In today’s world, almost 2,000 of digital currencies are available in the crypto space and Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency is widely adopted and popular in the market. Bitcoin due to its popularity has been used by criminals and hackers to carry illegal activities and should not be a big surprise to us.
Chainanlysis Company helps law enforcement to monitor bad actors by providing them with the investigation software. More recently, the co-founder and COO of Chainalysis, Jonathan Levin spoke to Fortune during one of its episodes of Balancing the Ledger and said that Bitcoin is the boss of the crypto world. He further pointed out that Bitcoin is responsible for the growing crypto crimes and holds accountable for 95 percent of crimes.
He mentioned that Bitcoin (BTC) is “by far the favorite” coin used by hackers and criminals. Bitcoin is one of the most valued digital currencies than any other currencies, the liquid coin; bitcoin is easy to carry trade and the foremost digital currency to mark its presence in the crypto market. Due to bitcoin’s positivity, it is attracting more and more criminals. Most of the users prefer to trade with Bitcoin rather than privacy coins, for example, Monero. The only reason for this is due to is high transaction volume and is traded most.
Levin said that cryptocurrency documents have led for the detention of many criminals including the recent arrest related to opioid series, carried out in the US a month back, is due to the blockchain analysis result. The blockchain analysis result has allowed officers to monitor illegal fentanyl purchases and other drugs that were paid through bitcoin. The officers have even tried to control the flow of illegal drugs entering into the US mostly from China.
Levin informed Fortune,
“What we’ve seen is that there is the ability to tie some of those cryptocurrency transactions either to the pharmacies in China or actually to the services that people are using to distribute fentanyl.”
According to Levin’s opinion traditional finance made it hard for law enforcement to create cases, due to transparency in cryptocurrencies, it is assisting the law enforcement to develop cases faster against the suspects because the investors no longer need to depend on foreign banks to obtain records.
The popular cryptocurrency exchange of Canada, QuadrigaCX was officially announced bankrupt in April, is under investigation and currently, Levi is carrying the investigation process. The death of QuadrigaCX CEO in December, previous year led the firm to lose access to its cold wallets and related keys and apparently the company has a debt of over $195 million, needs to pay 115,000 customers.
The blockchain forensic analysis has helped the US Drug Enforcement Agency and the Department of Homeland Security in cracking down the illegal activities. The services offered by Chainalysis to crypto companies and law enforcement are significantly important due to an increase in bitcoin crimes and scams.
Levin mentioned that QuadrigaCX is going through major difficulties.
Chainalysis Expansion
Chainalysis made a statement on April 25; it said that the company has designed its real-time transaction monitoring service for 10 cryptocurrencies, and includes tokens and Stablecoins such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ether, Gemini Dollar, USD Coin, Tether and Binance Coin. The real-time transaction monitoring is designed to crack down money-laundering cases.
