chainalysis

According to CoinDesk, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that authorities in Ghana and Nigeria arrested 28 people in an enforcement action against a West African scam network, which involved cryptocurrency investment fraud.The UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) stated that the operation also uncovered 117 victims of human trafficking in Ghana, who are awaiting repatriation to Nigeria. Private sector partners identified over $11 million in funds that could be frozen.The operation, hosted by the NCA, brought together tech companies and law enforcement agencies, aiming to combat scam networks targeting citizens of the U.S., U.K., and other countries. The Department of Justice stated that this is the first joint operation focused on West Africa. Cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Binance, as well as blockchain analysis companies Chainalysis, Elliptic, and TRM Labs, were all involved.Coinbase stated that it assisted in tracking illegal funds, supporting asset freezes, and providing intelligence to investigators, identifying over 65 active scam victims and preventing over $415,000 in potential losses. TRM Labs claimed it uncovered a large-scale peer-to-peer money laundering network. In the Sasaabi region of Ghana, authorities arrested 19 people and seized 303 electronic devices; Nigeria arrested another 9 people. Meta reported that it has deleted over 3.7 million Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages, and groups, most of which targeted Americans and Britons through impersonation tactics. Law enforcement also received leads on over 30 suspected scam centers.

According to Chainalysis data, among the tokenized U.S. Treasury assets where the geographical location of holders can be identified, the holdings of Italy, Portugal, and Singapore account for 29.9%, 18.8%, and 18.2% respectively, totaling 66.9%; the United States accounts for 10.5%, ranking fourth. The proportion of holders from Japan is 16.4%, the highest among all countries, but the value of their holdings only accounts for 0.4%, indicating that the value of holdings is mainly concentrated among a few large overseas investors.The report indicates that in the past year up to July 1, 2026, the scale of tokenized U.S. Treasuries grew by 125%, rising from $6.86 billion to $15.42 billion. Chainalysis believes that tokenization has lowered the minimum investment threshold and allows some overseas investors to gain exposure to U.S. Treasuries without needing to open a U.S. brokerage account.

According to a report released by Chainalysis on Wednesday titled "North America: The Inside Story of Growth in Agency Commerce," the United States will become a net inflow country for Bitcoin in 2026, marking the first time since 2022. The data shows that institutions have continued to buy Bitcoin this year, while retail investors are generally in a selling position. The report states that dollar stablecoins provide a way for those without U.S. bank accounts to hold dollars, while Americans already have dollar accounts, leading other parts of the world to turn to digital dollars, with Americans increasingly relying on Bitcoin as a scarce store of value.The report points out that since the launch of the spot Bitcoin ETF in 2024, the U.S. share of global Bitcoin activity has been rising in each reporting period, even though the U.S. crypto economy size (2.78 trillion dollars) shrank by 2.2% during the bear market, it still retained most of the nearly doubled gains by 2025. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved the Bitcoin ETF in January 2024, after having rejected such products for a decade; these funds managed by Wall Street institutions such as BlackRock, Fidelity, and more recently Morgan Stanley, set the record for the most successful issuance in ETF history.The report also states that stablecoins have transformed U.S. debt into the preferred currency for peer-to-peer economies and cross-border enterprises, with stablecoins continuously entering new application scenarios in 2026, mainly occurring overseas, bringing billions of dollars in economic activity to U.S. businesses and government. Since Donald Trump took office, several laws and executive orders supporting the crypto industry have been signed, including the GENIUS Act signed in 2025, which allows entities such as banks to issue stablecoins, provided they are backed by assets like U.S. Treasury bonds and disclose reserve status monthly.

According to Chainalysis, one of the biggest victims in the theft incident involving the cryptocurrency hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger was also a scammer, suffering a loss of over 60 BTC, worth approximately 4.8 million dollars, with funds coming from a task scam.In this scam, participants were paid to create fake sales and reviews for real products. Subsequently, a "negative balance" appeared, and participants were told that they had to invest their own funds to receive payment. On September 22, the mastermind behind the scam transferred the funds to three separate Ledger addresses. On October 9, the thieves emptied all three addresses, transferring the funds to the same wallet through a single transaction from each address. The receiving wallet has been reported to be involved with the stolen funds.

According to CoinDesk, based on the report "Inside North America's $3 trillion crypto economy: Agentic commerce accelerates" released by Chainalysis, AI agents have completed over 138 million transactions through the x402 payment protocol incubated on the Base blockchain via Coinbase, using cryptocurrency to purchase data, computing power, and access to AI models.The report indicates that in geographically identifiable AI model inference payments, wallets associated with the United States account for 88.1%, while wallets associated with China only account for 0.1%. Eric Jardine, the research director at Chainalysis, stated that one possible explanation is that Chinese developers are more inclined to use open-weight models like DeepSeek and Qwen, thereby reducing the demand for pay-per-use inference services.Chinese-associated wallets exhibit different activity patterns, accounting for about 90% of geographically identifiable payments for security and code analysis services, with most of the flow directed towards the AI smart contract auditing platform AgentLisa.Jardine also cautioned that this gap should not be interpreted as open-source AI weakening the on-chain inference market in Asia. Currently, payment giants such as Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe have supported the x402 protocol, and Coinbase has also begun allowing enterprise clients to accept AI agent payments.

According to a report by Cointelegraph, a recent report from Chainalysis indicates that remittances from Canada to India, China, and the Philippines have surged by 141% year-on-year, reaching $2.36 billion, with digital asset payments continuing to expand in these three major remittance corridors.In the 12 months ending June 2026, there were a total of 3.56 million related transactions, with an average amount of $663 per transaction. Chainalysis noted that these three countries accounted for an increase in the proportion of Canada's cross-border stablecoin outflows from 10.9% the previous year to 19.4%.Eric Jardine, research director at Chainalysis, cited additional data provided to Cointelegraph, stating that crypto remittances from Canada to the Philippines alone reached $61.02 million, involving 73,564 transactions, representing year-on-year growth of 28% and 34.7%, respectively.The analysis counted Bitcoin and stablecoins that circulated between personal wallets with amounts exceeding $10,000. Chainalysis listed Canada as the largest peer-to-peer (P2P) crypto economy among the G7 countries and believes that the large overseas-born population and the high costs of traditional remittance services are potential driving factors for its increasing adoption.Morva Rohani, executive director of the Canadian Web3 Council, stated in the report that about 23% of Canada's population is born overseas, the highest proportion among the G7, with frequent use of remittance corridors to India, the Philippines, Nigeria, Pakistan, and China.The report also found that in June, stablecoins accounted for 44% of the Canadian dollar-denominated order book trading volume, up from 30% a year ago.

A luxury villa near Pattaya, Thailand, was the scene of an armed robbery, where three armed individuals broke into a gated community, took control of a Chinese national with Turkish citizenship, and forced him to open a safe and hand over cash and three luxury watches. The attackers also threatened the victim at gunpoint to transfer $820,000 worth of cryptocurrency into one of their wallets, which was then immediately sold.After escaping, the victim reported the incident to the police, who have yet to confirm the nationalities of the three suspects. The police's second district has launched an investigation and identified the vehicle used in the crime through surveillance; the vehicle was later abandoned in a remote area. The police are tracking the sold digital assets to identify the related accounts and recover the funds. Chainalysis estimates that such violent robberies have stolen over $30 million in cryptocurrency in the first half of 2026.

Chainalysis, in its "East Asia Cryptocurrency Adoption Report" released on October 5, stated that during the period from July 2025 to June 2026, overall cryptocurrency activity in East Asia has slightly contracted due to the global bear market, but significant differentiation has emerged within the region: South Korea remains the largest retail trading center, Hong Kong is becoming a hub for institutional fund settlement, Japanese users are accelerating their shift towards DEX and perpetual contracts, while the peer-to-peer use of stablecoins in mainland China continues to expand.The report estimates that South Korea's cryptocurrency economy will reach $449.1 billion during the same period, a 12.3% increase from the previous cycle, maintaining its position as the leader in East Asia; Japan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Taiwan are at $228.3 billion, $192.2 billion, $176.3 billion, and $140.4 billion, respectively. The growth in South Korea is mainly driven by increased capital flows related to trading platforms, with the report stating that the local trading platform ecosystem has added approximately $51.1 billion in new traffic.The most notable change in the South Korean market comes from AI token trading. Chainalysis noted that by June 2026, AI-related cryptocurrency assets have become the largest thematic sector in won trading, surpassing the popularity of payment tokens like XRP. The report recorded that Worldcoin (WLD) achieved a trading volume of $7.41 billion during the observation period, with SAHARA, VIRTUAL, BIO, and NEAR also becoming active varieties. AI token trading priced in won accounts for about 19.5 times that of the yen market, indicating that South Korean retail investors are extending their AI investment preferences from the domestic stock market to the cryptocurrency market.However, institutional funds in South Korea are still in the preparation stage. The report points out that local banks and brokerages have generally formed digital asset teams and are promoting stablecoin, custody, and tokenization pilots, but direct corporate participation in cryptocurrency investment has not yet reached scale. If the cryptocurrency asset income tax planned for implementation in South Korea in 2027 is realized as scheduled, and corporate trading restrictions continue to be relaxed, the retail-dominated landscape of the South Korean market may face reevaluation.

According to Cointelegraph, a report by Chainalysis indicates that from the first quarter of 2024 to the second quarter of 2026, the number of independent wallets sending peer-to-peer (P2P) stablecoin transactions in China increased 43 times.During the reporting period from July 2025 to June 2026, Chainalysis recorded 18.1 million transfers involving self-custodied stablecoin holdings in China, totaling $10.41 billion. The annual turnover rate of stablecoin holdings was 33.2 times, more than three times the global average of 9.3 times. Chainalysis believes this characteristic aligns with users using stablecoins as working capital.Chainalysis estimates that the size of China's crypto economy is at least $176 billion, with domestic P2P activities accounting for 59.1%, which is 3.5 times the share during the 2025 reporting period. In March 2026, the volume of stablecoin transfers within China increased by $4.9 billion, marking the largest monthly increase during the reporting period. This growth occurred amid China's long-standing restrictions on crypto trading, as regulators introduced new rules in February targeting unauthorized RMB-pegged stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets.Chainalysis pointed out that China's P2P-dominated market contrasts with other markets in East Asia. South Korea, with $449.1 billion, has become the largest crypto economy in East Asia, with activity growing by 12.3% compared to the previous reporting period, and retail investors showing a preference for AI-related tokens. Institutional platforms in Hong Kong accounted for 16% of service inflows, nearly three times that of regional neighbors, and recorded nearly $24 billion in business-to-business inflows, issuing the first batch of stablecoin licenses in April.

According to Bloomberg, Absa Bank in Johannesburg, South Africa, has become the first bank in Africa to offer Bitcoin custody services, primarily targeting institutional clients, and will also provide custody services for other digital assets. Rob Downes, the head of digital assets at Absa's Corporate and Investment Banking division, stated that Bitcoin is the largest asset under custody at the bank, with plans to include more asset classes in the future. Absa did not immediately respond to Bitcoin Magazine's request for comment.Many banks around the world are gradually integrating or launching Bitcoin-related products and services. Some banks in the United States and Europe have begun offering crypto asset custody for institutional clients. In 2022, BNY Mellon became the first large bank in the United States to offer digital asset custody services; this month, Deutsche Bank announced plans to launch Bitcoin custody services for European businesses and institutional clients later in 2026.Africa has a large base of crypto-native users. A report by Chainalysis in 2025 shows that South Africa's on-chain value reached $36 billion, ranking second in Sub-Saharan Africa, only behind Nigeria's $92.1 billion; South Africa ranks 30th in the global crypto adoption index. Unlike Nigeria, the South African market is characterized by more institutional features, with a relatively clear regulatory framework that has issued hundreds of licenses to virtual asset service providers, attracting professional investors and traditional financial institutions.

According to Cointelegraph, a U.S. federal judge dismissed most of the claims made by the Celsius litigation administrator against the blockchain analytics company Chainalysis, but allowed one to proceed.U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett of the Southern District of New York ruled on Tuesday, rejecting Chainalysis's request to dismiss the incitement charge, determining that the complaint sufficiently alleges that Chainalysis was aware that a press release issued by Celsius in 2020 contained false statements and assisted in disseminating that information.The court simultaneously dismissed 12 other claims with prejudice, prohibiting the plaintiffs from amending in this case; another 3 consumer protection claims were dismissed without prejudice, requiring the plaintiffs to amend or notify the court by October 20.The lawsuit was initiated by the Blockchain Recovery Investment Consortium (BRIC), which acts as the litigation administrator and claims manager for Celsius's bankruptcy estate, representing Celsius and some former clients in asserting rights. Chainalysis declined to comment to Cointelegraph.The core of the case revolves around a $3.3 billion "audit." In 2020, Celsius used Chainalysis's Reactor software to calculate its managed asset size and publicly announced the results as an audit.According to the complaint outlined by the court, a Celsius executive initially calculated approximately $1.18 billion in assets using Reactor, which later increased to about $3.3 billion due to adjustments in methodology.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has imposed sanctions on the ATM network associated with Tren de Aragua and has added seven Tron addresses to the sanctions list.Blockchain analysis company Chainalysis stated that the counterparties of the aforementioned wallets had interacted with money laundering networks used by drug trafficking groups in Mexico and Colombia, as well as money launderers in Venezuela.

According to Decrypt, the UK's Crown Prosecution Service obtained a confiscation order under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, requiring 44-year-old Paul Chowles, a former officer of the National Crime Agency (NCA) from Bristol, to repay £1,810,678.93, approximately $2.4 million.This amount is related to the 50 bitcoins he stole, which were worth about £60,000, or approximately $77,000, when he took them in 2017. Of the 50 bitcoins, 30 have been recovered, and the Crown Prosecution Service attributes the difference between the two amounts to the appreciation of bitcoin since 2017.Chowles was involved in the NCA's investigation of the dark web market Silk Road 2, responsible for analyzing and extracting cryptocurrency from the devices involved. In May 2017, he transferred 50 bitcoins from Thomas White's reserve wallet over two days, splitting them into smaller amounts and transferring them through the bitcoin mixing service Bitcoin Fog, and cashed out a total of £144,580 through 279 transactions using Cryptopay and Wirex debit cards.For years, this theft was attributed to White, who has always denied it, and by the end of 2021, the missing bitcoins were listed as untraceable. In 2022, devices containing private keys were found during a search of Chowles' residence, and the Merseyside police, with the assistance of Chainalysis, traced the flow of funds.

According to Cointelegraph, data from Chainalysis shows that in the year leading up to June 2026, Singapore's cryptocurrency economic activity grew by 55.4% year-on-year, reaching a scale of $284 billion, reclaiming its position as the largest crypto economy in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania amid an overall contraction in the region.The increase was mainly contributed by institutional platforms, with such activities surging by 94% to $60 billion, concentrated among a few market makers, over-the-counter trading firms, and institutional brokers. During the same period, the total crypto economy in the aforementioned region declined by 6.8%.Chainalysis pointed out that the growth of Singapore's institutional ecosystem is highly concentrated, primarily reflected in large transactions on existing platforms rather than the entry of numerous new services. At the same time, Singapore is tightening cryptocurrency regulations while promoting tokenization, stablecoins, and digital asset settlements.In 2025, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) required local crypto companies providing services to overseas clients to obtain licenses or exit the market. StraitsX CEO Tianwei Liu believes this measure curbed speculative activities and increased the proportion of banks and large enterprises applying blockchain in production. MAS is also conducting compliance stablecoin and tokenized bank deposit pilots through the BLOOM program, with Ripple joining on March 25 to test cross-border trade settlements using RLUSD.The Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam excel in small P2P transfers. Chainalysis statistics show that the three countries collectively recorded 5.4 million domestic and international peer-to-peer transfers under $10,000, accounting for 14.4% of global similar transactions, but only representing 2.5% of the global crypto economy.

Chainalysis data shows that cross-border stablecoin capital flows increased by 77.5% year-on-year. While the overall scale has expanded, the capital flow remains highly concentrated.Chainalysis identified 4,708 new inter-country transfer paths, but these new paths only carry about 2.64 billion dollars, accounting for a small proportion of the total statistical amount of 220.3 billion dollars, indicating that cross-border flows of stablecoins are still dominated by a few major channels.

According to The Block, based on the seventh annual Geographies report by blockchain analysis company Chainalysis, during the 12 months ending June 30, 2026, the scale of global cryptocurrency economic activity shrank by only 1.6%, from $9.5 trillion to $9.4 trillion. During the same period, the total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market fell by about 50%, shrinking by $2.1 trillion, marking the most severe cryptocurrency bear market since 2022. The report states that the decline in economic activity is much smaller than the decline in market capitalization.Capital flows showed divergence. Funds flowing into exchanges, DeFi protocols, and other cryptocurrency services decreased by 4.3% to $8.9 trillion; domestic P2P transfers surged by 302.9% to $228.7 billion; cross-border stablecoin flows grew by 77.5%, rising from $124.2 billion to $220.3 billion. Chainalysis noted that its cross-border statistics are somewhat conservative, as they exclude transfers where the sending and receiving countries cannot be confirmed, and pointed out that this growth comes from payments averaging about $3,000, which are far from institutional levels and more aligned with everyday use cases such as personal payments to vendors, cross-border remittances, or transferring savings.Stablecoins demonstrated better value retention during the market capitalization decline compared to other cryptocurrency assets, with global on-chain balances dropping from $860 billion in September 2025 to $440 billion in June 2026, while stablecoin balances remained between $98 billion and $109 billion during this period.

Chainalysis released the "Cryptocurrency Tax Report: Data from Specific Countries," estimating that the scale of global cryptocurrency-related taxable activities is approximately $457 billion, covering transaction gains, on-chain income, and digital payments. The report states that it uses on-chain data to map these activities by region and country, providing tax authorities with a geographic view of potential taxable activities within their jurisdiction.Among them, stablecoin payment flows are the largest and most widely distributed category globally. The report also analyzes cross-border channels and their impact on direct and indirect tax obligations, demonstrating how on-chain intelligence can help tax authorities identify high-value, high-risk wallets to determine enforcement priorities.

According to Cointelegraph, a report by Chainalysis shows that in the past 12 months, the number of times attackers stored malware instructions or infrastructure information on public blockchains has surged by 420%, with state-sponsored hackers contributing about two-thirds of the new activity each quarter. Chainalysis linked previously unattributed activities on Tron, Aptos, and BNB Smart Chain to the North Korean-backed organization UNC5342.The report points out that the encoded pointers in Tron and Aptos transactions direct infected devices to the same BSC transaction, which contains encrypted server addresses and configuration data used to connect to remote access and data theft infrastructure. Information on public blockchains remains accessible even after domain names, servers, or code repositories are shut down, enhancing the persistence of malware activities. In 2025, North Korean hackers used similar technology called EtherHiding to implant coin theft code into smart contracts.Additionally, since July 2025, the volume of malicious blockchain writes has increased by 440%, when high-capacity open-source Chinese AI models began to have the ability to generate malicious code. Eric Jardine, head of cybercrime research at Chainalysis, stated that a clear temporal correlation was found, but it could not be proven that the attackers used these models.Chainalysis also identified threat actors suspected of being linked to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, writing encoded command and control routing data into the Bitcoin blockchain and sending small payments to well-known addresses historically associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, which are unrelated to the attackers and serve only as a permanent public location for infected devices to receive update instructions.

Blockchain analysis company Chainalysis estimates that France's potential taxable cryptocurrency activity will reach $9.4 billion by 2025, including $5.2 billion from payments, $2.5 billion from capital gains, and $1.7 billion from mining and staking income. French taxpayers reported only €368 million in net income for the 2024 fiscal year, involving about 24,000 people, an increase from approximately 7,700 people and €150.8 million in the previous year.Chainalysis stated that the non-compliance rate for cryptocurrency taxes in some countries may exceed 90%. The EU's eighth directive on administrative cooperation, DAC8, came into effect on January 1, 2026, requiring cryptocurrency service providers to collect user identity and transaction data. Tax authorities in member states will start exchanging relevant records cross-border from September 30, 2027; CARF currently covers about 14% of the world's potential taxable on-chain activities.

Blockchain analysis company Chainalysis has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Federal Claims Court, accusing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of illegally awarding a $94.6 million exclusive contract to competitor TRM Labs. This contract provides forensic software and support services for investigations by the Department of Homeland Security's task force, with a performance period from July 1, 2026, to June 30, 2027. Chainalysis claims this is the largest blockchain analysis contract awarded by the U.S. government to date.In the complaint, Chainalysis pointed out that ICE issued a Request for Information (RFI) on May 28, which included 18 questions regarding capabilities such as a proprietary fraud victim database, AI agent data retrieval, automatic notifications for virtual asset service providers (VASP) to execute voluntary freezes, and collaboration with stablecoin issuers. However, many of the RFI requests did not appear in the final Statement of Need released less than two weeks later, while ICE's market research determined that Chainalysis could not meet the needs based on RFI standards. Chainalysis also noted that "sexual extortion," which was not mentioned in the RFI, became one of the three main task areas in the Statement of Need, and some requirements closely matched TRM's proprietary product architecture.Chainalysis claims it was the only company to submit a capability statement, but ICE completed its market research the next day, determining that TRM was the only vendor capable of meeting all the requirements, and did not pose any follow-up questions to it.