KANALCOIN NEWS – UK customs, payments and tax authorities want to use blockchain analysis tools to help identify cybercriminals involved in trading Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It is reported that HMRC (Her Manjesty’s Revenuie & Customs) is looking for a vendor who can provide the FIS-DSI Cyber Crime team assistance tool to analyze blockchain-based cryptocurrency transactions.
HMRS hopes that blockchain analysis tools can help combat cybercriminals as they are increasingly used in unlawful transactions. Even Cryptocurrencies are also used to avoid taxes and money laundering. In the past year, it requested customer and transaction information from crypto exchanges such as Coinbase, eToro and CEX.IO in an attempt to identify unpaid taxes.
Free online tools and analysis of raw blockchain data can shed light on crypto transactions, but HMRC is trying to invest in commercial products. “These exchanges can store information about their clients and the transactions they have completed. At that time, these transactions could generate tax potential,” HMRC said.
That would allow investigators to cover up intelligence limitations to find out how cryptocurrency trading is currently supporting criminal activities against the agency. Desired a tool that can track transactions and value fluctuations in popular cryptocurrencies. “Although transactions are usually public, participants do not,” said HMRC.
Popular cryptocurrencies include Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Ripple, Litecoin and Tether. Ideally, this tool can also develop the ability to track private tokens such as Monero, Zcash and Dash which are notoriously difficult to trace. HMRC itself has allocated a budget of 100,000 pounds or the equivalent of 130,000 US dollars for the license of the selected tool for one year.
Tax authorities have also asked potential suppliers to submit their proposals until January 31. The contract is scheduled to start on February 17. Several potential suppliers that can provide the tools needed by HMRC are Chainalysis, Elliptic and Ciphtertrace. They are considered to have been tracking crypto transactions.
such as Elliptic which recently discovered more than 400 million US dollars linked to a ripple of fraudulent transactions and Ponzi schemes. Chainanalysis is also one of the popular blockchain analytics. They have tied up with several digital asset exchanges, including Deribit, Bittrex and Bitfinex to reduce illegal transactions and strengthen their discipline.
With the increase in crime and illegal transactions, the field of crypto analysis has become very demanding on the industry and government agencies. “Provision of tools that will support intelligence gathering methods to identify and group crypto-asset transactions into related transactions and identify those associated with crypto-asset service providers,” HMRC explains in its proposal.
Companies that offer such services raise millions of dollars and make big deals.
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Author: Randy Ntenk
Freelance writers