New research from Blockchain Analytics and crypto compliance company, Elliptic shows that several criminal organizations and terrorists are using Dogecoin as a means of payment.
The Dogecoin blockchain has grown in popularity in recent years, but now it appears that the criminal circuit is partly responsible for this.
Different forms of crime
The majority of transactions, according to Elliptic from relatively harmless fraud cases, scams and pyramid schemes. However, it also includes serious forms of crime such as financing terrorism and paying for child pornography.
Elliptic claims to have found more than 50 cases responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in criminal transactions in total.
As an example, they cite, among others, the Chinese government who confiscated around 20 million euros worth of Dogecoin in the PlusToken pyramid scheme.
Furthermore, just under 120 million euros worth of Dogecoin was linked to a pyramid scheme operating out of Turkey in 2021.
Terrorists and Dogecoin
Terrorists also appear to be making increasing use of Dogecoin. Despite the fact that the transactions in question are relatively small, Elliptic observes a growing “adoption” in this segment.
In July of last year, for example, the Israeli government identified several addresses that it could link to HAMAS. This involved a total of just under 40,000 euros in Dogecoin.
Elliptic further points to a small but growing number of child pornography vendors using Dogecoin. Although the total amount involved is around 3,000 euros, this is not a good development for the meme coin.
Finally, many extremist groups appear to be turning to Dogecoin when they are excluded from the traditional financial circuit. Funnily enough, the meme coin appears to be a very popular option among those groups.
Dogecoin down again
Regardless of the research, Dogecoin did relatively well for a while under these extremely poor market conditions. This was of course due to Elon Musk once again speaking out on the subject.
The successful entrepreneur and big fan of Dogecoin indicated that he had bought in and would continue to support the project. It is not clear what form he envisions exactly, but there is a good chance that, if the acquisition goes through, he and Twitter will soon have plans for Dogecoin as well.
Compared to bitcoin, which posted a minus of 4.85 percent for the past 7 days, and Ethereum, which posted a minus of 4.55 percent for the past week, the meme coin is thus doing more than decently.
However, it remains to be seen to what extent Dogecoin is a good investment for the future. It remains a coin that was started as a joke and in terms of developments very little is happening. Except, of course, for Elon Musk, who keeps pulling something new out of the hat for the project.
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