Investigation of Cryptocurrency Enabled and Dependent Crimes

Cryptocurrency has exploded in both use in business and speculation on the stock market. Increasingly, cryptocurrency is being used in a range of criminal activities, mostly notably as payment and money-laundering tool but also in investment fraud. The speculative nature of cryptocurrencies reminds us of the dotcom boom in the 1990s where any internet related companies attracted great speculation on the stock market without having a product, business plan or any ability to make profits. Naturally, the boom was followed by the dot-com crash a few years later which ended an era of unwarranted highly speculative internet companies. And going further back further in time the gold rush where people around the world flocked to seek their fortunes in lands far away such as Australia, Canada, and the United States in the 1800s, only to discover that finding and mining a big gold stake to be a dangerous and unlikely proposition. 2021 is the year that cryptocurrency became the centre of finance, the doggy Doge meme moved from joke to reality, and where crypto became the new gold rush (alongside toilet paper). Analysing the current research and literature, the authors bring in their personal experience in industry and government investigating cybercrime, online fraud, and cryptocurrency frauds. This chapter will analyse the use of cryptocurrency in online fraud and the challenges posed in crypto investigations and crypto investment fraud.