Towards Cryptocriminology of Crypto and Decentralized Finance: Cypherpunks, Scam Artists, and FBI Agents

• In Event: Digital Crime and Decentralized Finance: Artificial Intelligence, Cryptocurrency, and Large Language Models

Abstract

Although the capitalization of the global cryptocurrency markets fluctuates around 2.7 trillion dollars and an estimated 562 million people own crypto, criminology has been lacking in its response. To outline the contours of the criminological knowledge on the subject, I analyze and code all presentations focused on crypto delivered at the American Society of Criminology meetings between 2024 and 2019. To move the field towards greater theoretical cohesiveness, I classify the 22 relevant papers into 4 categories: funding extremism, white collar crime, drug markets, victimization. Then, I discuss the gaps in research focusing on regulatory and law enforcement challenges. I weave a narrative focused on Russia, where cypherpunks and idealistic libertarians developed technologies to resist authoritarian governments but inadvertently provided tools for the scam artists, extremists, and drug dealers. I concentrate on the cases of Telegram, Tornado Cash, Garantex, and Gotbit to illustrate my theoretical points. I show how these cases challenge fundamental concepts of traditional criminology. Specifically, the destabilization of the definition of crime/fraud and the loss/diffusion of criminal responsibility in the world where crypto has no inherent value, where wash trading (fictitious trading) is endemic and transactions are performed by artificial intelligence (AI) agents rather than humans.

Author

• Pavel Vasiliev, Ohio University