The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has revealed that between April 1, 2022 and March 31, 2022, its confiscated roughly £22.34 million in cryptocurrency assets.

It’s a stark contrast to the previous year in which there was no seizures of any digital assets, showing the increasing onus gangs and criminal entities are putting on cryptocurrencies.

Not only is this the first year that crypto-assets were seized by the NCA, the total value of these surpassed that of fiat currency (£26m) or physical assets (£7m) seized. It should be noted, however, that the value of crypto-assets were based off estimates taken in March of this year, which is a long time ago in the crypto world.

These findings were detailed in the NCA’s latest annual report which stated that the organisation wanted to ‘focus on cash-based and high-end money laundering impacting the UK, and the main vulnerabilities being exploited by criminals.’

The report claimed that the seizures ‘exceeded our ambition in delivering high-impact disruptions against money launderers (including working with partners to make large cryptocurrency seizures in the UK), and delivered a 20% increase in disruptions against professional enablers.’

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When outlining potential harms to the UK’s economy and institutions, the report stated that in the last year, ‘ransomware remained the most significant serious organised cyber-threat.’

It continued: ‘Many of the most capable serious organised crime groups that traditionally used banking trojans adopted ransomware themselves, or provided other criminals with access to their malware.’

Cyber-crime in generally became a much greater focus for the NCA between last April and March, 2022 with a greater proportion of its operations targeting the most ‘sophisticated cyber criminals, some of whom were attempting to take down signifcant UK infrastructure.

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