According to the latest report of the American company CipherTrace involved in cybersecurity in the first half of 2018 criminals have stolen from cryptocurrency exchanges more than $750 million — three times more than for the whole of 2017.
Experts CipherTrace write that for the past two years, attackers were able to withdraw from trading platforms $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency. The most recent episodes of this kind include robbery Coincheck ($530 million), CypheriumChain ($10 million) and the theft of $1.5 million of cryptocurrency trading application Taylor.
Stolen cryptocurrency criminals subsequently washed, allowing them to hide their identity and avoid arrest. In the cryptocurrency sector are numerous services on money laundering (called mixers, Laundry and other own terms). Services operate on the same principle: receive funds from a variety of different clients, mix them by breaking the total sum into many arbitrary locations, and then distributed to the addresses of the client-recipient. Typically, these services take from 1 to 3% per transaction.
The most famous “mixers” — BestMixer, Bitblender, Bitcloak and Coinmixer.
In addition to specialized services, criminals often use online gambling sites that almost never obey the rule “know your customer”. The network is available from 100 to 200 online gambling sites with a focus on cryptocurrencies. Criminals opened for them accounts and then transferred money to legalization. In online casinos they make the most simple bets or even withdraw funds to a new address without taking part in the games.
In 2017 laundered $266 million in the cryptocurrency. In the current year this figure is still at the level of $761 million the Problem of money laundering in the digital currency began to reach such proportions that it attracted the attention of regulators around the world. The report CipherTrace mentioned the activities of the international Group on combating money laundering and terrorist financing (FATF). Current rules require all exchanges to be registered or licensed, to verify the identity of customers to prevent money laundering and to inform the supervising authorities about the suspicious trade and transactions. According to Reuters, now the FATF is actively discussing how to make cryptocurrency exchanges to comply with the rules.
The same goal the us Network to combat financial crimes (FinCEN). Her focus is primarily on services for money laundering, stock exchanges, an all cryptocurrency trading pair (no Fiat money), and confidential coins.
See also: the US Secret service asked Congress to engage in Monero, zcash for bitcoin-mixers
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