The United States Internal Revenue Service’ Cryptocurrency Tracing Bounty is worth up to $625,000 for anyone who can break purportedly untraceable privacy coins such as Monero (XMR), as well as trace transactions on Bitcoin’s (BTC) Lightning Network.
The IRS will accept submissions as working prototypes until September 16. If accepted, applicants will receive an upfront payment of $500,000 over the next 8 months. This grant will allow applicants to develop their prototype into a working concept. Once the pilot test is completed and approved by the US government, another grant of $125,000 will be awarded.
About the United States Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the largest Federal law enforcement agency of the United States Federal Government. The IRS is responsible for collecting taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of federal statutory tax law of the United States. The federal government sometimes struggles to find ways to test, purchase and implement innovative technological solutions to combat cybercrime.
Then, Blockchain analytics firm CipherTrace claims to have a new tool that can trace several hundred cryptocurrency transactions of the Top 100 cryptos such as Ethereum (ETH), Tether (USDT), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Litecoin (LTC), the firm said in a press release. Although there was previously no tool capable of tracking Monero transactions, transactions, CipherTrace also claims to have a new tool that can also trace Monero (XMR) transactions as well, although its capabilities are yet to be confirmed. This is extremely relevant, as recent findings show that cryptocurrency-related crimes in the first half of this year have already amounted to $ 1.4 billion in theft, hacking, and fraud (read the report).
Using a virtual private network (VPN) for remote connections prevents cybercriminals from gaining access to your computer system.