The rise of Crypto Scams, a concern around Consumer Protection

Financial Technology is moving fast forward towards a futuristic world, where payment platforms offer speed, security, and convenience. From a world of cash to a world of keeping our money in central banks, now we live in a time where we can imagine paying for our groceries with digital currencies, like Bitcoin.

With the widespread adoption of digital currencies, criminals are moving to the new technology too, and chances are one could easily fall victim to cyber theft. Sadly, fraudulent activities such as scams, money laundering, terrorism financing, ransomware, human trafficking, and child pornography, can be tempting for crypto criminals.

According to Chainalysis's "Mid-year Crypto Crime Update":

"Through July 2022, $1.9 billion worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen in hacks of services, compared to just under $1.2 billion at the same point in 2021."

This hacking trend doesn't seem to stop there since in the first week of August was reported another $190 million hack of cross-chain bridge Nomad and a $5 million hack of several Solana wallets.

A survey conducted by the blockchain analytics firm interviewed 300 employees from 183 public sector agencies in the U.S. and Canada, to analyze if the public sector is ready to meet the challenges brought by cryptocurrency adoption. This indicated that 74% of respondents consider that their agencies aren’t "well-equipped to investigate cryptocurrency-related crime". 

Chainalysis recently warned the agencies about cyber criminals increasingly exploiting vulnerabilities in decentralized finance(DeFi) platforms:    

“If agencies aren’t becoming proficient in cryptocurrency investigations now, their knowledge gaps could compound, causing them to fall further behind the criminals exploiting cryptocurrency regularly”, said Chainalysis.

Binance said its investigations team has responded to more than 27,000 law enforcement requests since November 2021, with an average response time of three days.

“Binance is known among law enforcement to have a fast response system, unmatched by any traditional financial institution”, said global head of intelligence and investigations, Tigran Gambaryan.

Binance is on the right path, responding to the demand for help

After Chainalysis's chief technology officer, Gurvais Grigg stated in July:

“Law enforcement and national security agencies need the right training and tools to improve domain awareness, enhance investigations, and strengthen response capabilities. Specifically, agencies should consider creating a “Center of Excellence,” or a working group of crypto-related subject matter experts to leverage these tools and training.”

We are finally starting to work on this matter with Binance launching a Global Law Enforcement Training Program on how to spot cyber crimes around the world.

"The industry’s first global coordinated effort of this kind, the program is designed to help law enforcement detect financial and cyber crimes and assist in the prosecution of bad actors who exploit digital assets".

Binance is building out a team, to conduct more training and work hand-in-hand with regulators from around the world.

The training program is led by Binance's Investigations team, among which security experts, and former law enforcement agents, including analysts and operatives who previously helped take down some of the world’s largest criminal platforms, such as Silkroad and Hydra.

Since last year, Binance has organized more than 30 workshops on cybercrime investigations where participated enforcement officers from countries like Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Netherlands, Philippines, Sweden, South Korea, and the UK.

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