Criminals Are Adopting Blockchain as a Feature, Not a Bug

Despite its promise of transparency, blockchain technology is increasingly being co-opted by bad actors—not as a vulnerability, but as a tool. From money laundering to ransomware payments, crypto’s immutable ledger is becoming the criminal underworld’s new best friend.

Law enforcement struggles to keep up as illicit transactions get laundered through mixers and privacy coins. Meanwhile, regulators scramble to impose oversight without stifling innovation—a balancing act as precarious as a DeFi protocol’s smart contract.

Here’s the ironic twist: The very features that make blockchain secure (decentralization, pseudonymity) are what make it attractive for illegal activity. Maybe Wall Street was right to fear this technology—just for all the wrong reasons.

Blockchain being transparent is not enough

Recently, the crypto industry has recorded kidnappings as a result of blockchain transparency. A crypto investor, John Woeltz, did the most recent kidnapping, among many others, this month. He allegedly beat and hanged the victim off a ledge when he refused to provide his Bitcoin password. 

Ari Redbord said, “I think that’s the paradox of crypto…we say bad guys should never use crypto because we see every transaction, and that’s true, but the reality is that they can also MOVE funds faster and in larger amounts, and that’s why we just have to get better and better at what we’re doing.”

The thing about crypto is that funds can be moved in minutes, if not seconds. This is very friendly to criminals. According to Michael Pearl, vice president of strategy at a blockchain security firm, security methods such as multi-factor authentication could help make forced transfers harder to execute without alerting others.

On the other hand, transparency has helped blockchain technology compete with traditional assets such as Gold. Crypto users have convinced the US government that BTC is better than Gold. They reasoned it takes about 44k man-hours, 20 people and 18 months to audit the Gold Reserves in Fort Knox. But it takes about 1 second and a push of a button to audit Bitcoin. 

A victim scammed $2.6 million of crypto in three hours

A report from Web3 security company Cyvers says the victim was scammed twice in three hours and lost $2.6 million worth of Tether’s stablecoin (USDT).

🚨ALERT🚨Our system has detected~2.6M $USDT loss from a targeted address poisoning scam involving zero-value transfers. A single victim was repeatedly scammed by the same attacker address.

First, the victim lost 843K $USDT.
⏳ About 3 hours later, the same victim sent 1.75M… pic.twitter.com/WWVlrZvavK

— 🚨 Cyvers Alerts 🚨 (@CyversAlerts) May 26, 2025

The victim was the target of an address poisoning scam. Usually, attackers send transactions with no value from a wallet address that looks like a real one the victim uses or interacts with.

The person who was scammed first sent $843,000 in USDT to the con artist. Not even three hours later, they mistakenly sent an extra $1.7 million in USDT to the same fake address.

The event shows how complicated crypto-related scams are getting. This year has been difficult for crypto investors. For instance,  in April alone, over 18 big attacks were reported. The most severe one involved a fake bitcoin (BTC) transaction, which resulted in a loss of $330.7 million.

In February, hackers used malware to trick the Dubai-based exchange Bybit into approving deals that weren’t supposed to happen. The exchange lost $1.46 billion. This theft beat the previous record of $611 million stolen from Poly Network in 2021. 

Meanwhile, Ripple sent a message to its users telling them to be careful of scams, which tend to become more common when the crypto market goes up. The blockchain company wrote in a blog post about the rise of scams using AI-made content, such as deepfake videos of Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse giving away XRP.

“These posts include branding and profile pictures that look exactly like what the companies, individuals or government authorities use […] It’s important to spot which accounts are fake, and which posts are cryptocurrency giveaway scams.” Ripple wrote.

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