Bitcoin Daily: Crypto-Related Crime Fell To $10 Billion In 2020; Singapore Exchange, Temasek Team On Digital Asset Market Infrastructure

Cryptocurrency-related crime fell in 2020, according to a blog post from Chainalysis.

In 2019, criminal activity constituted 2.1 percent of all crypto transaction volume, which came out to $21.4 billion in transfers.

But that number dropped to 0.34 percent, or $10 billion, by 2020, the report says.

One of the reasons for the shift was that overall economic activity almost tripled between those two years, the blog says. The crimes that ended up driving the change in 2020 were scams and the darknet market, the blog’s stats report. More stats show that scams netted around $2.6 billion, representing 54 percent of the total fraudulent activity that year.

LVL, an upstart bitcoin exchange, has rolled out its own Mastercard debit card which it’s taking pre-orders for, a report from CoinDesk says.

The card will be linked to bitcoin and fiat accounts, and will be one of Mastercard’s premium accounts, able to be used anywhere globally, CEO Chris Slaughter said, according to the report.

The card represents some of LVL’s goals to bring traditional banking services together with crypto for regular consumers. The firm switched from a trading fee system to a subscription service in November 2020, and Slaughter said he thinks the debit card will be a big earner for the company.

Near 30 people in Kyodo, Japan have been charged for reportedly exchanging NEM cryptocurrency for other digital currencies, in spite of knowing the assets had been stolen, a report from The Mainichi says.

The report says there were 58 billion yen in digital money stolen from Coincheck Inc. in January of 2018, and after that, an underground operation emerged, in which the yen were exchanged for other digital currencies on a dark website.

The suspects, according to the report, had been trading at said exchange.

Singapore Exchange (SGX) has entered into a joint venture with Temasek, which is set to be the first exchange-led digital asset venture in Asia focused on capital market workflows through smart contracts, ledger and tokenization tech, according to a press release.

The partnership will utilize SGX’s multi-asset experience and strengths in working with operating market infrastructure, along with Temasek’s work in blockchain and ecosystem connectivity.