When crime becomes the 'new normal' in the crypto industry
Today, a warning from ZachXBT has directly torn apart the industry's fig leaf - the crypto world is experiencing an unprecedented 'crime super cycle'. Politicians are crazily issuing meme coins to harvest votes, North Korean hackers Lazarus effortlessly laundered $1.5 billion in stolen funds, the scale of the black market on the Tron chain has exceeded tens of billions, while the protocol parties are still quietly collecting fees. This is not alarmism, but the naked truth revealed by on-chain data.
Crime has become an industrial chain
Political meme coins: The most legitimate scam
In 2024, meme coins issued by political figures flooded the market, with former President Trump's $TRUMP coin market cap once exceeding $80 billion, while over 50% of the trading volume was confirmed to be wash trading manipulation. Ironically, these project teams couldn't even be bothered to conduct smart contract audits, relying solely on celebrity effects to pump and dump.
It only takes 3 hours from attack to money laundering
The Bybit incident: Lazarus infiltrated the exchange's cold wallet through social engineering attacks, $1.5 billion in ETH was dispersed across chains like Solana and Avalanche via cross-chain bridges, eventually mixing into the Southeast Asian OTC market.
DMM Bitcoin/WazirX: In May 2024, these two exchanges were collectively hacked for $540 million, with the stolen funds laundered through USDT-TRC20 channels on the Tron chain, with a tracking and freezing rate of less than 1%.
Tron black market: A 'shadow banking' system worth $5-10 billion
Due to low fees, USDT-TRC20 on the Tron chain has become the preferred choice for criminals, with illegal trading accounting for up to 58% in 2024, far exceeding Ethereum (24%) and Bitcoin (12%). Although Justin Sun co-founded the anti-money laundering alliance T3 FCU with Tether, only $130 million was frozen, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of the black market.
Who is condoning crime?
The 'dirty secret' of protocol parties
ZachXBT reveals that some DeFi protocols knowingly collect fees even though over 50% of the trading funds involve stolen money. For example, 30% of a certain lending platform's TVL consists of hacker loot, but the team refuses to freeze it under the guise of 'decentralization'.
The 'get out of jail free card' for KOLs and developers
Scam KOLs: Influencers promoting exit scams can simply delete their tweets to escape accountability. In 2024, only 0.1% of promoters were prosecuted among 149,686 fraud cases.
Exploitation users: Hackers involved in the Harmony bridge attack laundered money through the ZK mixing protocol Railgun. Developers argue that 'code is law', leaving law enforcement powerless.
The 'fatal lag' of regulation
The US GENIUS Act has failed, the SEC's regulation of meme coins is vague, and North Korean hackers are completely immune to international law due to state protection. This 'no man's land' situation has made the cost of crime almost zero.
Solution: Can the industry save itself?
Protocol layer: Mandatory compliance screening
Exchanges need to scan the on-chain source of funds before listing tokens. For example, Binance has delisted low-liquidity tokens like CATI, but this needs to be expanded to meme coins and anonymous projects.
DeFi protocols should integrate real-time monitoring APIs from Chainalysis or TRM Labs to automatically freeze high-risk addresses.
User level: Beware of the 'three highs' traps
High APY projects: In 2024, elderly individuals over 60 lost $4.8 billion in 'pig-butchering' scams due to believing in 'annualized 2000%' schemes.
Non-audited contracts: The Harmony incident proved that projects not audited by Certik or PeckShield had a 400% increase in attack probability.
Regulatory level: Transnational collaboration to break the deadlock
Imitating the T3 FCU model, requiring stablecoin issuers (like Tether) to forcibly freeze addresses involved in terrorism. In 2024, $1.3 billion has been frozen, proving feasibility.
Promote a pilot of 'on-chain justice', for instance, the EU plans to legislate the exploitation of smart contract vulnerabilities as a criminal offense.
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