Curriculum·Graduate·G405
Blockchain Analytics from the Compliance Side
Suex, September 2021. The US Treasury's OFAC sanctioned Suex, a cryptocurrency exchange, the first such designation of a crypto exchange, for acting as a conduit that laundered proceeds for ransomware operators and other criminals.
Lesson 1 opens on
Suex, September 2021
Suex was a cryptocurrency exchange that in September 2021 became the first such exchange ever sanctioned by the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. Treasury's case rested on analysis of Suex's known transactions, which found that over 40 percent of its known transaction history was associated with illicit actors, including the proceeds of at least eight ransomware variants. A published blockchain analysis of the same exchange found that, in bitcoin alone, Suex's deposit addresses at large exchanges had received over 160 million dollars from ransomware actors, scammers and darknet market operators since it opened in 2018.
The lessons
- G405-01Screening an address before you touch itExplain that a public ledger lets a compliance desk assess a counterparty before transactingabout 32 min · opens on Suex, September 2021
- G405-02Tracing for a suspicious activity reportExplain how stolen Upbit funds were traced across the chain after the 2019 theftabout 33 min · opens on The Upbit hot-wallet theft, November 2019
- G405-03Typologies: what laundering looks like to a compliance deskDefine a typology as a recognizable pattern of how illicit funds are moved and cleanedabout 33 min · opens on Hydra Market, seized April 2022
- G405-04The false positive and the cost of being wrongExplain how a dusting attack manufactures an on-chain connection a recipient never choseabout 33 min · opens on The Litecoin dusting attack, August 2019