The Italian mafia liked BTC

According to the commissioner of the Italian anti-mafia office (DIA-Direzione Investigativa Antimafia), who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, all criminal organizations are generally interested in BTC and cryptocurrencies.

Reasons for the Italian mafia’s affection for BTC

An Italian expert said:

“All criminal organizations, including the mafia, are interested in using these tools for their own business.”

The DIA knows criminal organizations very well, because it is a government agency set up thirty years ago specifically to fight the mafia.

In an interview with the Deutschen Presse-Agentur (DPA), an expert from the DIA also states that the mafia entered the sector precisely because of technological developments as well as the speed, security and anonymity of cryptocurrency transactions, ie. all the benefits for illegal business.

However, the numbers of these uses have not been published, so it is not possible to get an idea of ​​how the criminal elements monitored by DIA actually use cryptocurrencies for their business.

The interview was also about the size of the criminal activities monitored, the commissioner revealed that, for example, “Ndrangheta (Italian mafia from Calabria) earns from 300 to 350 million euros a week on drugs.” However, he did not say how much of this money is transferred to cryptocurrencies.

But despite anonymity, the Italian police have already managed to arrest several criminals who used cryptocurrencies, in part because law enforcement has stepped up their Internet investigations in recent years.

Monero for greater anonymity

Cryptocurrencies are used to completely anonymize the processes of ordering and sending illegal products or services, allowing criminals to hide their identity or location.

However, according to Blockchain Research Lab co-founder Ingo Fiedler, only the largest and most powerful organizations are truly able to cover up their operations by removing all digital footprints, and they need real specialists whose costs are often unbearable for smaller organizations.

You must also distinguish between different cryptocurrencies because they offer different levels of anonymity.

For example, BTC transactions in a chain do not offer a high level of anonymity, while transactions in Monero do. However, it is also true that off-chain transactions at BTC offer a very high rate of anonymity. However, these are usually small amounts and still leave some marks on the blockchain (when opening and closing Lightning Network channels).

Some help for criminals could come from Monero atomic swaps, which allow you to exchange BTC for XMR and vice versa without having to rely on an intermediary. For example, exchanging a BTC for an XMR and then making a completely anonymous payment in the XMR would cause all traces to be lost, just as a recipient would exchange an XMR back to the BTC.

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