Why it’s so hard for the US to go after hackers’ digital wallets

Name: Cryptocurrency volatility highlighted by China’s recent crackdown and Elon Musk comments
Uploaded: 2021-08-14T14:11:39.000Z
Duration: 2 min 27 s
Description: Cryptocurrency volatility highlighted by China’s recent crackdown and Elon Musk comments

Regulations on cryptocurrency vary widely around the world, and it won’t be easy for the US to alter that dynamic as it seeks to neutralise hackers’ money flow

Experts have identified a group of countries that are struggling to combat cryptocurrency abuse, including Ghana, Myanmar and Pakistan

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Existing international coordination around cryptocurrency abuse has been scattershot. Photo: AFP

POLITICO

Published: 10:11pm, 14 Aug 2021Updated: 10:15pm, 14 Aug 2021

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Eric Geller on politico.com on August 14, 2021.

US President Joe Biden has said he’ll take on hackers’ payment method of choice – cryptocurrency – in the fight against ransomware gangs. But any such effort faces a massive challenge: getting the rest of the world on board.

Congress and administration officials are increasingly pushing for oversight of cryptocurrency after a spate of cyberattacks in which criminal hackers hobbled the operations of a major East Coast gas pipeline, halted production at one of the nation’s largest meatpackers and breached an IT software vendor that supplied hundreds of companies. Each time, the hackers demanded millions – and sometimes tens of millions – of dollars in bitcoin.

But tracking, regulating or otherwise restricting a currency designed to elude governmental control is inherently an international task, and one that has proven more complicated than other types of global crime-fighting. Given a host of diplomatic and technological barriers, pursuing hackers’ wallets can be even more difficult than pursuing the hackers themselves.

Countries are moving at vastly different paces to tackle the abuse of virtual currencies, leaving regulatory grey areas where small cryptocurrency exchanges can hide. Many countries disagree on what transactions to permit and how tightly to control them. And experts warn of a persistent divide between well-resourced governments and those with less economic power.

“Developed nations will have consistent standards, and other countries will not, and that’s always going to be the way it is,” said Andrew Jacobson, a former financial crimes investigator for New York state who is now a lawyer in the cryptocurrency group at Seward & Kissel LLP.

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Cryptocurrency volatility highlighted by China’s recent crackdown and Elon Musk comments