Multiple XRP Accounts Linked To ‘’Dirty’’ $400 Million

Multiple XRP accounts got linked to about $400 million worth of dirty money which were related to illicit activities according to Elliptic, a London-based blockchain startup as we are reading further in the Ripple XRP news below.

As per Tom Robinson, Chief Scientist co-founder of Elliptic:

“We began researching XRP more than a year ago and have already identified several hundred XRP accounts linked to illicit activity ranging from thefts to scams and the sale of stolen credit cards.’’

The $400 million worth of XRP linked to the multiple XRP accounts for illegal activity is less than 0.2% of the total transactions on the network. The coin is now in third place by market capitalization which now stands at USD 10.9 billion. The illicit amount found would make up to 3.7% of its market capitalization. Elliptic launched the beta version today of its transaction monitoring support for XRP with full support expected at the start of December. The goal is to enable the financial institutions and businesses to screen all of the XRP transactions and detect if any are related to criminal activity or any sanctioned entity.

The criminal use of crypto assets is increasing and as per Robinson, by exposing it, the financial institutions will gain ‘’the confidence they need to engage with the crypto ecosystem.’’ Ripple’s XRP is getting a lot of popular financial institutions and some of the banks in the Asian Pacific region and this type of approach could also push the global adoption further. At the time of writing, XRP is trading at $0.25 and it is up 0.4% in a day but 7.4% in a week.

At the start of September, the startup published a report where you can read that the overall impact of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies regarding money laundering and other crimes is sparse in comparison to the cash transactions. When it comes to the most popular cryptocurrency-Bitcoin, Elliptic explained that up to 829 million worth of BTC was spent on the dark web which represents 0.5% of the transactions on the network. Elliptic found that:

The money service business could be unclear about the role in preventing crime on the blockchain which may end up now knowing how to implement vital anti-money-laundering processes. Money laundering can also be prevented with some other tools that match the customer data with Bitcoin transaction histories.