To buy the fentanyl ingredients they supply to drug cartels around the world, Chinese chemical makers now take cryptocurrencies.90% of the Chinese chemical companies that supplied fentanyl precursor chemicals and advertised their goods online were discovered by researchers at the crypto analytics platform Elliptic. These companies also offered to accept payments in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Tether (USDT), which were found to be used by only a small minority of these organizations.
The company recently reported that “many of these businesses were also willing to supply fentanyl itself, despite this being banned in China since 2019.”According to the investigation, the majority of the Chinese labs that provided the ingredients for fentanyl utilized accounts at “three specific exchanges” situated abroad that were left nameless.These businesses have received thousands of payments totaling just over $27 million, according to Elliptic’s analysis of their cryptocurrency wallets, which also showed that the number of “transactions has increased by 450% year-on-year.”
Elliptic claimed that numerous suppliers have acknowledged sending fentanyl precursors and the drug itself to Mexico, the country from which the majority of the fentanyl entering the United States arrives. The blockchain analytics company continued, “Most fentanyl trafficked into the United States is manufactured using precursors imported from Chinese suppliers.”In a related development, a research from the blockchain analysis company Chainalaysis showed that bitcoin addresses linked to alleged fentanyl precursor suppliers in China have collected more than $37.8 million in cryptocurrency since 2018.
According to the survey, Latin American cryptocurrency users remitted approximately $3.6 million worth of cryptocurrencies to chemical stores in China, making them the region’s most active participants in Fentanyl trafficking.