In 2024, ransomware attackers received ~$813.55M in payments from victims, down 35% on 2023's record $1.25B, as more victims refused to pay
The ransomware landscape experienced significant changes in 2024, with cryptocurrency continuing to play a central role in extortion.
Context & Ripple Effects
The reported decline follows a volatile payment cycle: Chainalysis had identified a 2022 drop in ransomware receipts before a record 2023 rebound. That makes 2024 less a simple linear recovery story than a fresh test of whether victims can sustain nonpayment.
Cryptocurrency remains the payment rail in this coverage, so the shift matters both as a measure of attackers’ realized revenue and of victims’ willingness to absorb disruption rather than fund extortion.
First-order effects
- Ransomware operators collected about $813.55M from victims in 2024, 35% below the article’s stated 2023 record, reducing the proceeds realized from successful extortion.
- More victims refusing to pay shifts the immediate cost of incidents away from ransom transfers and toward recovery, continuity, and response efforts.
Second-order effects
- A lower payment rate raises the value of prevention, backups, and incident-response capability for organizations seeking to make refusal viable.
- For cryptocurrency tracing and compliance efforts, lower ransomware payment flows do not remove the need to monitor extortion finance while crypto remains central to the model.
Third-order effects
- If refusal holds through future attack cycles, ransomware economics may become less dependent on the number of compromises and more dependent on extracting payment from a narrower set of victims.
- The 2022 decline, 2023 rebound, and 2024 fall show that aggregate ransom receipts are a volatile indicator; sustained assessment will need to separate attack activity from victims’ propensity to pay.
The trend: Ransomware is moving toward a contest between attackers’ ability to compel payment and victims’ growing capacity to refuse it, rather than a steadily rising payment market.