Major cryptocurrency exchanges processed payments for access to illegal videos with children

Major trading platforms for buying and selling cryptocurrencies such as Coinbase, Binance, ShapeShift, Bitonic, and LocalBitcoins have processed cryptocurrency transfers to the addresses of the now-closed darknet child pornography platform DarkScandals.com in the past. Reuters writes about this with reference to the results of a Chainalysis study.

It is reported that in addition to the above exchanges, customers of the closed site also used forty-five other platforms to buy cryptocurrencies. The publication does not specify which exchanges are in question. Chainalysis estimates that from 2017 to 2020, the now-closed site could have increased its profits 4 times from $ 250,000 to $ 1 million.

Through Coinbase and LocalBitcoins, DarkScandals.com customers were able to spend a total of about $ 22,000 from 2013 to 2019. Binance and ShapeShift processed significantly fewer such transactions, amounting to $ 3,400 before the darknet platform was shut down in 2020.

Thus, cryptocurrency exchanges will avoid punishment, as it is extremely difficult to accuse them of actually ignoring the problem — the amounts for monitoring to keep up with sexual offenders are quite small.

Founded in 2012 by Dutchman Michael Mohammad, DarkScandals.com sold graphic content depicting the rape of underage children. According to the investigation, more than 3,600 videos were uploaded to the site. In June 2022, a Dutch court sentenced Mohammad to ten years in prison.