Asia Times News Report Says North Korea is Mixing Cryptocurrency to Evade US Controls and Sanctions

North Korea, one of the most aggressive and closed countries on earth could be using virtual currencies to evade the economic sanctions imposed by the United States. At the same time, there are some reports that the country is working in developing its own virtual currency, something similar to what Venezuela did in the past.

According to two different financial analysts known as Lourdes MIranda and Ross Delston, North Korea has been using virtual currencies in order to avoid financial sanctions from United States.

The analysts said that criminals prefer to use virtual currencies rather than fiat or other financial instruments. Moreover, North Korea has also been using them in order to avoid these economic sanctions.

About it they explained:

“International criminals everywhere prefer cryptocurrencies and the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] DPRK is no exception. Cryptocurrencies have the added advantage to the DPRK giving them more ways to circumvent U.S. sanctions. They can do so by using multiple international exchangers, mixing and shifting services – mirroring the money laundering cycle.”

The analysts have also explained that North Korea could have used a ‘mixer¡ to move virtual currencies and hide their tracks. This helps criminals launder funds and make a blockchain scanning and tracking much more difficult for investigators. Additionally, they could have moved to other virtual currencies to obscure the origin of the funds they had.

There are different countries that have been working in order to create a national virtual currency. We can mention Venezuela with its Petro cryptocurrency and Iran, which might be developing its own digital currency. This solution would help the Asian country avoid economic sanctions imposed by western countries.

Moreover, Miranda and Delston suggest that with their own virtual currency it would be possible to open online accounts ‘under the guise of a non-adversarial nation using anonymous communication to conceal the user’s locations and usage on the internet.’

In addition to it, both analysts are sure that DPRK could also create a crypto wallet to move funds all over the world. The funds could be moved through different accounts in different countries and finally have USD dollars avoiding international sanctions.

“Voilá, the DPRK now has U.S. dollars with non of those pesky sanctions attached,” say both analysts.

In the past, North Korea has been accused of stealing virtual currencies from exchanges in South Korea.