As banks and mainstream investors embrace bitcoin, helping fuel the heady gains of the world's best-known cryptocurrency in 2017, some of its earliest adopters — criminals — have started banking elsewhere, Bloomberg reports. The problem for the criminal underground is that bitcoin's blockchain — or transaction history for each virtual coin — is traceable, allowing law enforcement and researchers to follow the crypto-money.
Europol, the European Union police force, warned three months ago that "other cryptocurrencies such as monero, ethereum, and Zcash are gaining popularity within the digital underground," with online extortionists and other cybercriminals apparently favoring monero, which quadrupled in value in the final months of 2017, Bloomberg says. (Bitcoin merely doubled in that time period.) These so-called privacy coins use encryption and other tools to obscure the sender and receiver in online transactions.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Judges block $25B Kroger-Albertsons mergerSpeed Read The proposed merger between the supermarket giants was stalled when judges overseeing two separate cases blocked the deal
-
Rupert Murdoch loses 'Succession' court battleSpeed Read Murdoch wanted to give full control of his empire to son Lachlan, ensuring Fox News' right-wing editorial slant
-
Bitcoin surges above $100k in post-election rallySpeed Read Investors are betting that the incoming Trump administration will embrace crypto
-
Enron mystery: 'sick joke' or serious revival?Speed Read 23 years after its bankruptcy filing, the Texas energy firm has announced its resurrection
-
US charges Indian tycoon with bribery, fraudSpeed Read Indian billionaire Gautam Adani has been indicted by US prosecutors for his role in a $265 million scheme to secure solar energy deals
-
Boeing machinists approve contract, end strikeSpeed Read The company's largest union approved the new contract offer, ending a seven-week strike
-
US economy still strong in final preelection reportSpeed Read It grew at a solid 2.8% annual rate from July through September
-
Boeing machinists reject deal, continue strikeSpeed Read The rejection came the same day Boeing reported a $6.2 billion quarterly loss
