Chainalysis, an up-comping crytp investigation company, had recently raised $100 million venture capital at a $1 billion. It was led by the venture capital firm Addition, along with Accel, Benchmark, and Ribbit.
Jonathan Levin, CSO of Chainalysis, highlighted the growing role of cryptanalysis companies and how governments and regulators around the world are looking at the industry. Levin noted that for governments around the world, addressing cybercrime has become a top priority, adding that there is a growing interest in the role of cryptography. He added
“I think that cyber crime as an issue is one of the highest priorities when it comes to the national government’s priorities and they are really cracking down on financially motivated cyber crime… I guess they would be agencies that consider cyber security, election security, as those kinds of issues, really focus on how cryptomongering fits into that.
While cryptanalysis companies have been able to provide radically innovative solutions for tracking coins in various block chains, there is also growing concern about whether such monitoring can lead to the creation of a surveillance state with the help of such companies. While Bitcoin remains popular on the dark web, Levin argued that there’s a difference between anonymity and financial privacy in the case of Bitcoin, and that the king’s currency allows for the latter, not the former.