In a world where the crypto industry is getting crippled down by regulations every day, “Virgin Bitcoin” is starting to become more and more popular among digital currency enthusiasts.
The CEO of CipherTrace Dave Jevans defined Virgin Bitcoins as essentially BTC tokens that don’t have a transaction record linked with them. These coins do not have a defined attribution history, making them susceptible to money launderering as well as others for financing illegal activities. Moreover, Virgin BTC cannot be connected with any wallet or other cold storage entity.
The G-20 Summit
At the recently concluded G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, the core governing committee accepted the standards set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
“When these standards go into effect, interexchange transactions will require transparency regarding senders and receivers of cryptocurrency. This opens doors to a wide berth of scrutiny as regulators probe different ledgers to determine what wallets participated in illicit crypto exchanges, hacks, etc. Bitcoin remains of interest to institutional investors, but their threshold for risk is much lower. With uncertainty as to how the crypto world will conform to the FATF standards, many traditional investors feel it best to air on the side of caution.” said Flex Yang, CEO of Babel Finance, to Cointelegraph
He added that if these connections with money laundering and other illegal activities continue the token could very well be seized or held indeterminately by regulators
“It’s like trying to deposit money in a bank that is from a drug cartel or criminal enterprise; banks will refuse to process transactions,” Yang added.
Additionally, it seems as if the Chinese government is looking to get their hands on Virgin Bitcoins. This is quite noteworthy because the demand for virgin Bitcoin seems to be on the rise worldwide and it seems as though mining operations in China are still running on a large scale. Yang added his two cents on this by saying:
“The buyers are from US and other more regulated areas. China’s miners are just sellers….. Buyers may be pursuing these coins because of their novelty as well as the perceived ease-of-compliance in regulatory uncertainty. In truth, virgin Bitcoin might not benefit family funds or intuitions/individuals making the purchase. Still, there is clearly more confidence in virgin (or white) coin and it continues to fetch high premiums as a result.”
The Main Issue with BTC
The main issues revolving around BTC is a potential dark transaction history attached to it such as money-laundering exercises or terrorism-related activities. And even after multiple transactions, its payment trail can still quite easily be traced back to the owner.
“Dark Tx histories also impede the fungibility of the BTC if these tokens have a lower value. This a big concern for hedge funds that are concerned that their entire fund could be tainted by a few bad tokens. While this is less likely to affect those holding small amounts, larger traders could potentially, and unwittingly, hold larger amounts of stolen assets, lowering the value of their investment pool through association.” said The CEO of CipherTrace
Yang was also keen that the premiums associated with virgin Bitcoin currently lay around the 10% mark, whereas, established players known to markup virgin coins by over 30%. James added,
“When we investigated BestMixer in November of 2018 they charged 5% for their Gamma level which was supposedly virgin coins. CipherTrace research revealed that these tokens were not, in fact, unused rather they had been cleansed via exchange hopping. This certainly raised the visibility and value of freshly mined coins. Moreover, the falling regulatory curtain is raising the value of clean coins as it becomes harder to launder funds through regulated exchanges.”
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