The whack-a-mole of stablecoins in crime
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” – George Orwell ||
Hello everyone!!!!! We are still recovering over here as the heroes arrived back home yesterday and, after visiting the Royal Family at their residence and then the Prime Minister at his, they made their way on an open-top bus to one of our main roundabouts for a giant party. According to this morning’s press, around 2 million people were out on the streets of Madrid last night to celebrate. The vibe was just amazing.
So, today I have a fuzzy brain which is one of the reasons today’s email is shorter than usual – the other is I have a schedule squeeze.
Production note: 🌞This newsletter will be taking a much-needed short break Thursday-Saturday. 🌞
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Onchain Treasury funds grew 8x in two years, and currently have around $13.8 billion in AUM.
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IN THIS NEWSLETTER
The whack-a-mole of stablecoins in crime
Term of the day: FATF
Markets: BTC still quiet
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WHAT I’M WATCHING:
The whack-a-mole of stablecoins in crime
Over the past few days, there have been a couple of interesting revelations in the murky field of stablecoin use in sanctions evasion and money laundering.
Last week, OFAC added four more crypto addresses to those known to be linked to the sanctioned Central Bank of Iran (CBI). Balances totalling $131 million were immediately frozen by Tether, bringing the total of CBI stablecoin funds frozen since the start of the Iran War to $475 million – not small change.
This raises an intriguing question: where did those stablecoin sums come from? According to a report from Chainalysis, $165 million had been transferred into the four addresses, mainly from an institutional liquidity provider and an Asia-based payment processor. Hmmm.
Chainalysis didn’t give names, but a FATF update published a couple of days later offered a clue.
