- Elliptic found 90 manufacturers willing to supply fentanyl precursors
- 90% of them accept cryptocurrency, mostly BTC
- They have received about $27 million in CA since the beginning of the year
- In China, fentanyl has been banned since 2019, but clandestine exports are still thriving
Yesterday, May 23, Elliptic released a new report highlighting the activities of a massive network of fentanyl (synthetic opioid) precursor producers.
As it turns out, most of the companies are located in the PRC, and they accept mostly cryptocurrency.
Elliptic claims that the lion’s share of fentanyl precursors (constituents of the drug) come from China.
The portal has identified at least 90 manufacturers. Meanwhile, in the PRC, fentanyl has been under the strictest ban since 2019.
90% of these companies accept cryptocurrency payments. According to onchain statistics, these vendors’ wallets have received about $27 million since the beginning of the year.
In comparison to 2022, transaction volume is up 450%. This could indicate both an increased demand for fentanyl and a gradual shift by providers to paying mostly in cryptocurrency.
This amount of precursors would be enough to produce $54 billion worth of fentanyl.. And this business is gaining momentum.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid. It is 50 times more potent than heroin, while being significantly cheaper to produce and faster to addictive.
In 2017, the UN listed fentanyl precursors as “highly hazardous substances”.
The nuance here is that some components of the drug are not actually banned, with the manufacturing process requiring no specialized equipment or expertise.
Worthy, in 2021, of the 106,000 overdose deaths in the United States, about 70,600 cases were caused by fentanyl.
We reported earlier that there are about 30 million cryptocurrency users in China. It seems that the policy of total prohibition in the country simply does not work.