Last year, according to a report by Chainalysis, which is a data firm based in New York, they stole an incredible $1.7 billion worth of cryptocurrency. In order to launder this money, hackers will distribute it across enormous numbers of wallets. They'll also use tools called mixers, where essentially lots of different actors all put their crypto into a combined pool. And then once they've got enough confidence that they've obscured the origins of these funds, they will try and convert this money into fiat currency into normal hard cash.
Shifts in the garment industry, which powered development in the country, represent one risk; meagre currency reserves are another. Yet nothing so imperils Bangladesh’s economic miracle as graft and patronage at the highest levels. How does North Korea afford its flashy weapons programme? Crypto scams of eye-watering scope. And the newsmaking history of BBC Monitoring’s radio translators.
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