According to Cipher Trace, fraud-related cryptocurrency transactions and theft of tokens from exchanges have increased during the first quarter of the year, to nearly $1.2 billion.

With an increase in the crime rate, the market has slowed down.  The price of the tokens have plunged, and business activity has disrupted.

While the price of the Bitcoin crashed in the year 2019, several experts are arguing that the news is not all bad.  They further add that the future for cryptocurrencies is looking fairly strong.

Optimistic analysts state, the market is known for its volatility, and this is the not the first of its kind crash seen in the market.

The speculative activity in the cryptocurrency industry has led to a massive movement of the prices over the past two years.

Jason Potts, RMIT University Professor in Economics stated, “There was a run-up of strong speculative interest in Bitcoin in late 2017, which has fortunately now dissipated.”

The professor opines that the Bitcoin market will be far stable in the year 2019. The cryptocurrency technology is in its early stages of technological innovation.  A degree of volatility is expected in the years to come.  Until the technology evolves to providing, robust streamlining of price trends, volatility is here to stay.

Lee Smales, Associate professor in finance, opines that there will be a point in time when the prices will not rise.  Then, investors will begin to think about the underlying issues of securities.  At this point, the prices will not go up any further.  When investors are not able to find a bigger fool they can sell to, they get nervous, and they begin to sell.

The quarterly report of Cipher has to state that the theft and scam rates value is at $356 million.  The losses related to fraud and misappropriated funds come to $851 million.

Dave Jevans, CEO of Cipher Trace stated, “Crypto crime has gotten worse because regulations are still weakly enforced. Europe broadly has not implemented its regulations yet, and the cybercriminal community continues to grow.”

In several areas around the US, the regulations are poor.  Problems related to theft and fraud have increased due to greed and mismanagement in these areas.  These frauds and scams happen with due participation of young management teams in the cryptocurrency companies, which manage billions of dollars.

Anti-Phishing Working Group focuses on solving cybercrimes.  Jevans chairs the organization.

The cross-border payments from US exchanges to those exchanges offshore are not under the purview of US authorities; therefore, there is a major gap in the regulatory environment for these transactions.

About 164 million Bitcoin transactions were analyzed.  The analysis revealed that the cross-border payments to offshore exchanges have increased by over 46% in the past two years.  This, in turn, contributed to 11.5% amounting to 11.5% of the world’s wealth which has been hidden offshore.