Rosfinmonitoring wants to track crypto users Russia’s financial monitoring agency wants to identify and profile crypto users

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Rosfinmonitoring, the Russian Crime and Money Laundering Funding Prevention Agency, has selected a contractor to develop a proprietary bitcoin transaction tool for 14.7 million Russian rubles ($ 200,000).

According to the government contract tracking website, a company named RCO won the auction for a bitcoin tracker. RCO is owned by Rambler, one of Russia’s leading IT companies, and specializes in computer-assisted text analysis. The company reduced the original contract price from $ 270,000 to $ 200,000.

The product should enable the agency to track the movements of digital assets, maintain a database of cryptocurrency wallets linked to criminal activity and terrorist financing, and even monitor the behavior of market participants in the cryptocurrency, indicates the auction page. The system should also help identify crypto users, profile them, and check if they are involved in criminal activity.

Rosfinmonitoring mentioned plans to create its own transaction tracking tool last August, looking for technology to remove anonymity from crypto users. At the time, the agency said it had a prototype for the Bitcoin blockchain, developed by the Moscow-based Lebedev Physical Institute. This year, however, the agency announced an auction to choose a new business.

Rosfinmonitoring first looked for a crypto-tracking tool in 2018. According to the government contracts website, this was provided and paid for. It is not known if the technology was used. Rosfinmonitoring declined to comment.

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