Chinese police have published a detailed technical report on tracking, seizing, and freezing cryptocurrency – revealing a sophisticated arsenal of forensic tools.
Bitcoin, Ethereum and the like may be household names, but they are illegal in China.
A 2021 government notice banned their use as currency, and new rules from earlier this year went even further, cracking down on stablecoins and the tokenisation of real-world assets.
Yet despite the ban, criminals still favour virtual coins for scams, gambling and money laundering because crypto transfers hide identities and do not require approval by central authorities.
A rare technical paper published on June 4 in the journal Forensic Science and Technology offers an unprecedented glimpse into how Chinese law enforcement agencies pursue illicit virtual assets.
The authors – Sun Shengbin of the Wenzhou Public Security Bureau, Lou Yandi of the Zhejiang Provincial Public Security Department’s Criminal Investigation Corps, and their colleagues – outline the process of evidence collection, transaction tracing and asset seizure.
 Â
​Read More