September 11, 2020
The US Internal Revenue Services (IRS) has opened a bounty program for persons and private contractors to crack to Monero (XMR). An amount of over $600,000 will be rewarded to anyone that can successfully prove that Monero transactions can be traced. The program was encouraged by the cumulative cybercrimes with several privacy cryptocurrencies, stated by the IRS.
Can someone trace Monero?
Monero belongs to the most popular privacy-focused digital currencies. This was designed with several features that can make its transactions believing to be hard to trace. By way of illustration, the amount of money involved in a Monero transaction can hardly be determined, unlike transactions with Bitcoin. Similarly, the parties making the transactions are unspecified.
After that, few investigative resources attempt to track Monero transactions and other privacy cryptocurrencies, making them a preferred choice for cybercriminals. Bad actors are progressively laundering ill-gotten funds through digital currencies. It has also been reported that several cases where Monero mining malware was scattered on public computers.
Because of these reasons, the IRS was encouraged to inaugurate the bounty program to see that Monero transactions are perceptible.
A bounty amounting $625,000
“IRS-CI is seeking a solution with one or more contractors to provide innovative solutions for tracing and attribution of privacy coins, such as expert tools, data, source code, algorithms, and software development services,” the federal agency said in the proposal broadcast.
The IRS will pay an initial amount of $500,000 for anyone who comes up with a practical idea. The other $125,000 will then be paid after the solution passes the pilot test, as approved by the US government. Individuals and teams interested in joining the search for viable Monero tracking tools should submit a prototype to the IRS.
No Comment