A dubious new record was set, as some 14 billion USD in cryptos have been received by off-the-grid crypto wallets. In comparison, back in 2020 that number was 7.8 billion USD.
That said, the total transactional value of cryptos for 2021 was an astounding 15.8 trillion US dollars, up a whopping 567% from 2020. Compared to that the illegal transactions are tiny drop in the bucket – only 0.15% of the entire volume.
Although cybercriminals have been more active than ever in the past year, legitimate cryptocurrency operations are outpacing the illicit ones by an order of magnitude that “might be the biggest surprise of all.”
Source
The initial number is alarming, to say the least, but in comparison to the total transactional value the picture becomes pretty different, I think, and far less bleak.

Thank you for this. A statistic without context is useless. It isn't surprising that given the way the market has been in 2021 that transactions increased dramatically. It's good to see that the % of illeagal transactions ultimately remains very low.

Context really matters, I agree. I am actually surprised how tiny the proportion of these transactions are compared to the legitimate ones. I wonder what the statistic looks like with fiat currencies.

Some more context - the UN Office of Drugs and Crime has released a report in which it has estimated that between $800 billion and $2 trillion of fiats are laundered each year. This is equal to 5% of the global GDP. Cryptocurrencies cannot even compare.