Bitcoin, since its inception has managed to gather a lot of dirt due to its usage for criminal activities. Bitcoin is notoriously known for its connections with the illegal drug market, hacking incidents, ransomware attacks, deep web sites and other scams. Being known as the most preferred currency of the criminals, bitcoin is also being widely used for money laundering and there are claims that it plays an important role in terror financing.
As the number of crimes involving bitcoin continues to rise, it is time for the law enforcement agencies to be aware of various challenges posed by the virtual currency. In order to combat the new age crime, even law enforcement agencies should keep up with the changing tech trends. The United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has decided to pitch in along with Internal Revenue Service(IRS) to create training programs on bitcoin and digital currency for tax examiners.
According to the latest report published on Coindesk — a cryptocurrency news site, the announcement about a joint bitcoin training program was made by the director of FinCEN, Jennifer Shasky Calvery. Jennifer was speaking at the ABA Money Laundering Enforcement Conference in Washington.
It is now essential for the tax examiners in the United States to learn about bitcoin and blockchain as bitcoin qualifies as property among many other things. Even though the conference was closely related to finance and economy, there were very few mentions of bitcoin during the three-day event.
While the new training program on bitcoin is confined to only one agency, the chances of introducing similar programs in other agencies is quite high. Interpol already has such program in place along with its own version of digital currency which is used for training purposes.