Law Enforcement Requests To Kraken Reach A New All-Time High

The cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has received a new record of law enforcement requests coming to the exchange and the highest volume in 2019, rising by 49% to 710 as compared with 475 from last year.

As the latest cryptocurrency news show, the data was revealed in a tweet from the exchange on January 6, where Kraken included a snapshot with analytics and stats, taken from the new 2019 Transparency Report from the exchange’s compliance team.

The snapshot reveals many different things. For instance, it shows that Kraken received a total of 710 information requests from global law enforcement agencies in 2019, making a sharp increase as compared with both the 475 in 2018 and 160 in 2017.

It's that time again. Here's a snapshot of our Compliance team's 2019 Transparency Report. Team America still ahead with 61% of total requests, down from 66% last year. Other geos gaining fast. Trend is obvious. Costs are increasing, even in a relatively flat market. pic.twitter.com/4AMe11unoL

— Kraken Exchange (@krakenfx) January 7, 2020

The law enforcement requests sent to Kraken are rising and the lion’s share of these requests (61%) were coming from the United States agencies. Down from 66% in 2018, the US-based requests are still popular and in a tweet, Kraken noted that even while the US remains ahead of other countries, “other geos are gaining fast.”

The overall uptick in law enforcement requests globally suggest that the trend is real. As Kraken said, the “trend is obvious. [Compliance] costs are increasing [for cryptocurrency exchanges], even in a relatively flat market.”

Following the US agencies from the UK and Denmark intervened to issue the most information requests from the exchange – and the top three countries each significantly outstripped agencies in other global jurisdictions as the visualization indicates.

Within the US, for example, the FBI accounted for the highest number of requests (116), followed by the law enforcement requests by the Drug Enforcement Administration (73) and the ones from Homeland Security Investigations together with Customs Enforcement (65).

The two agencies which are closely watched by members of the crypto community including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued 20 and 29 information requests in 2019, respectively.

On a global level, the Bitcoin news now show that 1,222 Kraken accounts were implicated in law enforcement data requests so far. Even 62% of these requests resulted in data being handed over to the authorities. The exchange revealed that almost a third of them (28%) were deemed invalid which means that they did not meet the exchange’s law enforcement production policy or the local legal requirements.