A report by Europol's European Cybercrime Centre makes the claim that, despite much of the evidence being anecdotal¹, Bitcoin is increasingly being used to pay for the live streaming of kiddy porn². The report was produced with the supposed intention of assisting law enforcement and the private sector to reduce and prevent such crimes from occurring, but it reads as nothing more than an attack on Bitcoin itself. Continue reading →

1. "Although much of the evidence is still anecdotal, concerns have been expressed by LE and financial experts in the wider international environment that commercial CSE online, among other criminal activities, is moving to a new unregulated, unbanked digital economy. Payment mechanisms providing a certain degree of anonymity are always open to abuse by those with criminal intentions, as developments in the use of Bitcoin show." ↩

2. It is recommended by organisations such as Europol that the term Child Abuse Material or CAM is better suited to describe such material as the word pornography implies that the children were willing participants and paid, but if Europol cannot be reasonable and differentiate between a paedophile and the use of Bitcoin, I cannot be expected to know the difference between the words kiddy porn and CAM. ↩