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Case Study: Hydra—Russia’s Largest Dark Market

Launched in 2015, Hydra is the most prominent Russian darknet market and likely the largest darknet market in the world. Hydra is Russian in origin and serves the following countries: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Moldova. Hydra became the top Russian darknet market in 2017, after the closure of RAMP…

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Analysis of the TITAN Token Collapse: Iron.Finance Rugpull or DeFi Bank Run?

TL;DR: Iron.Finance depends on arbitrage as their stabilizing mechanism for partially collateralized tokens. In the case of the TITAN token collapse, the time frame between its price feed oracle and the actual real-time prices of the market was too large causing users to become unprofitable and not protect the stabilization. As a result, TITAN dropped…

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Ransomware Seizure: Blockchain Analysis Helps US Authorities Seize Over $2 Million in DarkSide Ransom Paid by Colonial Pipeline

Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Recovery On June 7, 2021, the US Department of Justice announced that they had seized 63.69 BTC of the 75 BTC ransom Colonial Pipeline had paid to DarkSide. This ransom recovery is the first undertaken by the recently created DOJ Ransomware and Digital Extortion Task Force. While the FBI was able to…

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Sanctions Research: More than 72,000 unique Iranian IP addresses linked to more than 4.5 million unique Bitcoin addresses

The following is an excerpt from our Cryptocurrency Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Report. Since monitoring sanctions-related IP usage across the Bitcoin blockchain, CipherTrace has detected more than 72,000 unique Iranian IP addresses linked to more than 4.5 million unique Bitcoin addresses. These Iranian IP addresses were either involved in direct cryptocurrency transactions or were used… Read more

Analysis: Proposed FATF Guidance for Virtual Assets and VASPs

On March 19, 2021, global anti-money laundering watchdog the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) released a public consultation for its updated Draft Guidance on a Risk-Based Approach to Virtual Assets and Virtual Asset Service Providers. Key changes in the draft guidance include: DEXs and crypto escrow services are considered Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) Stablecoins… Read more

What Exactly is a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP)?

Cryptocurrency, digital asset, convertible virtual currency… there seems to be an endless list of terms for the same concept. If that wasn’t enough, a cryptocurrency exchange can also be referred to as a Virtual Asset Service Provider(VASP), Virtual Asset Entity, Digital Asset Customer (DACs), Money Service Business (MSB), or any other series of classifications depending…

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Infinite Minting Exploit Nets Attacker $4.4M

As DeFi protocols continue to heat up within the Ethereum ecosystem, CipherTrace is seeing more and more exploits and attack vectors come to light. This past week, on December 28th, 2020, Cover Protocol’s shield mining contract, Blacksmith, was exploited. Hackers used a bug in the mining contract to mint an infinite amount of COVER tokens…

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Half of 2020 Crypto Hacks are from DeFi Protocols and Exchanges

This blog is an excerpt from the upcoming CipherTrace 2020 Cryptocurrency Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Report In first half of 2020 DeFi took up 45% of all thefts and hacks ($51.5M or 40% of hacked volume). In second half of 2020 DeFi took up 50% of all thefts and hacks ($47.7M or 14% of hacked… Read more

Nearly $1B from Silk Road Move for First Time Since 2015

UPDATE: According to a November 5 US Department of Justice complaint, the 69000+ BTC (and the BCH, BSV, and BTG equivalents) that were moved earlier this week were in fact seized by the US DOJ. The complaint adds that the individual that moved the funds (Individual X) was able to hack into Silk Road back…

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Record Number of Dark Markets Online as Demand for Illicit Goods and Services Continues to Grow

The criminal environment of darknet markets is extremely turbulent. Numerous darknet markets are launched every year and just as many are constantly exiting, being seized, or otherwise going defunct. Despite this barrage, CipherTrace has noted more dark markets online than ever before. CipherTrace researchers are currently monitoring over 35 active darknet markets. The newest darknet…

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