2020 is ancient and the second link doesn't look impartial. Denying cryptocurrency facilitate criminal activities is as like denying the sky is blue.
Try going out and buying, then sending $22 million dollars worth of gift cards.
Crypto clearly makes the whole process far quicker and more anonymous.
Surely we can all agree that the benefit that cash bring still outweigh the wrongful use. When it's no longer the case I imagine it will be phased out too.
The open question is whether legitimate uses of digital currencies outweigh their illegitimate uses. The supplied data, which you're welcome to rebut, strongly suggests they do.
More to the point, the data suggests that GP's simple solution to stopping ransomware crime -- banning an entire class of media of exchange -- won't be effective. Not only has ransomware existed at least since the 1980s, well before the 2009 introduction of Bitcoin, but it isn't even dependent on digital currencies. (My personal and anecdotal intersection with it shows 0% usage; one in the 1990s demanded a mailed money order, and the other in 2023 provided a phone number to call and read gift-card scratch-off codes.)
Banning money doesn't stop crime.
Did you just go to Wikipedia article for Ransomware, saw 1989 AIDS Trojan being mentioned and now claim that ransomware existed since 1980? AIDS Trojan didn't really work and didn't provide any kind of anonymity for its creator. It was created by a mentally ill person. There were no instances of successful ransomware before Bitcoin. It really started with CryptoLocker. CryptoLocker gave victim an option to pay with either cash card or bitcoin. Cash cards were converted to bitcoin, which was outsourced to third party low-level criminals who took the risk of being caught. So bitcoin was absolutely critical piece here. And it was true for all successful ransomware schemes since. I stand behind my claim that ransomware wouldn't be possible without crypto. It's especially true about extortion attacks against corporations, like what article talks about.
It seems very important to you that you successfully draw a bright line between digital-currency-funded ransomware and the other ransomware that preceded it. You might strengthen your argument by taking a position closer to reality, which is that digital currencies have facilitated online transfers of value, and thus have become more popular. From that point of view, one would hope that digital currencies would come to dominate, including in the realm of ransomware. But again, that gets us back to the original topic: whether the beneficial uses of such currencies outweigh their negative uses.
Ransomware has declined (0.674% in 2020, 0.4768% in 2023): $59.6 million. Digital currency usage has increased (5.7% in 2020, 30.4% in 2023): $3.8 billion.
Which means we're still in agreement.