Pentagon Investigation Unit Wants To Spy On Bitcoin Transactions

A top-level Pentagon investigation unit wants to spy on Bitcoin and other crypto transactions across the world, right after we witnessed the Twitter hackers that tried to scam people in a fake bitcoin giveaway. In our latest Bitcoin news today, we take a closer look at their idea.

Bitcoin and other crypto analytics companies were able to forensically examine crypto transactions and were able to pinpoint who made the transactions and where. Now, the Pentagon investigation unit is looking for information about crypto analytics services in order to detect criminal and suspicious crypto transactions around the world. The US Army Criminal Investigation Division Command wants to obtain a license to help them track illicit cryptocurrency transactions according to a statement published a few days ago. Unlike more formal requests for proposal, the posting is a part of the research phase called a request for information:

“The contractor must provide worldwide web-based access to a reliable cryptocurrency investigation service,” the document read, giving a deadline of July 20 for companies to submit the information. The web based application must provide the capability to assist law enforcement identify and stop actors who are using cryptocurrencies for illicit activity such as fraud, extortion, and money laundering. Application must enables users to conduct in-depth investigation into the source of cryptocurrency transactions and provides multi-currency analysis from bitcoin to other top cryptocurrencies.”

The application has to help “spotting suspicious transaction patterns and interactions with other entities” and to also connect the tools to facilitate the analysis of data. The request for work comes right after the United States Army Contracting Command of New Jersey published a pre-solicitation notice that was looking for a similar application that aimed to help law enforcement agencies to track people using cryptocurrencies for illegal purposes.

Companies such as Chainalysis and Elliptic that won a contract with the IRS, carved out on the niche providing blockchain data and analysis to government agencies, financial institutions, and crypto exchanges. Coinbase for example made headlines by licensing the blockchain tracing software to the US Government which sparked a lot of controversies that claim the service causes a huge conflict of interest for the trading platform. Coinbase said in an email that it was aware of the request for work but they didn’t make a decision on whether it will bid.