The amount of payments in bitcoins and Ethereum in favor of providers of “adult” content involving minors in 2019 amounted to $930,000. Such data are provided by the analytical startup Chainalysis.
Related: Chainalysis: COVID-19 negatively impacts even darknet market
Compared with the year before last, the growth was 32%, which in turn more than doubled the figures for 2017. According to Chainalysis, this trend is more likely to indicate wider adoption of digital currencies, rather than an increase in interest in such content.
$930,000 is a negligible amount in the total volume of transactions related to illegal activities of $11 billion and in the total value of all cryptocurrency transactions of $1 trillion. Nevertheless, Chainalysis noted that further growth of these numbers carries reputational risks for the industry.
Experts noticed that reaching the record levels in 2018 and 2019 did not stop the closure of one of the largest networks for the distribution of child pornography, Welcome to Video.
Most of the transactions came directly from bitcoin exchanges with established KYC procedures. Thanks to the Chainalysis software and the detected patterns, certified financial crime specialists manage to detect consumers of banned content.
Chainalysis's solutions ultimately provide law enforcement and compliance experts with opportunities to evaluate other risky behaviors and build better risk profiles.