On April 12, the Western Cryptocurrency Investigations Centre was inaugurated. It is a collaborative team comprising Calgary Police Department investigators and analysts from the blockchain data company, Chainalysis.
In the announcement of the partnership via a blog post, Jonathan Levin, Chainalysis’ co-founder and chief strategy officer, commented that the public-private partnership shown to tackle innovative matters in financial services is a model that the rest of the world can adopt.
Together with @CalgaryPolice, today we’re launching the Western Canada Cryptocurrency Investigations Centre, a partnership that will enable law enforcement action to protect Canadians and build trust in digital assets.https://t.co/exGywqwW6B
— Chainalysis (@chainalysis) April 12, 2023
The new facility will add to what is already being done to put an end to the growing number of crimes related to cryptocurrency in Western Canada.
As per the blog post by Chainalysis, there has been a significant surge in the adoption of cryptocurrencies in Canada. The company noted that Canadian engagement with crypto ATMs, decentralized exchanges, and centralized exchanges has increased by almost 213% since 2019 as of January 2023. Additionally, the peak level of adoption in May 2021 was around 865% higher than in March 2019, with DeFi being a major driver of interest.
But along with this fast growth, there has been a rise in crime. Chainalysis says that in Canada alone, more than $41 million was lost to cryptocurrency scams in 2022. It also says that during the same time period, illegal crypto activity exposed at least $1,144 CAD for every 1,000 Canadians.
The Calgary police department plans to use the private-sector expertise of Chainalysis to improve its training programs for investigators and, according to the blog post, to give officers round-the-clock case support.
Chainalysis says that the next step is to make the program bigger so that it can help more law enforcement agencies in Western Canada. The company wants to eventually expand this concept globally, collaborating with law enforcement personnel around the world to offer made-to-measure, customized offerings based on the unique needs of the region at hand.
Chainalysis: Criminals Still Preferring Bitcoin
An analysis done by Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis firm, has indicated that Bitcoin, despite not being private, has been used in 95 percent of all crimes involving cryptocurrency. However, the revelation is not as shocking owing to the fact that Bitcoin is the most popular and it’s worth thousands of…
In "Crypto News"
Chainalysis Shows Bitcoin Wallets With more Than 1K BTC Reach Records
Bitcoin wallets with over 1,000 BTC continue growing. According to the blockchain analysis company Chainalysis, during 2020 the number of wallets with more than 1k BTC surged by 17%. At the moment there are 2,052 wallets with this amount or more of Bitcoin. Chainalysis Shows Large Holders Continue Buying Bitcoin…
In "Breaking"
Chainalysis Releases Suspicious Transaction Alerts For Cryptocurrencies
Chainalysis has released a new service that would alert interested individuals and firms when a suspicious crypto transaction is processed by one of the major blockchain networks. The information was released by Chainalysis in a blog post a few hours ago. New Tool To Detect Suspicious Transactions In a recent…
In "Breaking"
