Why some hackers are ditching bitcoin for a cryptocurrency called monero

When the FBI successfully breached a crypto wallet held by the Colonial Pipeline hackers by following the money trail on bitcoin’s blockchain, it was a wake-up call for any cyber criminals who thought transacting in cryptocurrency automatically protected them from scrutiny.

One of the core tenets of bitcoin is that its public ledger, which stores all token transactions in its history, is visible to everyone. This is why more hackers are turning to coins like dash, zcash, and monero, which have additional anonymity built into them.

Monero, in particular, is increasingly the cryptocurrency of choice for the world’s top ransomware criminals.

“The more savvy criminals are using monero,” said Rick Holland, chief information security officer at Digital Shadows, a cyberthreat intelligence company.

Created in 2014

Monero was released in 2014 by a consortium of developers, many of whom chose to remain anonymous. As spelled out in its white paper, “privacy and anonymity” are the most important aspects of this digital currency.

The privacy token operates on its own blockchain, which hides virtually all transaction details. The identity of the sender and recipient, as well as the transaction amount itself, are disguised.

Because of these anonymity features, monero allows cyber criminals greater freedom from some of the tracking tools and mechanisms that the bitcoin blockchain offers.

“On the bitcoin blockchain, you can see what wallet address transacted, how many bitcoin, where it came from, where it’s going,” explained Fred Thiel, former chairman of Ultimaco, one of the largest cryptography companies in Europe, which has worked with Microsoft, Google and others on post-quantum encryption.

“With monero, [the blockchain] obfuscates the wallet address, the amount of the transactions, who the counter-party was, which is pretty much exactly what the bad actors want,” he said.

While bitcoin still dominates ransomware demands, more threat actors are starting to ask for monero, according to Marc Grens, president of DigitalMint, a company that helps corporate victims pay ransoms.

“We’ve seen REvil...give discounts or request payments in monero, just in the past couple months,” continued Holland.

Monero was also a popular choice on AlphaBay, a massive underground marketplace popular up until it was shut down in 2017.

“It’s almost like we’re seeing, at least from a cyber criminal perspective, a resurgence...in monero, because it has inherently more privacy than some of the other coins out there,” Holland said of monero’s recent rise in popularity among actors in the ransomware space.

Monero’s limitations

There are, however, a few major barriers when it comes to the mainstreaming of monero.

For one, it’s not as liquid as other cryptocurrencies – many regulated exchanges have chosen not to list it due to regulatory concerns, explained Mati Greenspan, portfolio manager and Quantum Economics founder. “It certainly isn’t enjoying as much from the recent wave of institutional investments,” he said.

In practice, that means that it’s harder for cyber criminals to get paid directly in the currency.

“If you’re a corporation and you want to acquire a bunch of monero to pay somebody, it’s very hard to do,” Thiel told CNBC.

The digital currency could also be more vulnerable to regulation at its on-and-off-ramps, which is the bridge between fiat cash and crypto tokens.

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[HighlightWarehouse]

Scared to buy Monero because people use it on the dark web? Cool, now you know you wouldn’t have bought Bitcoin back in 2013.

[Baasta]

Monero is number one coin cuz it’s amazing and I am not hacker. Damn I am buying more Monero now 😭

[jayst]

Finally Monero gets the attention it deserves

[catschoose]

long XMR lol. True fungibility. Atomic swaps will solve the liquidity problems.

[Dyckle]

In a world where crypto is a requirement, Monero is king.

[billhickswasgreat]

"even less traceable" as though Bitcoin is at all untraceable :D
It is a public ledger. Bitcoin being anonymous was a media failure from the get go.

[beansprovideentertainment]

Monero is what bitcoin noobs think they buy when they buy bitcoin.

Proper private, fungible, digital money.

[omniversosindios]

Buying Monero now is like buy bitcoin in 2012-2013

[mattCwu]

Monero has plenty of liquidity. You could sell $10 million today on mainstream exchanges with no KYC and walk away with $9.5 million in BTC/USDT/DAI or any other of the major coins you wanted. That would take 1 day to complete, it's like a tiny bit harder than selling $10 million in Bitcoin.

[barcodeguy]

A crypto project focused on keeping user privacy alive

Mainstream media: "We can make them sound like the evil guys!"

[Elijah_Lopez]

Finally people are realizing monero is the best currency

[incognitocas]

This is literally a commercial for monero lol.

[coulombicdistortion]

Lmfao how late are you??? Monero was launched in 2014. Much wow. Truly Breaking News senpai.

[MarkSmithhhh]

Lol did they just realize monero exists? Good lord

[WhisperingEye]

"I follow crypro but I've never heard of Monero". This sums up every take CNBC has on crypto.

[PotterNEB]

Great reporting CNBC!! without your reporting, hackers might have never known about this novel and breaking news...

[lauriereid]

Nice video!! Very engaging from beginning to end, nevertheless online investment is the best profitable way to earn money right now.

[danielharshman]

They really hate it when you buy this stuff

[kaostical]

This is nearly the same BS they were talking about Bitcoin many years ago. Thanks for the heads up, time for me to acquire some Monero.

[agoogleuser]

The day CNBC finally realizes Monero exists after almost 8 years of it being used 😂🚀 let's go Bitcoin ! 🚀 We are still early to invest 🤣