You’d have to be living under a virtual rock to not have noticed that virtual currencies like Bitcoin have taken off, attracting investors, speculators, and, of course, criminals, all looking to profit from the enthusiasm surrounding these cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has been the gold standard in online currency exchange for bad guys, but its surging popularity has led to recent slowdowns in transaction processing speed and increased transaction fees. This has prompted criminals to start looking elsewhere, to other virtual currencies like Dash, Monero, and Litecoin.
Andrei Barysevich is Recorded Future’s director of advanced collection, and he’s the co-author of a recent blog post titled, “Litecoin Emerges as the Next Dominant Dark Web Currency.” He’ll take us through the research from Recorded Future’s Insikt Group explaining what factors cause groups of online fraudsters to switch from one cryptocurrency to another.