The UK’s police forces have seized £322 million worth of cryptocurrencies over the past five years, new figures show.

The stats were revealed after a series of Freedom of Information (FoI) requests were made by New Scientist magazine. The FoI requests found that 12 of the 48 police forces in the UK have seized cryptocurrencies.

As 15 forces did not respond to the requests, or refused to provide information, and with the UK National Crime Agency exempt from FoI requests, the magazine warned that the actual stats were likely higher.

This is also due in part to the difficulties in investigating crimes involving cryptocurrencies. For example, accessing encrypted and password-protected assets presents a technical challenge, while UK legislation also makes seizing cryptoassets difficult.

According to the publication, Bitcoin made up around 99% of all seized cryptocurrencies, with small amounts of Ethereum, Dash, and other tokens included.

In comments to the New Scientist, former head of digital forensics at Dorset Police and global cybersecurity advisor at ESET Jake Moore noted: “The key design of cryptocurrencies is to keep them secure from interception from anyone, whether that be a threat actor or law enforcement, plus they were not intended to have a back door for any reason.”

He added: “Digital investigations still remain in their infant phase and require far more resources to improve fighting this growing criminality. Cyber-criminals are very aware of the well-documented evasion tactics available but policing is improving at a rate that will slowly catch up in time.”

An upcoming report from blockchain experts Chainalysis warned that 2021 saw cryptocurrency-based crime reach an all-time high. The company claims that illicit addresses received $14 billion worth of cryptocurrencies, up from $7.8bn in 2020.

However, the group noted that the 78% increase was lower than the 567% increase in total transactions from 2020 to 2021, showing that legitimate usage is outpacing criminal adoption.

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The role of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in money laundering has become a source of concern for government and police forces worldwide. The decentralised nature of cryptoassets means that that high-value tokens can be traded quickly and anonymously, making them difficult to trace.

One of the biggest hauls of illicit cryptocurrency took place in July 2021, when the Metropolitan Police seized assets worth £180 million in an anti-money laundering operation.

This eclipsed a previous record set earlier in June, which saw £114 million of cryptocurrency seized.

In addition, the volatile pricing of many cryptocurrencies can cause headaches for the judicial system.

In one case, a convicted drug dealer in Sweden was owed over £1 million due to Bitcoin price rises. 36 bitcoins were seized from the criminal and used to pay off their judicial debts.

However, by the time the assets were auctioned, the price had increase so much only three tokens needed to be sold to raise the funds. This meant the Swedish Government had to pay back around 14 million krona.

All this has seen governments looking to crack down on the crypto industry.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) began requiring cryptocurrency firms to register their services from January 2021 as part of rules aimed at tackling money laundering.

The move saw Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, banned from operating in the UK.

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