The Australian anti-money-laundering watchdog the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (or AUSTRAC) issued a report in July that assigned a higher priority of concern to virtual currencies such as World of Warcraft gold and Bitcoin. This isn’t something entirely unexpected by both economists and experts on virtual currencies, after all hackers and others have used alternate-currencies for a very long time from boxes of Tide detergent to pre-paid phone cards.
Virtual currencies with their anonymity and capability of possessing value and transferring it under the radar would certainly become a watershed for both legitimate and illegal use—in fact, Bitcoin has been tauted as a way for people in tyrannical countries with controlled economies to exchange value. Criminal economies function in a very similar way.
The report for AUSTRAC seems to reflect this in short and in long, Rohan Pierce fromComputerworld has the full story, but here’s the gist:
“While the nature and extent of money laundering through digital currencies and virtual worlds are unknown, it is important to recognise their potential for criminal exploitation, particularly in response to tighter regulation of established or traditional financial channels,” the report stated.
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