Bitcoin (BTC) was lower in today’s trading, down 0.78% at time of writing, valuing the cryptocurrency at $6197.70.
Helping sending Bitcoin (BTC) lower was the surprising revelation made on Friday that the twelve Russian military intelligence officers indicted yesterday (Friday) used bitcoin to fund hacking attempts during the 2016 presidential election won by Donald Trump. The dozen accused are alleged to have made attempts to gain access to computers and the systems used by the Democratic Party. Included in the hacking attempts were the computer systems belonging to former Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton.
The accused facilitated the purchase the process with the use of Bitcoin, some of which mined by themselves.
As news spread, Republican congress member Emmanuel Cleaver took to Twitter and said: “I’ve been warning of the potential dangers of Bitcoin being used by nefarious actors.” He ended the tweet with “the crypto industry needs to step their game up.”
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fell on the news, with all cryptos languishing in a sea of red on Saturday. The fact that cryptos played a role in the biggest election scandal of recent times, will not have escaped the notice of the SEC. The whole crypto sphere is under intense scrutiny already by the U.S. regulator and other global governments. The indictment said: “In addition to mining bitcoin , the conspirators acquired bitcoin through a variety of means designed to obscure the origin of the funds. This included purchasing bitcoin through exchanges, moving funds through other digital currencies and using pre-paid credit cards.”
There are fears that the latest scandal could push the U.S. government further towards clamping down on on the crypto industry. At odds with many government policies is the very nature of cryptocurrencies and their ability to make untraceable transactions. However, what the indictment does show us, is that the FBI had the ability to document nearly move and transaction by the accused, which if anything, shows us that blockchain activities are still far from being untraceable.
