Bloomberg Law
Oct. 1, 2020, 12:00 PM

Booming Crypto Market a Potential Haven for Money Laundering

Matthew Leising
Matthew Leising
Bloomberg News

The booming world of decentralized finance, which has collected more than $11 billion in cryptocurrencies in a matter of months, is a potential haven for money laundering, according to new research.

Globally, 56% of digital currency services have weak or porous “know your customer” controls, blockchain security firm CipherTrace said Thursday in a report. KYC procedures are meant to confirm the identity of users to prevent laundering. Dave Jevans, chief executive officer of CipherTrace, said regulators will be looking more closely at decentralized finance because of its astounding growth.

“The last six to eight weeks have shown it to ...