Analysis Archives

U.S. arrests Bitzlato cofounder, alleges $700M illicit funds processed

On January 18th, the Department of Justice, US Attorney’s Office Eastern District of New York published a press release that stated that Anatoly Legkodymov was arrested on January 17th in Miami, Florida. Assistant Attorney General Polite stated, “As alleged, the defendant helped operate a cryptocurrency exchange that failed to implement anti-money laundering safeguards and enabled criminals…

Year One: A Mini Retrospective

It’s been a smidge over a year since Mastercard acquired CipherTrace. To celebrate this milestone, I sat down with Dave Jevans, founder and EVP of CipherTrace, and Johan Gerber, Mastercard’s EVP for Cyber and Security Innovation, to talk about everything we’ve accomplished, the challenges and the path ahead. While hailing a taxi in Barcelona, Dave was almost run over by a bus. Most people in that situation might see their lives flash…

Setting the Record Straight: Law and Policy Are Not at Odds with Crypto Analytics

The crypto revolution is transforming traditional finance systems by increasing access to financial services, accelerating transfers and bringing transparency and auditability to finance transactions. These are amazing enhancements. To sustain the viability of this new, decentralized digital economy, it is important to prevent bad actors using cryptocurrencies to fund violence and inflict harm. Blockchain analytics…

US Senate Hearing Recap on Stablecoins

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…

OCC Clarifies Rules for National Banks Engaging in Cryptocurrency Activity

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

Liquid Exchange Loses Over $90 Million in Warm Wallet Hack

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

Senate Rejects Crypto Compromise— Infrastructure Bill passes without clarification on crypto

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…

Poly Network Suffers Largest Crypto Hack Ever Recorded

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

Hamas Cryptocurrency Donations Update | Seizures by Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF)

CipherTrace Cryptocurrency Intelligence Update: 07/16/2021 On July 1, Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF) released a seizure order listing several cryptocurrency addresses across several blockchains associated with donation campaigns carried out by designated terrorist organization Hamas. In addition to bitcoin and Ethereum, the seizure order demonstrates that Hamas also collected donations in Tether,…

Second 12-Month Review of the Revised FATF Standards on Virtual Assets and Virtual Asset Service Providers

On July 5, 2021, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) completed its second 12-month review of the implementation of its revised Standards on virtual assets and virtual asset service providers. This review looks at how jurisdictions and the private sector have implemented the revised Standards since the FATF’s first 12-month review. The FATF’s first 12-month…