The hype surrounding cryptocurrency in recent times has gained much attention among new inverters. Cryptocurrency as Bitcoin and Ethereum hit their all-time highs as well as sudden drops in value. This drew the attention of the people searching for a chance to make quick money. As a result, this also gained attention among criminals, with illegal activities worth around 10 billion USD. Financial law enforcement agencies face huge problems as Blockchain technology changes the way of financial investigations. This makes it more important to understand the motive of the crypto criminals.
Get an idea of the dark side of cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrencies are enabling more and more illegal transactions every single day. Some of them are,
- Money laundering
- Drug smuggling
- Cybercrime
- Black market trading.
- Child exploitation.
- Fraud
- Funding for terrorist activities.
Government organizations and officials are focusing on crypto criminals and crypto transactions. They are trying to record all the transactions through proper tax paying. To track the illegal transactions and identify the criminals behind them. But with the high encryption of Blockchain technology, this is not an easy task. And this is why more and more criminals are shifting towards cryptocurrency.
Such problems related to ill use of crypto will likely be shifting to different countries lacking strong rules. It highlights how important international cooperation is in investigations. Cryptos are a worldwide phenomenon. The nations of the world mainly those with various trading activity need to work together for protecting consumers.
Hiding criminal transactions on cryptocurrency
- There are many reasons why criminals and terrorists do not store their illegal assets in banks.
- Banks are very high-security organizations regulated by government rules and regulations.
- One needs to fit specific requirements and guidelines to transfer a large sum of money.
- Banks require an id and follow the KYC regulation for money transferring.
- These regulations prevent money laundering and other illegal activities.
- In case of any suspicious activity, banks can seize the account.
- In the real world, moving or storing money in a suitcase or under the floor or inside the wall behind the paintings, as shown in many movies, is not an effective way.
- It is challenging to move vast amounts of liquid cash worldwide.
- But now, with the help of cryptocurrency, transactions can be easily made without any monetization.
What are the uses of cryptocurrency?
There are no proper indications or prove the cryptocurrency and NFT are used by any terrorist organizations. But this will leave a massive hole in this system for some illegal activities. With the world’s speed towards digital assets and the digital universe and as you grow your Bitcoin business, the criminals’ minds are also not behind. This could become a real issue shortly are mentioned below.
- Digital currency or cryptocurrencies are all based on Blockchain technology.
- This allows a user to own a specific part of the internet.
- This Blockchain is uniquely coded and well encrypted. This allows the blockchain to be individually unique and irreplaceable.
- This is why even if blockchain holds the record of the transaction, it is not linked to any physical data or other information.
- For this reason, cryptocurrencies are considered anonymous and create issues for government officials to monitor any illegal transactions.
- As per a report published in 2015 by Europol, Bitcoin has been involved in many high-profile cases and was used in almost 40% of illegal transactions in the European Union.
- Also, there are many cases where evidence of illegal transactions using cryptocurrency is reported.
- Bitcoin also provides financial security.
- The transaction on the Blockchain network.
- Are completely record-free and cannot be detected after the transaction has been completed.
- This allowed dark web purchases and black market transactions to be more secure and easy.
Conclusion
With speed, our world is shifting towards the digital platform. It is doubtful to ban or dismantle all cryptocurrencies suddenly or entirely. However, Bitcoin is not as anonymous as people think it to be. Yes, the transaction doesn’t have any physical data related to it. But the blockchain can publicly access a fair amount of knowledge on computers and get to the transaction history on that particular blockchain. This is why many Bitcoin transactions are made using other encrypted and anonymizing software such as “The Onion Router”.
