A few years ago, the FBI confiscated property and 144,336 Bitcoins ($ 28.5 million) Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road resource, which sold narcotic substances for the cryptocurrency. It was back in 2013 when one bitcoin cost about 200 dollars. Now, when investors' interest in crypto-currencies has increased, and Bitcoin from $ 1,000 has grown to almost $ 20,000, Ulbricht's fortune would have been estimated at $ 2.2 billion.
For many years Bitcoin was de facto the currency of black markets and the unit of account of criminal structures. Confidentiality, the simplicity of storage and ability to make anonymous payments, all these qualities have made it a good tool for drug dealers, weapons, and other illegal operations, among criminal and terrorist organizations.
One can only imagine how many millionaires in the criminal world we received in just a few months, and how many shadow structures can continue to be enriched if their savings are stored in Bitcoin.
In this story, not only Bitcoin is an alternative to ordinary money. In September 2016, Montero's cryptocurrency was recognized as a new alternative to the criminal world, when another resource AlphaBay, added it as a unit of account. As is known in contrast to Bitcoin, Monero uses a new address for each transaction and has improved functionality that increases anonymity.
After this happened, Monero grew by 344% since November 2016 and by 3400% since AlphaBay began to accept it. And here you can see the obvious enrichment of crime.
Especially recently, the interest of terrorist organizations in the crypto-aliens has grown, perhaps related to the "insanity of growth" that we observed quite recently. The last December report of the Meir Amit Information Center for the Study of Terrorism in Israel spoke about the website of the IGIL terrorist organization dedicated to donations in Bitcoin and noted that terrorists are now betting on the "widespread use" of cryptocurrency. A few days after the report, a resident of Long Island was arrested because of sending a sum of Bitcoins equivalent to $ 62,000 to support terrorism.
As it turned out, the terrorists used Bitcoin for many years one of the first. In 2013, the counterterrorism organization Ghost Security Group, whose participants monitor wallets with crypto-currencies of terrorists, reported that it has information about the IGIL purses, where the Bitcoins had about $ 3 million, at a cost of about 330 $ for a coin at that time. Today, these 3 million turned into more than $ 136 million.
Roger Rice of the Ghost Security Group declined to comment on the specifics of such monitoring but told Yahoo Finance that anyone who currently keeps funds during the growth of the cryptocurrency is making huge profits, whether criminals, law-abiding citizens or state structures.
"We certainly note the growth of open communities on crypto-currencies in Telegram - and not necessarily related to terrorism," he said. "Those who have grown rich on the growth of the value of their savings in Bitcoin, have probably already made a profit."
Bitcoin transactions are the most anonymous when they are executed correctly, and this makes it difficult to track the amount of cryptocurrency in criminal structures. According to Mark Testoni, general manager of the National Security Service of the United States (NS2), which helps the US government track digital terrorists, approximate data on who uses Bitcoin.
"Obviously, this is a network that has gained popularity due to its anonymity," he said. "This is like a modern version of Swiss bank accounts. So far it can not be said about the percentage ratio of criminal groups or terrorists in it. "
Stefan Simon, a security researcher at Binary Defense Systems, a company dealing with cybercrime, and monitoring Bitcoin wallets, said it's very difficult to determine the address of a criminal even when you can access the wallet.
