Tag Archives: Money Laundering

The Israeli pensioner Esther Freeman has reportedly turned an ILS 10,000 Bitcoin investment, worth roughly $3K at that time, into ILS 1,000,000 (~$324K) in eight years. However, Hapoalim Bank – one of the largest in the country – denied accepting the profits as the initial investment source might have had a connection to illegal financial operations. Cash Is The Problem In 2013 a 69-year old retired citizen of Israel, Esther Freeman, decided to enter the cryptocurrency market...

The government of Kazakhstan reportedly plans to put local companies working with digital assets under its regulatory scope. According to a proposed bill, those entities will have to give detailed information about their crypto operations to the country’s financial watchdogs to prove they have no connections to money-laundering schemes. Kazakhstan May Tighten Its Crypto Rules As reported by the local media Sputnik, the National Parliament of Kazakhstan passed a bill to make...

The American authorities have accused the Baltimore resident – Ryan Farace – of laundering2,933 BTC between October 2019 and April 2021. Interestingly, the man was sent to jail in 2018 and has presumably executed the criminal activities from behind bars. ‘Xanaxman’ Dealing with Bitcoin Even from Prison According to The Baltimore Sun, officials of the state of Maryland had pressed charges against Ryan Farace – also know as “Xanaxman” – for laundering 2,933 BTC over the period...

Less than a year after Chainalysis placed BitMEX into its “high risk” cryptocurrency exchanges zone, the company has reversed its decision. The analytics company has conducted an internal review of the derivatives exchanges, which has strived to improve its AML compliance lately. BitMEX faced extreme scrutiny last year when most of its executives at the time, including Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed, were indicted by the US government with accusations of...

The British police confiscated £180 million or about $250 million worth of digital assets as part of a thorough investigation for money laundering. The operation was marked as the largest seizure ever executed in the United Kingdom. Breaking The Record According to a recent Reuters report, the Met’s Economic Crime Command made one of the largest global crypto seizures – nearly $250 million worth of various digital assets. The operation, which was part of an ongoing...

This allows users to create trustless atomic swaps between the two cryptocurrencies without having to route through a centralized exchange service. Monero’s Privacy Mechanisms Monero’s ring signature system draws anonymity from a minimum ring size. Receivers are protected via stealth addresses, and funds within the ring are indistinguishable from each other. The minimum ring size is 11: given no other information, an attacker can identify the source of a transaction with a...

Bitcoin is doing extremely well as of late, but that’s not changing the minds of certain financial firms and individuals. Among today’s bitcoin doubters is Bill Gates, the software mogul known for creating Microsoft programs.Bill Gates Thinks the World Doesn’t Need BTCIn a recent tweet, Gates puts on an attitude of indifference towards bitcoin, the world’s number one cryptocurrency by market cap. The message reads:I don’t own bitcoin. I’m not short bitcoin, so I’ve taken a neutral view. I do...

No doubt that with bitcoin and the establishment of the crypto space about 12 years ago came the furthering of financial crime. To this day, many analysts and industry experts express concern regarding the amount of money laundering and other forms of criminal behavior that continue to rock the crypto space and drag it further away from legitimate or mainstream territory.Is Money Laundering as Big a Problem as We Thought?The good news is that while the crime may seem widespread and heavy, new...

Amid the renewed anti-Bitcoin remarks ascribed to mainstream finance stakeholders, reports have emerged showing banks in Australia working in cahoots with violent South American cocaine cartels. Despite aspersions to the contrary, the crypto market continues to account for an insignificant proportion of global financial crimes.Australian Banks Funelling Dirty Money for Drug CartelsAccording to the Australian Financial Review, banks in the country have reportedly laundered about 500 million...

​Janet Yellen, President Joe Biden’s U.S. Treasury Secretary nominee, seems to have balanced her statements about Bitcoin and crypto, after her previous negative rhetoric about the emerging technology.Janet Yellen Acknowledges Crypto’s BenefitsIn a written response to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee on Thursday (Jan. 21, 2021), Yellen stated that cryptocurrencies had benefits that needed to be explored. Yellen added that the emerging technology had the potential to “improve the efficiency...