FBI Director: Cryptocurrency a “Significant Issue” for Law Enforcement

Christopher Wray, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, noted that cryptocurrency is a “significant issue” that will probably become a bigger concern as time goes by.

On Tuesday Wray gave a statement in front of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee where he answered to cryptocurrency- and terrorist prevention-related questions coming from U.S. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT).

Wray shared the agency’s views:

“We are looking at it from an investigative perspective, including tools that we have to follow the money even in this new world that we’re living in.” 

Wray and Romney were on the same page when it came to the topic of terrorist financing. The Director believes that U.S. enemies are getting “more facile with technology and particular various types of technology that anonymize their efforts.”

As wee see, Wray doesn’t see the problem only in crypto and made a remark that encryption is nowadays a very significant part of modern technology and especially instant communications.

According to him:

“Whether its cryptocurrency, whether it’s default encryption on devices and messaging platforms; we are moving as a country and world in a direction where if we don’t get our act together money, people, communication, evidence, facts, all the bread and butter for all of us to do our work will be essentially walled off from the men and women we represent.”

FBI reported that during the course of 2018 they had 130 cases under investigation that engage cryptocurrencies in some manner. These cases range from human trafficking to ransomware and are quite serious. In May 2019 FBI took measures and shut down a dark web market place, called DeepDotWeb which accepted crypto for some of their services.