Theft of cryptocurrencies through hacking of exchanges and trading platforms soared to $927 million in the first nine months of the year, up nearly 250 percent from the 2017 levels, according to cyber security firm CipherTrace.<\/p>\n
The recently published report<\/a>, which looks at criminal activity and money laundering in the digital currency market, also showed a steadily growing number of smaller thefts in the $20 million-to-$60 million range, totaling $173 million in the third quarter.<\/p>\n Digital currencies stolen from exchanges in 2017 totaled just $266 million, according to a previous report from CipherTrace.<\/p>\n Bitcoin\u2019s popularity and the emergence of more than 1,600 other digital coins or tokens have drawn more hackers into the cryptocurrency space, expanding opportunities for crime and fraud.<\/p>\n \u201cThe regulators are still a couple of years behind because there are only a few countries that have really applied strong anti-money laundering laws,\u201d<\/strong> Dave Jevans, chief executive officer of CipherTrace, told Reuters in an interview.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Jevans is also the chairman of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a global organization that aims to help solve cyber crime.<\/p>\n He said there are likely 50 percent more criminal transactions than those that were traced for this report. For instance, CipherTrace is aware of more than $60 million in cryptocurrency that was stolen but not reported.<\/p>\n The data also showed that the world\u2019s top cryptocurrency exchanges from countries with weak anti-money laundering regulations (AML) have been used to launder $2.5 billion worth of bitcoins since 2009. The top 20 virtual currency exchanges in terms of volume were analyzed for the report.<\/p>\n The CipherTrace report declined to name those exchanges<\/a>.<\/p>\n These money-laundered funds represent transactions that CipherTrace was able to directly monitor and designate as criminal or highly suspect.<\/p>\n In estimating the $2.5 billion, CipherTrace looked at about 350 million transactions from the 20 exchanges and found 100 million of those with counterparties. From there, the firm was able to cross-check the 100 million transactions with its own data on criminal activity.<\/p>\n At the same time, these exchanges have also been used to purchase 236,979 bitcoins worth of criminal services, equivalent to approximately $1.5 billion at current prices, the report showed.<\/p>\n \u201cAll exchanges get these money-laundered funds. You really can\u2019t stop them,\u201d<\/strong> said Jevans.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd here\u2019s the reason why. We learn about the criminal stuff often times after it actually happened. So there\u2019s no way to know in real time. You can know 80-90 percent of the time, but it\u2019s impossible to know 100 percent,<\/strong>\u201d he added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Follow ForkLog on Twitter<\/a><\/span> and Facebook<\/a><\/span>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Theft of cryptocurrencies through hacking of exchanges and trading platforms soared to $927 million in the first nine months of the year, up nearly 250 percent from the 2017 levels, according to cyber security firm CipherTrace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"human_written","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[281,48,148],"class_list":["post-6040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-crime","tag-exchanges","tag-security"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"232","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6040"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6041,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6040\/revisions\/6041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}