Crypto Forensics Firm: $400M Of XRP Tokens Were Used For Illicit Activities

One analytical and crypto forensics firm named Elliptic has recently tied around $400 million worth of XRP tokens to illegal transactions, the latest Ripple news show.

As a press release published on November 20 unveils, the firm indicated that the “$400m of illicit activity identified by Elliptic represents less than 0.2% of total XRP transactions, demonstrating that the vast majority of activity is legitimate.”

The crypto forensics company started analyzing the XRP token over a year ago and has so far identified that hundreds of XRP accounts are related to illegal trading activity. This includes anything from thefts to the sale of stolen credit cards, as the release adds.

When commenting on the findings, Tom Robinson who is the chief scientist and co-founder of Elliptic said:

“As criminal use of crypto-assets such as XRP evolves, we are committed to shining a light on this illicit activity, giving financial institutions the confidence they need to engage with the crypto ecosystem. XRP is gaining increasing traction in the APAC region among financial institutions and banks.”

The crypto forensics firm also said that the findings were revealed as part of the introduction of the beta version of the transaction monitoring support for XRP. This apparently enables clients to check if a transaction is linked to criminal activities or any sanctioned entities. The analysis shows that Elliptic conducts ongoing dark web research, identification of money laundering patterns as well as data which links XRP accounts to known entities.

Recently, the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis was in the cryptocurrency news when it launched alerts for suspicious transactions across 15 major cryptocurrencies. As the firm noted, this tool is meant to help crypto exchanges and other financial institutions to mitigate their regulatory as well as reputation risks.

Even though the cryptocurrency companies try to incentivize the network integrity by setting up bounty programs with rewards, the crypto forensics firm model is trying to unveil everything about the (illegal) use of cryptocurrencies nowadays. As industry members such as John McAfee think, authorities need to require cryptocurrency companies and trading platforms to help them control the digital currency use – especially in illicit activities.

Meanwhile, the price of XRP today is relatively stable in the $0.2530 region.