DarkWeb’s Favorite Crypto Is Monero: Europol Report

Darkweb’s favorite cryptocurrency is Monero according to the latest Europol report that we are reading more about in our latest cryptocurrency news sites reports.

According to Europol, the privacy-enhancing wallet services and cryptocurrencies are major threats in the cybercrime space but the law enforcement agency also noted that Darkweb’s favorite tool is Monero. Europol named privacy integrated crypto mixing services as one of the main cybercrime threats of the century as we can read in the IOCTA report. Monero is in the process of becoming a crypto coin for the Darkweb transactions while Zcash and Dash are the next popular alternatives.

In the 2020 Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment report we can read that the enforcement agency named the privacy-focused coin mixing services like Samourai and Wasabi wallets as one of the main threats. This is in addition to centralized coin mixes that are already very popular. Europol also pointed out some other features which are concerning according to the agency. Samurai offers remote wipe SMS commands when under distress and these wallets don’t remove the links between the origin and the fund destination but make crypto tracing even more challenging.

In the observation of cybercrime activities around the world, Europol commented on the use of privacy coins in Darkweb interactions. The agency commented that it was initially Bitcoin that the underground markets were using first. Over the years, the focus shifted to cryptocurrencies like Monero, Zcash, Dash, and Ethereum. While BTC still remains a popular payment method, the use of privacy-based cryptos increased but not by the rate expected by its proponents.

However, the agency observed the important development as Monero is gaining the upper hand when it comes to DarkWeb transactions which are followed in order of preference by Dash and Zcash. In the report, Europol commented that dealing with these digital currencies is quite hard. All of these coins could present a huge obstacle to law enforcement investigation despite the altcoin communities favoring their implementation over other coins.

Monero has been on the radar of other agencies as blockchain analysis Chainalysis won a $625,000 contract from the Internal Revenue Service to tack the XMR transactions. The release of the report didn’t affect XMR’s price as the coin rallied 19 percent in the previous week and it is up by 5 percent in the past 24 hours. LTC developers also launched the MimbleWimble testnet to fulfill their objective of creating a scalable blockchain.