A recent press release reports, “CipherTrace, the global leader in cryptocurrency intelligence, today announced the launch of CipherTrace Crypto Risk Intelligence, its comprehensive cryptocurrency risk threat detection and proactive risk management service for banks and financial institutions. Key features of the product include detection of unregistered cryptocurrency money service businesses (MSBs), risk evaluation of cryptocurrency companies for bank relationships, attribution of cryptocurrency-related transactions, counter-party risk scoring, and a chronology of all known cryptocurrency threats within payment networks. Research by CipherTrace Labs found that every one of the top 10 U.S. retail banks currently have unregistered cryptocurrency MSBs—including crypto exchanges—transmitting funds on their payment networks. Analysis revealed that a typical large bank is processing as much as $2 billion a year in undetected cryptocurrency-related transfers, posing a challenge to Anti-Money Laundering compliance.”

The release continues, “This is especially significant since compliance with both the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) funds Travel Rules requires financial institutions to clearly identify the MSBs they facilitate. Most banks are ill-equipped to identify and monitor cryptocurrency exchanges and other virtual asset service providers (VASPs) as MSBs, which is required under the BSA and new FATF guidance that will soon become law in G20 nations. CipherTrace monitors over 500 cryptocurrency companies and provides risk scores, compliance scores and AML filtering data for financial institutions… Banks currently have a number of advanced tools and methods for risk management, Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing of conventional payments, but they are left exposed when it comes to virtual currencies that use traditional payment systems such as SWIFT and the ACH networks.”

Read more at Business Wire.

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