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- The UK’s NCA has recently signified its plans to regulate the cryptocurrency mixing services that enable illicit users to disguise their activities.
- Lately, this cryptocurrency technology has flourished, facilitating darknet criminals to avoid detention while carrying out illicit activities.
- The Agency wants the crypto mixer operators to work in alienation with the law.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) of the United Kingdom (UK) has recently issued a warning against cryptocurrency mixing services that it claimed and opined are utilized for ill-gotten laundering funds. The Agency claims that it wants the operators of the crypto mixers to comply with the law.
It is basically a crypto technology that can disguise the blockchain transactions and enables anonymous movements of dark web Bitcoin.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency transactions are primarily recorded on a public ledger that provides transparency. Bitcoin is not entirely anonymous as all the transactions can be easily tracked via the mixing services.
For instance, the privacy issue can be solved with the help of decentralized mixers like Wasabi based on the CoinJoin protocol. And the focus of these services is to obscure the origin of the funds. There comes a flaw with them, too, that they can’t make the transactions entirely untraceable, but they can certainly make the task of tracking down the blockchain complex.
These open-source programs have lately flourished, profoundly facilitating the darknet criminals to avoid detention while carrying out illicit activities.
And therefore, now the UK’s criminal Agency has taken a move towards calling regulations for the technology used in intertwining with the transactions making it hard to trace payments in BTC and other crypto assets. The Agency opined that regulations would force the mixers to comply with the money laundering laws.
These crypto mixers’ services are often employed by criminals and trouble makers who are willing to launder crypto. An instance of such a scenario where the mixing services were used is the largest Twitter hack that happened in July 2020, where over half of the Bitcoins were acquired.
But these Bitcoin mixers are usually legal for the jurisdictions at a global level. But there were occurrences where these mixers were criminally charged, like in May last year, and Roman Sterlingov was arrested by the US authorities, who were the operators of the famous tumbling service named Bitcoin Fog. This service facilitates laundering nearly $335 million from famous darknet marketplaces.
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Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast, with a major in macroeconomics and minor in business statistics. She believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks, and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning. She frequently researches, and posts content on the top altcoins, their theoretical working principles and technical price predictions.
