NFTs Are Used As A Money Laundering Tools

NFTs, which have become quite popular lately, are unfortunately used as a money laundering tools.

NFTs are blockchain-based digital items where a digital asset cannot be replaced because of its uniqueness. You can store a lot of data thanks to NFT on the blockchain like Ethereum. These data can be digital files such as audio, picture, video. According to a report by Chainalysis, the number of people using NFTs for money laundering is increasing. NFTs are used in many areas such as fraud, malware operators, theft. This also affects NFTs badly. As can be seen from the graph, although there was not much gain in 2020 with the malicious use of NFTs, this gain increased significantly in 2021. Money laundering via NFT has not reached huge numbers yet. However, the fact that NFTs are not easy to track can increase this number and NFTs can become a new fraud center. The report also mentions that NFT owners engage in wash trading to artificially increase the value of their NFTs. In the report, it is possible to see that most of those who use this method are unprofitable, but those who are successful make a lot of unfair profits. Wash trading can be briefly described as a fictitious buying and selling transaction. The aim here is to increase the volume of the exchange traded. However, this is against the laws of many countries.