invezz.com
The debate of many financial experts regarding the benefits and disadvantages of cryptocurrencies in the economy has continued. This time, a popular financial expert, Lee Reiners, has made a case for why crypto needs to be banned.
He stated that the popularity of cryptocurrencies and the rise of ransomware is no coincidence. According to him, cryptocurrency is the reason why cybercrime and ransomware have increased in recent times.
Reiners is also executive director of Duke University’s Global Financial Markets Center. While speaking to CNBC, he said “the existence of Bitcoin and the rest benefits nobody except criminals and speculators.”
He added that the best way to curb the menace of these threat actors is to stop cryptocurrency entirely.
Increasing numbers of ransom payments to hackers
Reiners was asked about the percentage of ransom payments to hackers using cryptocurrencies. He said the number has increased over the years. He stated that the amount of ransom paid so far could be in billions, including both the reported cases and the non-reported ones. Reiners added that it is high time law enforcement looked into the situation because cryptocurrencies do not serve any important benefits to the economy. Instead, it has led to a lot of criminality, with the perpetrators becoming bold because they can evade being caught when they receive payments through cryptocurrency.
Banning ransomware payments
Reiners also talked about the suggestions from experts to completely ban companies from paying the ransom as a solution to the increasing number of threats. He stated that putting out the law is not the problem but getting people to comply. The nature of crypto payments can make it difficult to know who has paid a ransom and who hasn’t. He noted that the law will not be effective even if 10% of the companies still pay the ransom. According to him, it will defeat the entire purpose and encourage more threat actors.
Reiners concluded that the best solution is to ban the means the criminals use in collecting their ransom, which is cryptocurrency.