During a panel today on legal compliance within the crypto industry, several law enforcement experts highlighted recent changes in public perception of the crypto industry, pointing to the speed with which the Twitter attack suspect was found just weeks after the incident, as an example of how effective blockchain technology can be in solving crimes.

The panel was part of a series by the Association of Certified Financial Crime Specialists (ACFCS)

A 17-year-old man was just arrested in connection with the recent Twitter hack
Twitter and law enforcement
Lana Schwartzmann, Director of Compliance at Paxful, spoke about the Twitter hack: „It’s quite amazing how different this is from what we would see in the traditional trust world. This would never have been resolved so quickly.

Also speaking about Twitter, Coinbase’s head of compliance, Jeff Horowitz, agreed that it was part of a changing narrative in the crypto industry: „The story quickly changed to ‚how are crypto companies going to work with the police to track down this problem?

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Overall increase in institutional comfort and interest
Horowitz went on to describe major improvements in the debates on the regulation of cryptomonies over the course of „perhaps the last year or two“.

Jonathan Levin, co-founder of Chainalysis, a company that helped track down the Bitcoin address used in the Twitter attack on 17-year-old Graham Clark, compared the estimated $10 million laundered at Bitcoin each day to the total amount moved in the blockchain:

„There are over a billion dollars moved in the bitcoin blockchain per week, so this is still a very small amount of value compared to what is moved in total.

Institutions, Levin said, are very involved in looking at how to adopt cryptography, but noted that „this is not a when or a if, this is a how. An audience survey during the panel found that a lack of regulatory guidance is the main barrier for financial institutions working with crypto technology.

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Levin also spoke at length about North Korea’s famous Lazarus group as an example of law enforcement to better familiarize itself with Crypto Investor technologies. As reported by Cointelegraph, in March 2019 the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned two Chinese citizens and their associated cryptobilleters for providing exit ramps for stolen Lazarus crypt coins.