Illegal Bitcoin use is down, but privacy wallet laundering is up, says analyt...
2020 has apparently been the year of privacy wallets, as more exchanges onboard KYC requirements. Elliptic, a leading firm in blockchain analytics, has found major shifts in recent trends in illicit crypto usagPer the firm's Dec. 9 study, the proportion of Bitcoin transactions that the firm has linked to criminal activity is way down, certainly relative to its 2012 peak:Nonetheless, bad actors continue finding new ways of placing ill-gotten gains via crypto. Elliptic noted a slight rise in crypto mixing usage, but a major increase in privacy wallets:Increasing legal pressure and criminal....
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The founder of the Wasabi Wallet called the decision a major setback for Bitcoin’s fungibility, while one of the developers advocated for the use of other privacy coordinators over zkSNACKs. CoinJoin, a popular Bitcoin (BTC) mixing tool, will block transactions associated or flagged as illegal. The announcement came from the official Wasabi Wallet Twitter account, of which Coinjoin is a part.The zkSNACKs coordinator will start refusing certain UTXOs from registering to coinjoins. pic.twitter.com/X3kBuQwieO— Wasabi Wallet (@wasabiwallet) March 13, 2022 The official announcement noted that....
Bitcoin wallet providers haven't focused on increasing privacy to promote consumer financial independence and safety over the last year, according to the Open Bitcoin Privacy Project’s (OBPP) second edition survey. As no provider received a score of more than 50 out of 100, the OBPP suggests privacy work has stagnated within the bitcoin wallet industry and that improvements to these services are greatly needed. While new bitcoin wallet providers have begun adopting hierarchical deterministic (HD) architecture for advanced security, the OBPP contends that many privacy advances from 2014,....
Benjamin James Cance, who has been charged for shipping illegal arms, possession of an unregistered weapon, and money laundering, allegedly used bitcoin to facilitate transactions. Bitcoin payments are typically untraceable, as the verification process is done by a network of computers solving complex algorithms to update the distributed public ledger called blockchain. This isn't the first time that the cryptocurrency has been involved in illegal dealings, as it has been the currency of choice in the now-defunct Silk Road or underground marketplace in the Dark Net. Bitcoin for Illegal....
Bitcoin wallet providers Darkwallet and Armory performed the best in an independent test that sought to identify the strongest wallet offerings for financial privacy. Darkwallet version 0.8.0 and Armory version 0.93.1 both received top scores of 45 out of 100 from the Open Bitcoin Privacy Project (OBPP) Spring 2015 Wallet Privacy Rating Report, the first release from the open-source organisation that seeks to promote and improve privacy in the bitcoin ecosystem. Scores were based on performance in five categories that assessed the privacy the wallets offered from blockchain observers and....
The Dutch government is trying to make it easier to launch a criminal investigation against persons who use bitcoin to launder money from illegal activities, according to Financieele Dagblad, a Dutch newspaper. Dutch investigators have discovered criminals are shielding activities using “bitcoin mixers.” A bitcoin mixer is a grab bag with bitcoins of several owners. The bitcoins paid out from the bitcoin mixer cannot be traced back to the original owner. Bitcoin And Money Laundering. The FIOD, the investigative arm of the Dutch tax authority, wishes to have the bitcoin mixers recognized as....