Ciphertrace by Mastercard has launched version 3.0 of Inspector for Financial Investigations and Blockchain Forensics. Featuring a new, sleek user interface, it delivers powerful visualization and knowledgebase enhancements. Inspector 3.0 includes an Ethereum visualization tool that helps users see the movement of funds across addresses and their interactions with smart contracts. Investigators can filter searches…
The Monero community posted notice of v15 (version number, not client version) — release version v0.18.0 — hard fork (HF) network upgrade on November 19, 2021. Known as “Fluorine Fermi,” based on Monero’s release naming convention, the network had meetings in March 2022 and reached a consensus on April 16, to target deployment of the…
On Dec. 14, 2021, the Senate Banking Committee on Banking, House & Urban Affairs convened a hearing to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of stablecoins. Stablecoins maybe privately issued cryptocurrency or algorithmic or “non-collateralized/decentralized” stablecoins such as DAI, an algorithmic stablecoin issued by MakerDAO. Stablecoins differ from other cryptocurrencies because their value is linked to government-issued…
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recently reported that only 58 out of 128 reporting jurisdictions advising that they have now implemented any the revised FATF standards, including the “travel rule.” This aligns with what we have found through our work with the FATF and with leading VASPs — identifying the Sunrise Problem as…
CipherTrace offers a variety of training and certification programs to help users understand the intersection of cryptocurrency and financial crimes. These classes allow users to leverage the expertise and best practices of our team of cryptocurrency AML experts and forensic investigators to learn how to minimize risk, prevent and detection financial crimes. If you are…
On November 18, 2021, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) published Interpretive Letter #1179. This is the fourth interpretive letter in a series (1170, 1172, &1173) that discusses if it is permissible for National Banks and Federal Savings Associations to engage in certain cryptocurrency, distributed ledger, and stablecoin activities. OCC Interpretive Letter… Read more
On August 18, hackers stole a little over $90M* in more than 69 different cryptocurrencies and tokens from Japan-based exchange Liquid Global. Liquid’s teams have yet to release a postmortem detailing the attack vector used by the hacker. While about $16 million in assets from more centralized tokens have already been frozen according to Liquid,… Read more
TLDR: On the morning of August 10, the US Senate passed the now infamous Infrastructure Bill (HR 3684) which, in its current state, suggests implementing tighter rules on any business that handles cryptocurrency such as reporting gains and expanding reporting requirements for what is loosely defined as cryptocurrency “brokers.” After a single senator objected to…
Standoff between Poly Network and Hacker over keys to multisig wallet Aug 18 Update: In an August 17 Medium article, the Poly Network team announced that they had offered the hacker, whom they refer to as “Mr. White Hat,” the position of Chief Security Officer along with a $500,000 bounty for identifying the exploit. In… Read more
Recent headlines like the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware attack confirm that cybercrime is on the rise with no end in sight. The need for cryptocurrency intelligence built from immutable blockchain data has never been clearer. Attacks on critical infrastructure and financial institutions have accelerated at an alarming rate. The Biden administration has stated that “cybersecurity resilience”…
