most of your paper money in your leather wallet have probably been involved in some illegal activity at one point. The only difference is bitcoin is traceable, physical fiat is not.

If you, or the government, for some reason want to trace your money, you/they should embrace bitcoin.

This and your latest posts sounds awfully much like an automated posting bot. Care to share something insightful?

They aren't necessarily held on wallets, right? That's just basically the tally of illegal BTC they found but said BTC has already spread over various wallets of others through mixers and other methods right? Well, not that I care much tbh. It's not like knowing about them changes the fact that they are illegal, and even if they were to be owned by me, it's not like I wouldn't be able to use it in the end. Plus, if they were able to send said coins to exchange and made me able to receive it, it already states that said coins are wiped clean, or even if it wasn't and just managed to slip the surveillance, then it isn't really my fault that it ended up on me. They can freely check transactions history for that after all.

I suppose they are confirmed, one way or another, or else they wouldn't list records of said illegal Bitcoins. That, or just a part of it is true, but it shouldn't deviate from that I suppose (that is, considering this is everything that was confirmed to be illegal). It is a small amount, yes, but they could still influence the market albeit temporarily by dumping a huge number at one time.

The point is that once this coins hit the market, it will really hit hard enough to plunge Bitcoin again. I don't know if you know this but even 2% of those coin would make a panic selling. Remember the 13,000 Bitcoin Scam? The time where Bitcoin is trading $10,000 but dived to $4,000 because of the scam, that is most likely will happen. That could potentially make another bear run for a long time.

Who knows? If those bitcoins used from illegal activities are now circulating and been using by others now. In that case, no matter where it came from it is still bitcoin that is decentralized. Thus, the source is untraceable.

Huge percentage used by dark markets, paying as bitcoin for illegal things and then it recirculate. I know the essence of this thread that OP wanted us to understand is that the increasing numbers of bitcoin is being used in other activities such of these instead of the supposed real purpose why it was created in the first place.

Is it considered illegal to buy legal stuff on darknet marketplace? What if I buy some book, for example, that is legal in my country and illegal in the US? Would it make bitcoins, which I used to buy a book, illegal in US? From my perspective, these bitcoins were never used in illicit activities, but Chainanysis says that my bitcoins are illegal. I am confused.

What if I want to absolutely consciously donate my money to scammers? It is not illegal to send transactions whoever I want, right?. Is it also considered illegal? Why chainalysis should have an ability to censor and judge my decisions? I didn't vote for them and consider their activities illegal and amoral, they violate my human rights.

This doesn't matter at all. It is already hitting the market dude and we can be holding now a scammed bitcoin. But then again it's too unnecessary to know where your holding are from, as it is only a currency, a money, and not a thing that has your name or records its past. Are you even sure that the bitcoins you hold right now isn't from any other illegal activities from the past nor had been generated illegally? Or should I say, is there anything illegal in the aspect bitcoin and cryptocurrencies?

hence, whatever those Bitcoins are from. It is just money, nothing more, nothing less.

Those are bad history of bitcoin and that amount will continue to circulate for whatever reason.
That scam or fraud already affects the price of bitcoin and right now we are moving on and continue from reaching many people as much as we can. Most of those illegal bitcoins can't retrieve anymore but some of those was able to track and sue the people behind it. The scam activities will continue to exist at any market so keep this in your mind and always think to become more effective with your bitcoin.

True there is a huge possibility that those illegal Bitcoin are already mixed up on the market,
We don't know how many of those Bitcoin are already circulating on the market who knows maybe half or more of it are already on the market.
They could sell it little by little so that we wouldn't feel the impact of the dump.

This is the first thing I think about after reading OP. But I think the possibilites of us associated with illegal activities just because our bitcoins mixed with some that are marked used ilegally is unlikely. Perhaps, different countries have different regulations and jurisdiction, keeping track of the illegally marked bitcoin will be too hard, plus, we have already underwent KYC's for sure, and some of local exchanges have already implemented systems that could block bitcoin that restricts their TOS or rules.

It’s quite possible that you might have used illegal bitcoins in one or the other , but you wouldn’t be aware of that. I have seen exchanges block people’s account with claims that they are holding illicit BTC funds, and then ask them for a proof.

We just don’t know it, you can’t tell where your coins are coming from, you don’t know how the sender got it... Unless you’re always buying direct from centralized and legit exchanges. If not that, then you likely might get one of those and if you try to move it to a centralized exchange they will probably detect it and lock your funds, and you will then have to answer for what you don’t know about.

In order to qualitatively analyse information of this kind, it is necessary to have data on dark net wallets, such databases probably exist. But if we consider that various services always change wallets to new ones for anonymity, then it turns out that we have far from complete statistics. By the way, it is interesting how the bitcoins that have passed the mixer are determined and what is the attitude of this statistics to bitcoin mixers.

Somehow it's so hard to free Bitcoin from this scam and illegal stuff reputation. Although fiat money is involved in all kinds of criminal activities from money laundering to terrorism financing, everyone is always pointing to Bitcoin
Yes, Bitcoin has been used on dark web (now replaced with Monero) and in illegal activities mainly because of better anonimity compared to fiat. But Bitcoin is much more than that, criminal and illegal activities are not defining it and it has much more.good sides than bad sides.

Because of such illegal activities few governments might just not be in situation of approving it or making them as a legal status as they fear that it will give more rise to such activities. But this is also unfortunate as those who are interested to make the best use of it in right way could not do it because it is banned in their country. Also, the hackers after hacking asked for the bitcoin a money which make it more dangerous.

I'm sure illegal Bitcoin has entered the market, and maybe we all have already bought it. Because in my opinion it's difficult
find out the source of Bitcoin in the market from where. So it is difficult to separate between legal Bitcoin and illegal Bitcoin.
Not only Bitcoin, even fiat is also widely used for illegal activities. So we don't need to worry about things like this, because
it has no effect on the market. Investors don't care where Bitcoin they buy from.

The fact is that more and more crypto exchanges are implementing some form of monitoring and analysis of the origin of BTC, which in itself would not be bad if it can prevent illegal activities. But it’s also a fact that the average user (and some more advanced ones) can hardly determine if their BTCs have ever been to some blacklisted address.

Cash, however, is something else entirely - unless the banknotes are not marked (serial numbers in a database), anyone can literally use such cash for anything without any fear, so I guess cashiers won’t be CSIs to discover the origin of the money.

The days will come, but how many days will it take - or rather the years for the financial system to become decentralized? I'm not a pessimist by nature, but the system is very firmly rooted and hard to change - at least I haven't heard any serious politicians or bankers talk about it yet.

For a financial system to become decentralized, it will be a dream as the politicians will not like that to happen, do you really think that they really want a transparent system, not in a light years and you will not hear any politicians or banker talking about having a transparent decentralized system.
The problem with all the exchanges monitoring the coins is that if the coins are coming through mixers then they might mark those coins and they might even confiscate the coins asking for the source.

900000 BTC is around 4,25% and more of the total supply of Bitcoin 21.000.000.
Well does it really influence the market with that percentage? Moreover, will they enter the market suddenly at one time?
We don't even know where the BTC is now and we also do not know whether they still keep the BTC or turn it into cash. Probably they are some of the whales. but probably they are also using it only for converting to cash money easily in order to make some certain payment.
So, I think that it will not bring a big significant influence to the market.

That was my thought. When a government does a huge drug bust they will say things like "$100 million of drugs taken off the streets" but they are referring to the street level resale of the drug to dramatically over inflate what is happening here to boost their own ego, get more government funding and what have you.

Probably no different here. By over-exaggerating the amount of BTC or their value, you make a more compelling argument to legitimize whatever it is you are attempting to prove. Of course they aren't entirely wrong. Just view their numbers somewhat skeptically.

Oh dear - whatever next?

I'm waiting for someone to discover a covid infected Bitcoin.

Why do you think that those who own those "shadow" bitcoins (as you called them) would mindlessly just dump them ? After all, they are interested in profit, so why would they behave any different than others?

To answer you question, no, I do not worry about such scenario. Bitcoin survived so much already and at this moment stuff like that can't hurt him in the long run, and that's what's most important.


Yep. It amazes me how people keep finding ways to worry about BTC.

one could only imagine such graph for any fiat  :-X

i soak all my bitcoins in bleach so its all good.

In my opinion 900,000 illegal Bitcoins circulating in the market does not affect the price of Bitcoin, because we will not know
where illegal Bitcoin is. So in my opinion it is mixed with legal Bitcoin, and investors will not be able to differentiate in the end.
The most important we can invest smoothly and can make a profit from Bitcoin.

Indeed. Since we are in a vast market like this in crypto, we certainly do not know where and from what hand does it come from because cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin is just being transacted and circulated across the market coming from different addresses and we do not even concern if the source is a legitimate or an illegal one. Yes, most Bitcoins are coming from illegal activities and transactions which we certainly know and care about like we do on physical money or cash because if ever that came across from a dirty stuff, then it is not our faulty anymore because currencies are normally being circulated to be used up by many people so we do not care anymore and should not worry if ever it came from somewhere illegal.

By comparison, the above mentioned BTC allegedly used for illegal activities only sums up to  more than $ 9.79 billion and its almost traceable!

Now a recent statistics shows a frightening amount of more than $ 232 billion (see link below)  on illegal drugs spending alone and we have to consider that most of these transactions were made possible by using fiat money which is almost untraceable.

I think if those BTC hits the market, which I assume is happening right now, I think it doesn't have a big impact if we ought to compare it to illegal transactions using fiat money. Imho.


Source: https://www.worldometers.info/drugs/ (https://www.worldometers.info/drugs/)

Pretty much this. You never know what coins you receive, if they were before involved with some illegal activities.
Same with dollar bills, most of them have trace of cocaine on them, and you care? Not really, because if you would, money would lost its main value and purpose.

The number of bitcoins associated with illegal activities is quite high compared to the entire sum circulated in the market. This isn't a big issue, because with the circulating sum of USD and other fiat, there will be more and more volume of fiat associated with the black market and illegal activities. For the same do we ignore using the fiat on our daily needs. Same will be with bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, we need to use it in the right way and teach good about bitcoin to the world.

Ask the source of the original coins that come with the mixer whether it is allowed, or indeed some exchanges have the authority to be able to find out. Like the Chipmixer platform which was created for a privacy.

Many illegal Bitcoins are produced by scammers who then eliminate traces by using a coin mixer platform. it's like a knife that can be used for good things and can also be used for bad things.

What do you mean illegal bitcoins? No matter how they are used, it is important that they are in circulation and continue to be bitcoins.

This is like saying "there are 900,000 trillion trillion trillion oxygen molecules associated with illegal activity because someone breathed them in while committing a crime, all of these molecules will somehow be breathed in by someone else."

Who decides what is illegal and where?
Who decides if someone has already used the "illegal" bitcoins and an innocent party owns them?

Think about all the gold (or silver) in the world.  At some point it is virtually guaranteed that it was either stolen, someone was killed for it, some evil dictator/totalitarian ruler/emperor/king/queen etc,  forced people to surrender it to him/her (spoils of war, taxes etc) or it was mined by slave labor.  Does that mean that all gold is tainted?  No, it means that evil and immoral people are in the world and they did something bad with some object.  

It doesn't mean that the object is good or bad, it means that the use to which is was put was bad.  Forks don't make people fat, guns don't kill people, actions by people using those implements do so.

This whole "analysis" is just idiotic.

These are definitely interesting numbers, but it certainly doesn't come as any surprise to me that the numbers are this high.  I would love to see the numbers for fiat currency, they would be so far beyond these numbers it's not even funny. I think it's important people keep that in mind.

What criteria do they go by? How do they get to these numbers? Unless I missed it and I apologise if I did and I am just being silly but as far as I can see I can't find an explanation as to where and how these calculations come from. Saying darkmarket activity is all illicit is not true at all. There many gambling websites for example that exist on the darkweb. Hell there was an old man selling cookies and no it was not a code word for drugs or it normal cookies not space cookies or anything.

Other things they sell on the darknet are for example medical supplies that otherwise would have cost an arm and a leg. It is disgusting that medical supplies are not sold at cost or close to it. A read about a man who needed inhaulers or some breather apparatus for his wife and he got it on the dark web for multiple times cheaper. I don't call that illicit. If anything they people selling medical supplies for such high prices are the real criminals.

Another thing is. Anything you get on the dark web you can get on the clearnet. The darknet is not this mysterious place of wonder. It's boring as hell and it's like a 56k modem. Sure there is some wierd stuff but you can see that on the clear web too. Another thing is most of the things there are scams. There are no hitmen and things like this. If you pay someone to make a hit where would they? They could just take the money and do nothing.
People watching too much damn TV.

Who do really cares to check or verify on which their transactions came from if it is from a illegal activities or from the good ones? First of all, we are into a vast world of cryptocurrencies so basically we do not really know into who and which hands the cryptocurrencies we have got from numerous transactions really came from because it is quite impossible to track it down due to many numbers of transactions being processed day by day. Who do really know or even care to identify it first if the transaction they receive came from safe hands or not? Whatever or wherever the Bitcoin transactions we got came from will not be duly our responsibility anymore since usage and transactions of Bitcoin and being done continuously and simultaneously in circulation like paper money so it is just normal that there are cases money whether digital or cash will have a chance to came from illegal activities which we are already not aware because we do not even know that it happen.

The point is indeed there are many Bitcoin usages that can be related on illegal activities but why to worry about if you do not even have relation to those guys. It is just so happen that upon circulation of the cryptocurrency, a chance of obtaining transactions coming from illegal activities could be possible. But that was just because of the circulation process. Actually we do not care at all into who will be the transaction be sent out or who will be the next one to handle those after we have done transacting it.

Its hard to deny that bitcoin is being used in darkmarket because it is still happening where many people want to transact using bitcoin to remain anonymous and spread their illegal activities. Stolen funds are high as well because of many failed exchanges before and I hope they improved a lot today to lessen the stolen funds. Scammers will continue to increase that volume, protect your bitcoin.

I have read a thread here that has been scam for 100k usd that is huge money involve but he was being scam. Others that are being phished out with their bitcoin wallet. There are many malwares nowadays that could be accidentally downloaded like some of them are annoying ads that keep popping out whenever you navigate to other sites. So, one should be careful online if device was being used to access funds in the wallet. To keep the wallet safe from online it may be a good practice to use offline wallet and just access whenever it is really needed.

It will hit the market if it's not frozen, we have a lot of mixers and these people know what they are doing.

Still that's bitcoin, whether coming from illegal or legal, it has the same value and acceptable anywhere as long as it's properly clean by the money launderers. This is a huge money, and more so in the future as the demand increases for sure, but we can't deny that illegal activities will continue to rise if the market regulation is not that strict, but just like fiat, we should not expect that bitcoin is purely for legal transactions only as the decision lies in the hands of the holders, actually, we might not know that our bitcoin now was already pass in different wallets and some of these wallets have use that bitcoin for illegal transactions.

That is really some large chunks of Bitcoin being labeled as illegal. Though we cannot be too sure if they can track it, but even if they plan on tracking every single Bitcoin or transactions being made on these blocks, it will surely take too much of their time. Lets just hope that whatever we are working on the Cryptocurrency Industry, we are earning them through hard work and not scamming other people since credential matters in the Industry.

Assuming that all these bitcoin are spent for drugs (that is absolutely not true since there other illegal/grey-hat stuff sold in black market)
Let's make some count, and compare it with FIAT money....

585000 * 11400 USD = 6,669,000,000 (at actual value, obviously this in historical chart, it means they are counting ALL bitcoin involved in this activity) 6 billions of equivalent in USD

https://www.worldometers.info/drugs/
238,399,050,000 = 238 billions of USD

I think it's enough... there is not much to say: just a small portion of drug market use BTC as form of payment.

How that site managed to get all the data especially the darknet one? ::)

Bitcoin is a currency so it could be used anywhere and by anyone it doesn't mean bitcoins were used for this purposes alone.

Researchers like Chainalysis are just selling data to governments. They do not inderstand the idea of bitcoin.

The main purpose of this research is to point to the fact that bitcoin is used for illegal activities. It is not important for them how much bitcoins are involved, anyway they cannot provide any strong evidence that bitcoins were indeed used to buy illegal stuff. What they are trying to say, in my opinion, is that bitcoin is used to buy drugs only because of the fact that no government is controlling bitcoin. Bitcoin for them is illegal by default, no matter what things you buy with it.

How did they determine that those thousands of bitcoins was use in illegal activities? Are they sure with their data? And how reliable it is because bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency. How they know all of this? I am just wonder that a digital currencies can be monitored if where it will be use. For example i have 100bitcoins,the researchers will be able to know if what do I do with my bitcoins? I think they  just guess and put in the data.

That's why average people associate Bitcoin with illegal stuff or criminals. But in reality, I don't think that all of it are serious crimes, illegal activities can be smaller offences; money laundering or simillar. Either way, it's irrelevant, who knows how much fiat is used for illegal activities, and Bitcoin should be treated differently because of this.

They probably already did, but we shouldn't really care. A big percentage of cash that could be found anywhere in circulation was used for illegal activities, but why would you care, it's just paper, you'll spend it.

bitcoin was created to make it easier for someone to do various transactions, but behind all that there are many people who hate bitcoin. the analysis you describe here does not provide enough evidence, or maybe this analysis was created by bitcoin haters. let alone, 900,000 BTC is nothing compared to the existing supply, this will not affect the price.

Indeed, for the long time that we are using fiat currency there are countless times that fiat is used for such illegal activities making it incomparable to the bitcoin itself. And these figure is actually low than what I expected for the bitcoin, everytime I think of it I actually see the transaction in the network as illegal, like buying a gun online etc.

But then again 5% of is a lot when converted, I'm curious what these bitcoins are used to buy since I do have an idea how dark it is in the darkweb. It is not surprising at all that a privacy coin like bitcoin would be used for these activities, I mean who's criminal online that would want to be publicly seen, no one.

Illegal bitcoins? This is not true at all. Illegal actions of scammers and nothing more.

When bitcoin is decentralized and no one can track the purchases are used for what things then it is impossible to say all these bitcoins were used for illegal purpose.In darknet there are some services available for common person as well which is not going to come under illegal activity.

Is what you say will be a very terrible threat later? because the use of bitcoin for illegal activities and of course this cannot be avoided but will it have an impact on the government's emphasis on the existence of bitcoin in the future because of the contribution that leads to illegalities.

hopefully things like this can be avoided because if there are no restrictions then one day the government will not be friendly with the existence of bitcoin. it will turn out to be bad information.

Exactly, these figures doesn't seem so large and dramatic. Maybe the amount that can't be traced is bigger, however compared to amount of illegal fiat money this is nothing to worry about. We all know that Bitcoin is used for illegal activities as well but so it's fiat with the difference that no one is making drama out of that and stigmatite fiat currencies like they are doing with Bitcoin.

At first I was worried about this but then I read someone's post saying without these illegal transactions, Bitcoin might not be the same.

Bitcoin may not be fully anonymous but we can't remove the fact that there will always be those people that would take advantage of these to do illegal transactions. I think that billion might not even be comparable to trillions and trillions of fiats being used to the same kind of acts until now.

Well, it seems like you have exposed the dark side of how Bitcoins are being used by some people working on illegal works to keep on making money. Yes, that was the sad reality that a big bunch of Bitcoins are being used illegally by some people to do their dirty jobs and make transactions by using cryptos but how can we be able to know that such Bitcoin we have received have came out from those illegal transactions if like paper money, Bitcoins are being circulated to provide the users demands and it was freely transferred through transactions. If that's the case, then we cannot tell from which hands does the Bitcoin we have came from.

But we must come to think that this were just a part of the whole Bitcoin circulating in the market and must not embody it as a whole. We cannot control people on how they would use their Bitcoins but this must not lead to misinformation that illegal transactions are being done all due by Bitcoin because a big part of it is still a clean track of transactions that are used for legal activities. All currencies have their flaws which are made up of people using it. The problem is not on Bitcoin but on the people doing illegal transactions using it.

Well if you put together all the money being generated by illegal drugs, black market, and illegal arms trade then it will surpass the amount of bitcoins that is being discussed here. So I do not really worry that this will affect bitcoin altogether. All of believe that Bitcoin makes us anonymous and most of us believe that we  can't remove the fact that there will be organizations and persons that would do illegal things with Bitcoin and crypto currencies.

I have seen and heard severally that loads of fraudulent acts are now aided through the use of virtual or digital currency but that is not to say that Bitcoin has bad tenets. People frankly use money for whatever they deem fit as long as it is unde their possession as their property. i personally don't see  the need for attaching bitcoin to things as these because the dollar is never metnioned in this context.

It is true that many currencies are linked to illicit activities, but it is not something that we should worry much about, Bitcoin is like any currency, when we receive a few dollars we do not know the origin much less to what that money is related.

What are you speaking about? Repeatedly?
Most of the darknet uses bitcoin. The fact that bitcoin is used by drug dealers is said by all the media whenever possible. Judging by these statistics, "dirty" bitcoins are less than 5%, however, in the minds of ordinary people we can say that all bitcoins are "dirty".

And who says that these numbers are correct. It might happen that these numbers are wrong and may be the number is even higher.
We can't even say that the bitcoins we hold in our wallets have come from a good source.
May be somebody would have used it for illegal activities but bud that doesn't make a difference.
Even fiat money would have been used for criminal activities and then used by us but money is money.
So in the same way bitcoins are bitcoins and there's no such thing as illegal bitcoin.

This problem has been around for some time, because there are many who suspect that the value of bitcoins could be greater or smaller in number entering illegal areas. but because there is no security regulatory agency that oversees bitcoin, it will not be on the trending topic of cryptocurrency forums and legal security agencies.

And this numbers is only growing....

The problem with the Bitcoins held by criminals and scammers is that their activities are rising and becoming more of a problem. There is a growing use of Bitcoin in the darknet markets and increasing concerns. This may be used by governments as an excuse to ban or regulate Bitcoin unfavorably.

The chart below shows the use of Bitcoin by the dark web markets. While this activity is rising Bitcoin will keep being seen as a method to facilitate transactions coming from illicit activities. Russia for example passed a law recently regulating cryptocurrencies but not allowing the Russian population to use them as a currency, which is their actual purpose.


Image link (https://crystalblockchain.com/articles/darknet-use-and-bitcoin-a-crypto-activity-report-by-crystal-blockchain)

they are because illegal activities are always there and they only got stronger when market of cryptos are pumping  .  the known numbers are roughly close to 900k btc's but the the rest of btc belongs to legit transactions so its fine i guess ? while there are also btc that doesnt belong to someone else because they havent been mined yet but we can still do something like controlling the scams , hacks and other ilegal acts as early as possible  before those btc fall to wrong hands

Bitcoin is very actively used in the Dark Net. Therefore, there is no guarantee who had your coins in the past. It's the same as with paper dollars ... yesterday this money could be used to pay for drugs or weapons, and you got change with them in the supermarket. Because of this, you did not become a criminal.

Just like what Royse777 stated above. We have no idea where are our coins originated.
As long as you know you're not doing illegal activity, you are good to go and you don't have to worry.
Same with our fiat money, we don't know how many hands had it passed on.
And with crypto mixers, very likely that at some point we encountered some of those illegal bitcoins.

That would be the smartest indicative statistic for Fiat.
Even if this data is correct, it is less than 5% of the total amount of Bitcoins. Even if they hit the market at the same time, they won't change anything. First, their movements will be immediately noticed.
Secondly, if the price drops slightly due to the sale of these BTC, then this will be an excellent chance to increase the volume of BTC in your portfolio.

Not quite sure what these figures are based on. I suppose these criminals didn't PM the writer of the article to let them know how much they have in their bags. The probable conclusion is therefore that these charts are based on stats, which I personally believe is crap.

Another important question, and people stated this before, is how you define "illegal". I think we all know the definition of "crime" but "illegal" as a concept is a lot larger than "crime".

This is however, in spite of the shortcomings of the original article, a very interesting discussion. (which I am not used to in the General Discussion Boards ;D )

What about coins that were bought with legal money but not declared to the IRS? Are these coins illegal?

What about coins that were bought with money from gambling or prostitution in a country were gambling or prostitution are legal, but by someone who lives in a country were it is illegal? Are these coins illegal?

As you see, this deserves an in-depth discussion, which is way too large to be simply captured within the limitations of a simple chart.

I do not pay much attention to these because they will find a way to dissolve them into the market. Thousands of Bitcoin transactions are made every day. It could be done through exchanges, peer-to-peer, and they would certainly have to go through a mixer to make illegal money legal. Currently there are thousands of bitcoins that cannot be recovered from private wallets. I just look at their chart and believe bitcoin will continue to increase in value.

I do not think we need to be bothered as to where our coins originate from. Just like fiat, which have circulated so much that we do not care about it's origin, whether legal or illegal, we do not have to worry about the origins of the coins.
Trillions of fiat currencies have originated illegally and yet have found it's way into circulation that have gone through even many of us. As long as your coins aren't used for illegal purposes, I believe you're good to go

BTCBTC How about use those bitcoin for good purpose,