Ukrainian authorities will be able to “block crypto wallets” in order to seize illegally obtained assets, a notice on the country’s Ministry of Finance says. Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s Finance Minister, reportedly said that the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine (SFMS) will be the responsible authority for tracking the sources of origin of the funds on citizens’ crypto wallets. Authorities use an analytical product scanning for the crypto funds’ origins and uses As part of the regulatory policy, the SFMS will be able to not only find out the origin of crypto, but also detect how those funds have been …
A new report on the PlusToken Ponzi scheme shows regulated exchanges are being used to dump coins, despite stringent Know Your Customer (KYC) identify verification rules. Investigative company OXT Research has released a second edition of their in-depth blockchain analysis on the PlusToken scam. The report explained PlusToken funds generally moved from unmixed allotments and locations, to mixers. After mixers, the funds saw consolidation, and then finally distribution. OXT’s report said: “Approximately 80% of coins entering mixing have been distributed while up to 33,872 BTC remain in the mixer and 3,853 BTC are in the distribution process, resulting in a …
Cryptocurrency compliance company Elliptic has released the Elliptic Data Set, geared toward identifying cryptocurrency transactions associated with money laundering (AML). The development was announced in a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Aug. 2. Making the crypto world more transparent Having developed a data set of 200,000 Bitcoin (BTC) transactions with a total value of $6 billion, Elliptic claims it to be the largest set of labeled transaction data publicly available in any digital currency in the world. According to the announcement, the product is designed to help users more efficiently identify illicit transactions, as well as transactions associated with …
Coin Center — a nonprofit research and advocacy center focused on crypto-related public policy issues — has urged Her Majesty’s Treasury not to over-broaden the scope of the United Kingdom’s anti-money laundering/counter terrorism financing (AML/CFT) regulations. The development was revealed in an official Coin Center news release published on June 10. Coin Center’s central concern regards HM Treasury’s plans to ostensibly “impose data collection and reporting requirements on not only cryptocurrency developers, but all open-source software developers and others who facilitate the peer-to-peer exchange of cryptoassets,” as the news release states. The advocacy center outlined its position in detail in …
Tracking cryptocurrency transactions is getting easier for law enforcement agencies. On Oct. 16, Cointelegraph reported on how authorities in the United States successfully shut down an international child pornography site. To identify the criminals, the investigators used tools developed by analytic company Chainalysis, which helped to track the Bitcoin (BTC) wallets, used by the criminals to receive payments from customers. As authorities find more and more ways to track cryptocurrencies, criminals use new techniques, and many sites remain beyond government control. Who will win this battle and can the fight against financial crimes grow into total control over users? Cryptocurrencies …