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The DOI matches its Crossref record; 41 of the 41 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Sex, Drugs, and Bitcoin: How Much Illegal Activity Is Financed through Cryptocurrencies?

Open access
Foley, Sean, Karlsen, Jonathan R, Putniņš, Tālis J·2019·The Review of Financial Studies

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies are among the largest unregulated markets in the world. We find that approximately one-quarter of bitcoin users are involved in illegal activity. We estimate that around $76 billion of illegal activity per year involve bitcoin (46% of bitcoin transactions), which is close to the scale of the U.S. and European markets for illegal drugs. The illegal share of bitcoin activity declines with mainstream interest in bitcoin and with the emergence of more opaque cryptocurrencies. The techniques developed in this paper have applications in cryptocurrency surveillance. Our findings suggest that cryptocurrencies are transforming the black markets by enabling “black e-commerce.” Received June 1, 2017; editorial decision December 8, 2018 by Editor Andrew Karolyi. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

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Cites

Show all 41 references

Research works printed but not linked: 14

  1. Basu,, 2014, The strategic attributes of transnational smuggling: Logistics flexibility and operational stealth in the facilitation of illicit trade, Journal of Transportation Security, 7, 99, 10.1007/s12198-013-0132-0 · doi:10.1007/s12198-013-0132-0
  2. Basu,, From mining to markets, Journal of Financial Economics.
  3. Cox,, 2016, Staying in the shadows: The use of bitcoin and encryption in cryptomarkets
  4. Fanusie,, 2018, Bitcoin laundering: An analysis of illicit flows into digital currency services
  5. Greenberg,, 2017, Monero, the drug dealer’s cryptocurrency of choice, is on fire, Wired
  6. Khapko,, 2016, “Smart” settlement, 10.2139/ssrn.2881331 · doi:10.2139/ssrn.2881331
  7. Lavorgna,, 2016, How the use of the internet is affecting drug trafficking practices
  8. Lewman,, 2016, Tor and links with cryptomarkets
  9. Martin,, 2014, Drugs on the dark net: How cryptomarkets are transforming the global trade in illicit drugs., 10.1057/9781137399052 · doi:10.1057/9781137399052
  10. Martin,, 2018, Cryptomarkets, systemic violence and the ‘gentrification hypothesis.’, Addiction, 113, 797, 10.1111/add.14029 · doi:10.1111/add.14029
  11. Rogoff,, 2016, The curse of cash, 10.1515/9781400883219 · doi:10.1515/9781400883219
  12. Van Slobbe,, 2016, The drug trade on the deep web: A law enforcement perspective
  13. Wijaya,, 2018, Monero ring attack: Recreating zero mixin transaction effect. In 2018 17th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications/12th IEEE International Conference on Big Data Science and Engineering (TrustCom/BigDataSE), 1196
  14. Yin,, 2017, A first estimation of the proportion of cybercriminal entities in the Bitcoin ecosystem using supervised machine learning, Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, 3690, 10.1109/BigData.2017.8258365 · doi:10.1109/bigdata.2017.8258365

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Metadata

Authors
Foley, S., Karlsen, J. R., & Putniņš, T. J.
Venue
The Review of Financial Studies
Published
2019-04-04
Volume
32
Issue
5
Pages
1798-1853
ISSN
  • 0893-9454 (ISSN-L)
  • 1465-7368
OpenAlex
W3123868249
Cited by
1,051
References
41
FWCI
145.90
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green
Funders
  • Capital Markets Co-operative Research Centre
  • Australian Research Council (DE150101889)

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Sex, Drugs, and Bitcoin: How Much Illegal Activity Is Financed through Cryptocurrencies? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/rfs/hhz015
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Foley, S., Karlsen, J. R., & Putniņš, T. J. (2019). Sex, Drugs, and Bitcoin: How Much Illegal Activity Is Financed through Cryptocurrencies? The Review of Financial Studies. https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/hhz015

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