Nishant KThe rise of cybercrimes in the cryptocurrency market
The cryptocurrency market has always had to face problems due to the increasing instances of Cybercrimes. The investor’s wallets are hacked into and then the wallets are emptied off of the cryptocurrencies, looting millions of dollars of the investors. One peculiar type of crime that has been happening in the market is Cybercrime using Cross-Chain-Bridges
Cross-Chain-Bridges are essentially the platforms that help the crypto investors to move their cryptocurrencies between various blockchains available in the market. This service is not secure and hence hackers are on the look to free the transactions in the middle and rob the investors off.
Recently, Nomad reported an exploitation which had drained around $190 Million from the wallets, creating a huge problem for the company. The company went on to take steps and actions and was able to recover around $35 million.
According to recent reports, another Cross-Chain-Bridge RenBridge was used by the criminals to lauder money and cheat the investors. Let’s look into the details of the case.
RenBridge used to launder around $540 Million
Credits: Infinity Financial Solutions
According to the reports, it is noted that RenBridge was used to launder around $540 million from the wallets. The reports also added that, around $150 Million was used in ransomware payments, meaning hackers breach into corporate networks, they use RenBridge to demand payment from the companies in order to recover their data.
Elliptic’s reports on RenBridge
According to Elliptic, RenBridge served as “A major facilitator” for ransomware gangs with ties to Russia. RenBridge is a popular choice for people who want to clean stolen money. In the past two years, RenBridge has been used to launder more than $267 million in cryptocurrency assets seized from exchanges and DeFi providers, including $33.8 million from the Japanese crypto exchange Liquid, according to Elliptic.
The views of experts on Cross-Chain-Bridge!
Many experts believe that Cross-Chain-Bridges are a boon as well as a bane for the cryptocurrency industry. The positive side of the coin is that they give the investors a vast number of options to chose from for payments and trading in cryptocurrency. The flipside or the negative side of the coin is that it can go ungoverned making it easy for the hackers to steal the money.
Writer’s Insights:
The next step for the regulatory authorities should be to sit and narrow down on the negatives of Cross-Chain-Bridge to help the platforms be secure and grown in the market.
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