Treasury sanctioned a slew of crypto addresses today when listing four Russia-linked actors attempting to influence the 2020 elections. . https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1118
The actors used a combination of BTC addresses (referenced as XBT), Litecoin, Ethereum, Zcash, Bitcoin Cash, and Dash. https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/recent-actions/20200910
The use of several diff types of cryptocurrencies is notable. Back in 2018 when Treasury dropped sanctions against GRU agents who used crypto to influence the 2016 elections, they only used BTC. https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download
The mixture of currencies (including privacy coins which can't be traced on the blockchain) is a huge indication that Russian government actors' are getting more advanced at obfuscating their activities through crypto.
. @SignCurve has a great 2018 piece speculating that Russia's government crypto operations would start taking advantage of many different cryptos, especially privacy coins. https://twitter.com/SignCurve/status/1304089903177830400?s=20
You can follow @brenna__smith.
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