Japan’s National Police Installing Crypto Transaction Tracking System

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The Japanese National Police Agency is reportedly installing a new system for cracking down the crypto transactions for providing aid to cryptocurrency related investigations concerning cybercrime. This system however limited for major cryptocurrencies according to the reports released on media.

Japan’s NPA (National Police Agency), on 30 August announced that it has figured out a new policy that introduces software probably in the coming year. It will help in visualizing the transaction history of the virtual currencies to increase money laundering, financial theft, and other cryptocurrencies, according to Yomiuri Shimbun.

New outlet by Fisco reveals criminal offenses which took place recently involves the virtual currency transactions over many anonymous accounts. Moreover, the police have to operate under a tremendous workload as they have to work through several records during the cryptocurrency investigation.

About the new crypto tracking scheme, the publication has also said that their service target is limited for major currencies such as BTC (bitcoin) and ETH (Ethereum). National Police Agency, Osaka Prefectural Police Department and Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department will tentatively be allowed to use these services probably in the next economic year.

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Nikkei says that the National Police Agency has already put a budget request for 2019 with 2.7 billion yen ($24.3 million) estimate required for addressing the cybercrime threat and those who are threatening the integrity of the cryptocurrency.

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According to reports from NHK, this agency has also come forth with their plans of adding an estimated 35 million yen for its budget discussing the proposal for related expenses that will be necessary for the software introduction.

Yomiuri Shimbun also restates that this software will be useful in extracting all the data from transactions. This investigation will ask for major data volume to make the cryptocurrencies and cyber tracking related to it, much more effective.

The software was explicitly designed by a private company that can gather all the data that is for this field of investigation. This software shall also describe more information relating to the virtual currency exchange operator which is a kind of information that is not accessible in the blockchain databases.

Nikkei also said that this software would make it possible for tracing the flow of transactions from a vantage point where the software can be used to examine crimes entangled with virtual currencies. The system will help with efficiency and speed of crypto investigation including money laundering and fraud, says the National Police Agency.

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In February the agency also revealed 669 cases that describe suspicious transactions which are reported to the government by crypto exchanges up until December last year.

In March the agency also released the yearly statistics related to cryptocurrency for the very first time which shows 149 of hacking attempts cases of individual cryptocurrency last year. There was total damage of 66.4 million yen in total with the unauthorized transfers according to Nikkei. These funds embezzled from a total of 16 companies which includes three wallet providers and crypto exchanges.