Industry Report: No Bitcoin Crime Goes Unpunished
A bitcoin buyer is robbed, the latest game to pay in digital currency, and new initiatives for fighting ransomware are set forth. Want to catch up on your latest digital currency news? Take a look below. BITCOIN ROBBERY. A bitcoin buyer has undergone quite a scare after being robbed at knifepoint. 32-year-old Steve Manos of Lake Worth, Florida set out to take part in what he thought was a routine bitcoin sale last Sunday in a nearby parking lot. The thieves, whom Manos had done business with before, held him at knifepoint in the street before making off with the $28,000 USD he had brought....
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Digital currencies such as Bitcoin are enabling individual criminals, who come together on an ad-hoc basis, to boost the "crime-as-a-service" business model. The newly-released Europol report titled, 'Exploring Tomorrow's Organised Crime', states: "Virtual currencies increasingly enable individuals to act as freelance criminal entrepreneurs operating on a crime-as-a-service business model without the need for a sophisticated criminal infrastructure to receive and launder money." The research, aimed at identifying the key trends in the EU criminal landscape, revealed that such developments....
An international crime expert has labeled London the center of international money laundering, saying the city's major banks disregard the anti-money laundering regulation that at the same time burdens FinTech startups. Roberto Saviano — the author of the popular crime investigation books “Gomorrah” and “Zero Zero Zero,” dealing with the Italian mafia and the cocaine trade, respectively — made the comment in an interview on July 4. In June, the UK's National Crime Agency published a report on the state of 'Serious and Organized Crime' in the country, which described how money laundering....
Europol has issued a new report on Internet crime in which it outlined a number of scenarios involving bitcoin. Called the Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (iOCTA), the report examines the use of bitcoin on various dark web sites, by organised crime and individual actors, and calls digital currencies an 'enabler' for cryber-criminals and a challenge for law enforcement. However, it makes a clear distinction between bitcoin and digital currencies designed with true anonymity in mind, like darkcoin, warning: "We feel it should concern everyone that the latest cyber currencies are....
In its latest report called the Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment for 2015, Europol outlined the state of cybercrime threats in the European Union. The report mentions bitcoin and virtual currencies, claiming that it accounts for roughly 40% of criminal-to-criminal transactions online. This follows the agency's statement indicating that cryptocurrencies promote the crime-as-a-service business model, wherein bitcoin was highlighted for its role in facilitating money laundering. The cryptocurrency is known for its anonymous transactions, which Europol says makes it "heavily abused....
Ciphertrace, a blockchain analytics company, has announced that crypto-related crimes have moved to the realm of decentralized finance (defi) apps and protocols. Now, the impact these hacks and exploits represent is way bigger than the one classic hacks to centralized exchanges and other scams do, according to their latest “Cryptocurrency Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Report.” Ciphertrace: Crime Moves to Defi Ciphertrace, one of the biggest cryptocurrency crime and blockchain analytics companies, has found that most of the crypto-related crimes have now moved to decentralized....