Zcash Criminal Research Paper Explores ZEC’s Usage For Illicit Activities

Latest Zcash Criminal research paper aimed to explore the extent to which the privacy coin is used for criminal purposes and in today’s ZEC latest news, we read more about the paper.

The analysis was funded by the Electric Coin Company, the company behind Zcash while RAND Corporation conducted the research and conducted that ZEC was not regularly used for illegal activities. The critical findings offered by the corporation are vague and illogical in light of the Zcash status of an untraceable privacy coin. The first finding read:

 “Zcash is relatively unknown in the academic research community, and the links between Zcash and illicit or criminal activities have not been substantially researched.”

The discovery here is that there’s no academic research out there which details the use of the coin for illegal purposes because there’s no such literature out there. The researchers found some articles on the technical aspects of Zcash and its privacy features only. The authors admitted:

 “Crucially, the absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence, meaning that the fact that there is little proof that Zcash is used for illicit or criminal purposes does not mean it is not happening; rather, this activity is simply not being detected.”

The second finding was that there’s no evidence of widespread illicit use of Zcash. There some indications that Zcash is being used illegally but there’s no such evidence. The third finding was that Zcash only has a minor presence on the dark web. The dark web merchants use ZEC on a smaller scale and it is used less often than other coins. The Zcash research paper also found that the transparent ZEC wallets made up just 0.09% of the total while the shielded Zcash wallets made up to 0.02% of the total. Bitcoin, on the other hand, accounts for more than 90%.

The fourth key finding is that the users engaged in criminal activities don’t fully understand the ZEC operating model. The users don’t fully understand the privacy features or they aren’t aware of them.  The report even suggests that criminals avoid ZEC because they don’t believe in the effectiveness of the privacy features of the coin.