The European Union security agency, Europol, has taken over Wasabi Wallet, a Bitcoin privacy tool. Reports from the agency’s European Cybercrime Center (EC3) analyzed the effect of the privacy tool on using the Bitcoin blockchain to investigate crimes, CoinDesk reported. EC3 informed that blockchain analysis company Chainalysis estimates how much money was filtered through Wasabi for crime purposes by stating that “there are” difficulties in security controls.
$ 50 million in Bitcoin in 3 weeks to Wasabi
In the first part of the report sent to the agency officers in April, “According to Chainalysis, approximately 50 million dollars of BTC was transferred to Wasabi in the last 3 weeks. 30 percent of this rate came from ‘dark web’ markets. Considering that dark web transactions constitute 1 percent of total market transactions, this is a really serious figure. ” These observations by Europol reveal the long-standing tension between advocates of Bitcoin privacy and governments. The fact that the blockchain is transparent and that the transactions between the accounts can be traced helps catch the criminals, but privacy advocates want Bitcoin transactions to be less traceable. In this way, it is thought that more people will see BTC as a means of payment. EC3 fights financial crimes in this digital age. The report actually describes what Wasabi is in general and is called “a wallet that tries to overcome the transparency of Bitcoin and makes it difficult to track by mixing transactions.” The second part of the report, which appeared in May, describes how an agency employee will find Wasabi transactions on the blockchain and how to use the wallet.
Europol confirms report leaking Telegram channels
On the other hand, the report has infiltrated some Telegram channels and the institution has acknowledged this and the accuracy of the report. In the statement made by Europol’s press department, it was stated that the report was published only for Europol official employees and at the same time it contains no operational information. “No” was given to the question whether Europol has the possibility to “correct” the confused transactions again. ZkSnacks, the company behind the Wasabi wallet application, did not answer questions about the issue. ZkSnacks, which received a six-digit stock investment last year by Canadian company Cypherpunk Holdings, is worth $ 7.5 million.
