It should be noted that Dogecoin still has a loyal fan in the person of Ilon Musk. The day before during the Qatar Economic Forum event, the billionaire confirmed that he still supports popularization of DOGE. Moreover he was persuaded to get in touch with this coin by not the most well-off people, i.e. in fact the PR of the cryptocurrency is a kind of gesture of help. Read more about this story in a separate article.

How cryptocurrencies are used

Dogecoin appears not only in incidents involving the theft of funds from crypto users, but also as a means of payment in a wide variety of areas of crime. Here’s a relevant rejoinder from analysts.

While the vast majority of this activity consists of fraud, scams and pyramid schemes, Dogecoin is also used in the most serious types of crime, including terrorist financing and child sexual abuse material trafficking.

Accordingly, analysts have been able to identify instances of such use of DOGE. Why criminals do not use confidential Monero-type solutions and prefer meme coin for this purpose is unknown.

The Elliptic report mentions an order to confiscate 84 crypto-addresses linked to the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas or used in terrorist activities. It was issued by Israel’s National Terrorist Financing Bureau in July 2021. Among the aforementioned crypto-addresses were wallets containing the equivalent of $40,235 in DOGE.

Dogecoin use in the underworld

The report also noted a “small but growing number” of cases of child abuse material being sold on both the darknet and the conventional internet. Some of the criminals involved in this area use DOGE to make payments to their customers. While the actual amount of Dogecoin identified here by Elliptic is small – less than $3,000 – analysts are confident that this indicates “a tendency for criminals to use a wide range of cryptocurrencies in an attempt to avoid the attention of law enforcement.”

Read also: Elon Musk reiterated his support for Dogecoin, but advised against investing in cryptocurrencies

Among the variety of financial flows in the criminal world, DOGE is still more often used in stealing digital assets and attracting victims to pyramid schemes. According to Decrypt’s sources, more than 50 theft, fraud, and pyramid scheme incidents have been identified to date that have helped criminals obtain “hundreds of millions of dollars in Dogecoin”.

Dogecoin exchange rate

This also includes the financial pyramid scheme PlusToken, whose turnover once reached $6 billion. In 2020, Chinese law enforcement authorities seized $20 million in DOGE from individuals associated with the criminal scheme. Elliptic also noted $119 million in financial flows associated with a massive fraud scheme in Turkey, where someone under the pseudonym of Turgut V promised his victims huge profits from mining investments.

In addition to criminals, DOGE is also very popular with far-right extremist groups. The altcoin has been successfully used by their leadership to raise money in the form of donations. This money is used to fund news sites, blogs and video distribution platforms on the aforementioned topics.

One such news site called Infowars, which supposedly “fights globalism and promotes a pro-human future around the world,” has so far raised over $1,700 in Dogecoin. The amount is relatively small, but the mere fact that it’s funded has given opponents of the coin, and the entire crypto industry in general, a reason to criticise the crypto as a tool for extremists and criminals.

Infowars portal

Unfortunately, preventing the trend of cryptocurrencies spreading to suspicious individuals is extremely difficult. Here, decentralisation works against the image of digital assets: after all, there is no centralised authority in the world that can significantly influence cryptocurrency transactions.


We don't think the analysts' arguments seem the most convincing. Certainly, crypto can be used for bad purposes and prohibited activity - but the same thing happens all the time with fiat currencies like the dollar, euro and rouble. In addition, such transactions do not mean that cryptocurrencies should be banned. Such actions only characterize the people who conduct them. Crypto in this case is just a decentralised tool.