Crypto compliance specialist Elliptic has a mission: to prevent, detect and pursue criminal activity in cryptocurrencies. In such a rapidly developing sector and with opacity around regulation across jurisdictions, transparency and accountability are vital in tracking crypto transactions – and it is an area in which RegTech is fast spreading its wings.
The firm provides anti-money laundering (AML) compliance software and forensic and investigative services to cryptocurrency exchanges, major financial institutions, and government agencies in order to analyse transactions and detect criminal activity. This week, it launched a new solution in the form of transaction monitoring support for XRP, the currency of the Ripple payment network and the third largest cryptocurrency by market value after bitcoin and ether.
“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,” says Dr Tom Robinson, Chief Scientist and Co-founder at Elliptic.
The Elliptic platform has already identified over $400 million of illicit activity across XRP transactions – although this represents less than 0.2% of total XRP transactions, suggesting that the vast majority of activity is legitimate.
XRP is the latest asset to be added to the firm’s crypto-asset risk management suite, which uses blockchain insights and analytics to alert clients to high-risk transactions, and which already supports bitcoin, ether, litecoin, and tether.
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