General

When Ryan Wedding represented Canada as an Olympic snowboarder in 2002, few could have imagined the trajectory his life would take. Now, over two decades later, Wedding is one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives, accused of leading a violent drug trafficking network. His organization allegedly transported massive quantities of cocaine from Colombia to North America, facilitated by modern technology—notably cryptocurrency. The case serves as a stark reminder of how criminals are exploiting digital financial systems, creating new challenges for law enforcement worldwide.

In the ever-evolving world of blockchain and crypto assets, one of the latest hot topics is crypto "mixers” (or “tumblers”). Mixers have been the subject of intense debate: Are they heroes of privacy or villains enabling financial crime? Are mixers merely open-source, decentralized code, or are they tools for criminals and bad actors to launder illicit funds? The truth likely lies somewhere in between.

As a leading blockchain analytics provider enabling law enforcement and crypto businesses to tackle financial crimes, earning industry grade credentials underscores our commitment to setting the highest standards for protecting sensitive information. Adding to the existing fort of our robust security - ISO 27001, SOC 2 type II- Merkle Science is now GDPR compliant as well. The company received its GDPR compliant certification in December 2023 after an independent audit.

On April 20, 2022, in its latest rounds of sanctions against Russia, the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Russia-based crypto mining company Bitriver AG. This historic designation marks the first time that a crypto mining operation has been sanctioned by the OFAC.

Last month, the EU Parliament Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) voted in favor of a new draft of the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) framework. Further, recently the EU Parliament agreed to start negotiations with the EU member countries on rules that would allow the tracing and identification of transfers of crypto-assets