Some had doubts about it, others were more suspicious on this topic, but eventually, it is official. A former US federal prosecutor announced this summer during the international Money 20/20 conference taking place in the Netherlands: “many more crimes” were perpetrated via the use of fiat currencies and not with cryptocurrencies.
This former District Attorney for Western Pennsylvania, elected by the Senate under the administration of G.W. Bush in 2001, argues that it is now high time to get rid of the negative and harmful connotations around the crypto sphere.
The former prosecutor supports his remarks and notes that:
“ I worked for more than 20 years in the [US] Department of Justice and I find it wrong to advance the fact that there is more crime through the use of cryptocurrencies. I entirely refute these words… [moreover] cryptocurrencies can still be traced, no cash “
So what’s going on with this famous un-traceability of cryptocurrencies?
This argument seems to be counterintuitive. Indeed, anonymity was one of the motivations behind the invention of cryptocurrencies
Buchanan continues his speech and says that indeed, there are currently many tools available to law enforcement to determine the entire path of a crypto on a chain of blocks. Elliptic and Chainalysis seem, according to her, to be the perfect examples. These cryptos judicial services can reveal blockchain-specific intelligence systems.
While these tools are extremely forward-looking, the same can not be said of the law. “The laws are lagging behind in this area and are becoming far too obsolete,” she says, comparing the current state of affairs with the first steps of the Internet in the 2000s.
Retired from the federal government, but not inactive
Mary Beth Buchanan is currently General Counsel at Kraken, a major cryptos exchange platform, and has been very involved in cryptography in general for the past five years.
She preached cryptocurrencies as “wonderful tools” that provide “at a very low cost” value transfer on a global scale. Regarding the adoption by a large majority of people, Buchanan says “we are already there” seeing cryptocurrency evolve “around the world” and “used by developing populations.“
One of our articles last year already mentioned the legitimacy of Bitcoin while at the same time revealing the dubious practices it offered. But it is clear that in a broader context, opinions are much more nuanced.
All in all, when we know that in the 1980s drug trafficking in the United States and Europe already peaked at the time at $ 124 billion, we are far from $ 72 billion in activity illegal Bitcoin today on a global scale.
