Blockchain is being brought to transparency – Kommersant FM

Russia has learned to identify the owners of cryptocurrencies. At least that’s what they say in Rosfinmonitoring. The department has a tool that can track transactions of Russians with digital assets, said the head of the department, Yuri Chikhanchin. The program, called Transparent Blockchain, allows you to “see the sender and recipient of funds.”

Little is known about this service. Rosfinmonitoring announced its creation in 2021, VTB Bank helped in its development. Initially, it was supposed to recognize transactions only in Bitcoin, but now it allegedly can work with 30 cryptocurrencies. From time to time, the department boasts about the results of the “Transparent Blockchain”, reporting that with its help, for example, a contract murder was solved.

How can all this work? Wallet owners do not always reveal their identities even to payment operators, recalls Vladimir Smerkis, the former head of the Binance exchange in Russia and the CIS:

“If two anonymous wallets exchange cryptocurrency with each other, it is impossible to find out the name and surname of the recipient and sender. This can only be done when using centralized platforms, for example, exchanges or exchange offices.

Obtaining the sender’s first and last name, if we only have the address of a cryptocurrency wallet, is possible only at the request of law enforcement agencies.

This is one of the points. The second point is when a certain number of cryptocurrency addresses are flagged by scammers. The system collects data, highlights bad addresses and allows government agencies from all over the world that are connected to the system to exchange this kind of data.

But to create a wallet, at the moment there is no need to provide your first name, last name and passport information. You can simply start it by logging into the Internet. Then, of course, there is a loophole for scammers.

At the same time, wallet numbers are, in principle, available to anyone without subscription or payment. As a rule, such services are useful because they provide clustering. That is, for example, so-called mixers are used. These are services where a large number of bitcoins are poured, and they come out already mixed, that is, it is impossible to understand from which specific wallet this is done.

Such services help cluster transactions, unravel them and understand where they came from on the exchange.”

The head of Rosfinmonitoring said that the number of transactions with cryptocurrency has tripled over the year; it is actively used by “drug dealers, terrorists and corrupt officials.”

The department maintains a database of so-called gray addresses, of which there are now about 19 thousand. However, the real organizers of criminal schemes are not always hidden behind them, Mikhail Uspensky, a member of the expert council of the working group on cryptocurrencies of the State Duma, is sure:

“Many accounts are registered under dummies, so-called drops, this is a fairly common practice. There are cases when it is indeed possible to trace the path of digital currencies to some exchange, but from all other signs it becomes clear that this is not a real person.

The maximum that law enforcement can get out of this situation is to try to establish connections between the front man and the real perpetrators of the fraudulent actions. But these chains, as a rule, are always built remotely, via the darknet.

In what cases can law enforcement officers be lucky? Most often, the detection of certain persons in such crimes occurs due to a banal loss of concentration of the organizers of the schemes themselves. Somewhere there remains some minimal trace, an indication of unnecessary information, personal data.

For example, the case of programmer Ilya Lichtenstein, who was discovered after hacking a large exchange. He maintained his anonymity for a long time, but in the end he ordered some cheap gift card from a store for $100 from one of his wallets, and it was delivered to his home address. Having unraveled this transaction, he was eventually arrested by American justice.

What helps most in finding the person hiding behind an anonymous wallet is the sluggishness of the owner himself, as well as vengeful people from his circle, especially former lovers.”

According to the head of Rosfinmonitoring, employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Investigative Committee and the FSB are connected to the Transparent Blockchain system. There is also interest in the service abroad: Arab, African and Latin American states allegedly want to acquire access, and it is already working in some Central Asian countries.

Before the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, when the product was just announced, Rosfinmonitoring’s partners included Finland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Malta.

---

Everything is clear with us – Telegram channel “Kommersant FM”.

Ivan Yakunin