From Syndicates to Protocols: Rethinking Organized Crime in the Age of Cybercrime

Arthur  Hartmann

doi:10.6000/1929-4409.2025.14.11

Authors

Arthur Hartmann Hochschule für Öffentliche Verwaltung Bremen – University of Applied Sciences in Public Administration, Bremen, Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence Crime Investigations and Criminal Justice, Doventorcontrescarpe 172 C, 28195 Bremen, Germany https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4019-7747

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6000/1929-4409.2025.14.11

Keywords:

Cybercrime, Organized Crime, Figurational Sociology, AGIL Framework, Functional Equivalence, Cybercrime Infrastructures, Cryptocurrencies, NFT (Non Fungible Tokens), Money Laundering

Abstract

This article develops the concept of cyber-mediated organized crime to capture structural transformations driven by digital infrastructures, especially cryptocurrencies.

Integrating functionalist theory (AGIL), Elias’s figurational sociology, and trust theory, it reconstructs how criminal formations adapt by substituting social embeddedness with cryptographic mechanisms.

Empirical domains—ransomware, darknet markets, blockchain laundering—reveal how digital actors fulfill core functions of protection, coordination, and trust under pseudonymity and decentralization.

Rather than replicating traditional hierarchies, these formations emerge as adaptive social systems shaped by functional differentiation and technological affordances.

Their systemic resilience, despite evolving law enforcement strategies, underscores new modes of illicit governance and contestation.

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