Connect with us
DAPA Banner

Crypto World

Crypto-linked human trafficking payments surged 85% in 2025, Chainalysis report finds

Published

on

Bitcoin risk-reward has shifted after recent selloff

Cryptocurrency use for transactions involving human trafficking surged 85% in 2025.

Summary

  • Cryptocurrency use in human trafficking transactions surged in 2025 through cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, XMR and stablecoins.
  • Telegram-based escort networks and CSAM vendors accounted for a large share of tracked crypto flows.
  • Payments were primarily routed through stablecoins, laundering networks, and escrow platforms based in Southeast Asia.

According to a Feb. 13 Chainalysis report, which tracked cryptocurrency-facilitated human trafficking payments tied to escort services, labor recruiters connected to Southeast Asian scam compounds, and child sexual abuse material, among other categories, the networks comprised cryptocurrency transactions valued at “hundreds of millions of dollars across identified services.”

Chainalysis said that the various payment methods involved ranged from Bitcoin and alternative Layer 1 tokens to stablecoins. Meanwhile, platforms involved with facilitating these transactions included Chinese-language money laundering networks and various Telegram-based services that operated guarantee and escrow mechanisms to coordinate and confirm payments.

Advertisement

Large transactions were primarily centered around Telegram-based international escort networks, with 48.8% of each transaction exceeding $10,000. These platforms were mostly reliant on stablecoin payments, per the report.

Transactions in connection with CSAM were smaller in size, with an average value under $100. However, one platform tracked by Chainalysis had reportedly used over 5,800 cryptocurrency addresses and accumulated over $530,000 since July 2022. These platforms, which previously operated primarily using Bitcoin (BTC), were found to be using privacy-focused Monero (XMR) to launder the proceeds.

“Instant exchangers, which provide rapid and anonymous cryptocurrency swapping without KYC requirements, play a crucial role in this process,” Chainalysis said.

Advertisement

Meanwhile, Scam compounds use a combination of Telegram-based recruitment channels, guarantee platforms like Tudou and Xinbi, and stablecoin payment rails to coordinate and process payments.

As previously reported by crypto.news, these organizations lure in victims through fake job offers before forcing them to operate various crypto-linked scams under inhumane conditions.

Chainalysis was able to trace the flow of funds from several different countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Spain, and Australia, to Chinese-language services that processed large-scale stablecoin transactions and facilitated laundering through Southeast Asian trafficking networks.

“While traditional trafficking routes and patterns persist, these Southeast Asian services exemplify how cryptocurrency technology enables trafficking operations to facilitate payments and obscure money flows across borders more efficiently than ever before,” Chanalysis said.

Advertisement

Cryptocurrency technology has long been criticized for supporting criminal activity by helping bad actors circumvent traditional financial controls and oversight. Recently, there has been renewed scrutiny over its role in ransom demands and alleged links to early crypto investments associated with Jeffrey Epstein.

However, Chainalysis notes that the underlying blockchain technology can be leveraged to detect and disrupt trafficking operations, as it offers visibility that is not possible with cash transactions. 

It urged compliance teams and law enforcement to adopt proactive monitoring strategies and track key risk indicators.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Crypto World

Will Hedera price crash as stablecoin supply and app revenue decline?

Published

on

Hedera price has formed a descending parallel channel pattern on the daily chart.

Hedera price has been in a downtrend over the past month as the token continues to be bruised by the geopolitical concerns that have pushed investors away from risk assets.

Summary

  • Hedera price dropped to a six-week low of $0.083, down over 12% in a month amid weak market sentiment and geopolitical tensions.
  • On-chain activity declined, with DeFi app revenue falling nearly 70% and stablecoin supply dropping 6%, signaling reduced network usage and liquidity.
  • Technical indicators remain bearish, with price trading in a descending channel and key support seen at $0.087.

According to data from crypto.news, Hedera (HBAR) price fell to a six-week low of $0.083 on Tuesday, down over 12% in the past month and over 20% from its year-to-date high.

Hedera price fell amid weakness in its underlying ecosystem activity as key performance indicators started to flash red. Data from DeFiLlama shows that revenue generated by DeFi apps on the network had slumped nearly 70% from the previous month’s high.

Advertisement

A drop in app revenue means that a lower number of users are interacting with the Hedera ecosystem, signaling weakening demand for its decentralized applications and reduced overall network usage.

Third-party data also show that the total supply of stablecoins on the network has fallen 6% over the past 7 days to $52.71 million. Declining stablecoin supply typically reflects reduced liquidity and capital inflows on the network, further reinforcing signs of slowing activity.

Hedera price has also remained in a downtrend due to reduced investor appetite for risk assets amid the ongoing U.S.-Iran war that has led to a flight to more traditional safe-haven assets such as gold and U.S. equities.

Advertisement

On the daily chart, Hedera price has been trading within a descending parallel channel pattern, a formation where the asset consistently makes lower highs and lower lows. As long as an asset trades within such a pattern, it will likely continue to face persistent selling pressure as it bounces between the upper and lower boundaries.

Hedera price has formed a descending parallel channel pattern on the daily chart.
Hedera price has formed a descending parallel channel pattern on the daily chart — April 1 | Source: crypto.news

Technical indicators also appear to portray a bearish outlook for Hedera price in the upcoming sessions. Notably, the Bollinger Bands have begun to narrow, with the price trading below the middle band, suggesting contracting volatility while the short-term trend remains tilted to the downside.

The Aroon Down is at 92.86% while the Aroon Up remains at 0%, indicating strong downward momentum and that a recent low has likely been established within the current trend.

For now, the immediate support level for Hedera price lies at $0.087, which aligns with the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement level. A drop below this level could increase selling pressure and open the door for a move toward lower support zones.

Advertisement

Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Crypto World

Inside Coinbase’s push to bring prediction markets on chain and on venue

Published

on

Epstein files show crypto ties to Coinbase, Blockstream: DOJ

Coinbase is folding regulated prediction markets into its “everything exchange” vision, using The Clearing Company to clear on‑chain event contracts beside crypto and stocks.

Coinbase’s push to become an “everything exchange” will increasingly run through regulated prediction markets rather than just spot crypto, according to Côme Prost‑Boucle, the exchange’s head of international listings, speaking with crypto.news at ETHGlobal Cannes on March 31.

For Prost‑Boucle, prediction markets are not a novelty bolt‑on. They sit at the core of Coinbase’s plan to become what he calls an “everything exchange.” “The whole strategy is pretty simple,” he told crypto.news.

Advertisement

“We want to build the everything exchange with Coinbase, meaning that we want to bring under one regulated umbrella all of the asset classes that you can imagine and offer this to both our retail customers and our institutional customers.”

Coinbase leading the way to become an ‘Everything Exchange’

That umbrella now stretches beyond spot crypto into derivatives, options, tokenized stocks and equities, token sales and, crucially, event‑based contracts that let users trade on future outcomes. “We have this whole breadth of different products that we’re bringing into one umbrella, which is Coinbase,” he said. “Our goal is to push this to as many users as possible across the world, and the reaction has been pretty tremendous so far.”

Coinbase’s debut in prediction markets was deliberately conservative. The initial launch in the U.S. leaned on Kalshi, the CFTC‑regulated event‑contract venue, giving the product an immediate regulatory backbone but also clear constraints on geography and design.

“The first iteration of the product is available in the US and in a couple of regions, but for instance, it’s not available in Europe because of lack of regulatory clarity,” Prost‑Boucle said. That version effectively pipes Kalshi’s markets into the Coinbase interface, letting users trade small‑ticket contracts on elections, sports, macro data and other real‑world events while staying inside a U.S. event‑contract framework.

Advertisement

The second phase is more aggressive. In December, Coinbase agreed to acquire The Clearing Company, a specialist prediction‑market clearing startup with roots in the existing event‑contract ecosystem.

Prost‑Boucle referred to it in the interview as “a company called The Clearing House,” but the strategic intent is clear. “The goal is for us to bring these capacities internally so that we can develop this product on chain and we can develop with the DNA that we have to bring all asset classes on chain,” he said. In effect, Coinbase is moving from renting regulated rails to owning the clearing and risk stack, and then pushing more of the lifecycle on‑chain while staying within the event‑contract perimeter. That stands in contrast to crypto‑native venues such as Polymarket, which prioritizes unconstrained on‑chain liquidity first and only later began to grapple with regulatory structure.

Prediction markets dominate conversation at ETHGlobal

If prediction markets are to sit alongside crypto, derivatives and tokenized stocks in a single app, collateral efficiency will determine whether users actually route meaningful size through Coinbase. Here, Prost‑Boucle says institutional desks are already applying pressure. “That’s also something that institutional clients have been pushing for,” he noted when asked about cross‑margining prediction markets with other Coinbase products. “We’re currently doing cross‑margining for our perpetual futures product, and that’s something that our institutional clients have been craving,” he added, pointing to demand for “always‑on exposure possibilities, weekend hedging, all of this that perpetual futures have as internal features.” The logical goal is to have a single collateral pool backing BTC perpetuals, tokenized equity and a portfolio of geopolitical or macro event contracts, rather than trapping capital in isolated silos across venues. “At the moment we’re working on this product,” he said of cross‑margining, “but I think that’s a good vision for us in the longer term—to have cross‑margining across the different asset classes, I guess.”

Advertisement

The main structural obstacle to that vision is Europe. “Prediction markets in the EU are pretty difficult to apprehend because there’s no unified regulatory framework,” Prost‑Boucle said. “It all depends on what you have as an underlying asset.” He draws a sharp line that mirrors emerging legal commentary: a contract on the future price of Bitcoin is treated as a financial derivative under MiFID, while a contract on an election or football match is pushed into gambling. “If the contract lies on a financial underlying asset, that would be regulated by MiFID,” he explained. “But all of the other classes, where currently all of the volumes are—on politics, on sports, this would be regulated under gambling laws in Europe.”

That split leaves most of today’s on‑chain volume—heavily skewed toward politics and sports—in regulatory limbo from the perspective of a regulated exchange. Any operator that wants to offer political or sports markets across the bloc has to navigate a patchwork of national gambling regimes, each with its own licensing, consumer rules and, in some cases, state monopolies. “It means you would have to go for every single European gambling law, because there is no unified regulatory framework,” Prost‑Boucle said. “These laws are pretty national, they’re quite country‑specific and they’re quite hard to get.” Despite that, he is not writing off the region. “I guess we’re still hopeful that at some point we’re going to have regulatory clarity on prediction markets and a better structure in Europe that enables this type of contract to flourish as well,” he said.

Beyond trading revenues, Coinbase clearly sees prediction markets as an information layer that competes with polling, research, and even traditional media. Prost‑Boucle points to cases in the U.S. where broadcasters are already embedding live market odds, such as CNBC, CNN, the Dow Jones and other media recently integrating Polymarket odds into the ‘traditional’ newscycle.

That, in turn, brings the problem of truth into focus. Once markets start pricing geopolitics, conflicts, and leadership changes, disputes over what actually happened can become payout disputes. That means oracles used to resolve contracts may be facing increasing scrutiny from not only bettors, but also regulators.

Advertisement

Prost‑Boucle argues that most of the damage begins with poor contract design. “It’s crucial when you enter a contract to look at what the event criteria are,” he said. “Obviously you want to diversify sources of truth and have kind of fixed criteria to make sure there is no ambiguity when an event like this happens,” he added. Asked whether AI agents could help by aggregating across outlets and delivering a consolidated verdict, he is open but cautious. “Potentially, AI could be helping with sorting out across different sources‑of‑truth venues and making sure that we have a consolidated view and a fixed view that is not biased by any specific media or even a group of people,” he said.

For now, Coinbase’s approach is less about chasing the wildest version of prediction markets and more about proving they can live inside the same rule‑set as everything else on the platform: keep them in a regulated perimeter, pull clearing and risk in‑house via The Clearing Company, and wire the whole thing into a broader multi‑asset venue where collateral actually earns its keep across products. As Brian Armstrong has put it in other contexts, Coinbase wants to be “the most trusted bridge” into the crypto economy, and in that frame, everything else—from MiFID hair‑splitting in Brussels to the next generation of AI‑driven oracles—is just another set of constraints to engineer around, not a reason to sit out a market.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Crypto World

CoinShares Stock Debuts on Nasdaq After $1.2B SPAC Deal

Published

on

CoinShares Stock Debuts on Nasdaq After $1.2B SPAC Deal

CoinShares, a European-based digital asset manager, is slated to make its US public markets debut today following the completion of a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger, highlighting the crypto industry’s deepening ties with public markets.

The company announced Wednesday that it had finalized a previously announced business combination with Vine Hill Capital Investment Corp., resulting in the formation of a new holding entity, CoinShares PLC. The combined company begins trading on the Nasdaq on Wednesday under the ticker symbol CSHR.

The transaction, first unveiled in September, values CoinShares at approximately $1.2 billion and includes a $50 million capital commitment from institutional investors.

Although the Nasdaq debut marks CoinShares’ entry into US public markets, the company was already publicly traded in Europe prior to the listing.

Advertisement

A US listing aims to attract institutional capital, wider analyst coverage and increased visibility, while positioning CoinShares to expand its footprint in the world’s largest financial market. The move also comes as the regulatory backdrop for digital assets in the United States continues to evolve.

CoinShares manages more than $6 billion in assets and is one of Europe’s largest crypto-focused investment firms. It is best known for its crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs), which are listed on European exchanges.

Source: Eric Balchunas

A tougher backdrop for crypto stocks

The backdrop for digital asset companies has shifted dramatically since September, when CoinShares’ SPAC deal was first announced. 

The exchange-traded fund issuer’s CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF (WGMI) is down more than 22% in the last six months, Yahoo Finance data shows.

The crypto market has since lost more than half its value, following a broad correction in digital asset prices, declining trading volumes and the fallout from the Oct. 10 crypto liquidation event that triggered widespread deleveraging, alongside a more volatile environment for capital raising and investors.

Advertisement

Crypto-linked equities have been among the hardest hit. Companies such as Coinbase, Gemini and Figure Technologies are down sharply this year, while Circle has bucked the trend amid continued growth in stablecoins.

Source: Brian Sozzi

However, analysts at Bernstein don’t expect the downturn to persist. In a recent note, they said crypto-related stocks could be nearing a bottom heading into first-quarter earnings, which are widely expected to reflect weak performance.

Related: Circle plunged on CLARITY Act fears, but fundamentals unchanged — Bernstein