u.today
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has established several projects on crypto, according to Director Bill Burns.
At The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council Summit, Burns said that cyber criminal gangs were expanding their reach in terms of the scale of attacks, their number and sophistication.
Cryptocurrencies were mired in several high-profile ransomware scandals earlier this year, with the Colonial Pipeline hack being the most notable one.
The news about the CIA being involved in crypto reignited some tired conspiracy theories about the agency's role in creating Bitcoin.
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— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) December 7, 2021
Last year, it came to light that leading Swiss encryption company Crypto AG had been secretly controlled by the CIA and West German intelligence for decades.
In April, former CIA boss Michael Morell said that governments had to embrace Bitcoin since he considered it to be "a boon for surveillance” due to the fact that its transactions can be easily traced:
Put simply, blockchain analysis is a highly effective crime fighting and intelligence gathering tool.
Morell claimed that this would encourage illicit actors to move away from Bitcoin.