The Australia’s financial intelligence agency intensifies efforts to tighten the surveillance of crypto exchanges, warning that inactive platforms risk disintegration if they do not voluntarily manage.
In a press release of April 30, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (Austrac) said that many recorded digital exchange providers seem to have ceased operations but remain listed, potentially exposing the system to criminal exploitation.
Austrac is starting to contact Crypto exchanges
Austrac said it started to contact exchanges that no longer seem active, of the 427 companies currently registered.
“Companies registered with Austrac are required to keep their details up to date; this includes details on services that are no longer provided,” said the agency.
“Our intelligence shows that cryptocurrency can be exploited by criminals for money laundering, scams and mule activities, and we see too many people victims of scams involving digital currency.”
Austrac said that all trade-offs exchanges and suppliers of cryptographic automatic counters must be officially registered before offering Fiat-Crypto conversion services, noting that inactive companies are a vulnerability that could be targeted and poorly used.
Nicole Thomas, national director of regulatory operations of Austrac, described the cryptography sector as a “high risk”, adding that the registration lends a certain degree of legitimacy that bad players can exploit in the event of surveillance.
The agency warned that it could cancel the registrations if there are reasonable reasons to believe that a company is no longer operational.
In addition, Austrac said that he will soon launch a publicly consultable register, allowing consumers to check whether an crypto exchange is officially registered and under a regulatory examination.
The ASIC stops 130 scam website every week
Earlier this month, the Australian Commission on Securities and Investments (ASIC) announced that it had closed 95 companies that would operate under false pretexts.
The ASIC noted that it had increased the application, which reveals an average of 130 scam websites per week.
To date, he has disabled more than 10,000 malicious websites, including more than 7,200 false investment platforms and 1,500 phishing scams.
In a related repression, the ASIC has also recently targeted the cryptographic ATM operators who have failed to comply with anti-flowage regulations, following a peak of suspicious activity linked to machines.
Last month, Australian Federal Police (AFP), the National Anti-Scam Center (NASC) and Binance Australia issued warnings to the victims of the sophisticated fraud program, which exploited false messages to deceive users in the transfer of their cryptographic participations.
At the time, AFP revealed that more than 130 potential victims had been informed as part of a proactive repression against the scam.
The fraudsters would have used encrypted email sms and messaging platforms to pretend to be Binance representatives, wrongly affirming that the victims’ accounts had been compromised.
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