According to a recent study, Australian judges are more likely to impose harsher sentences on criminals who utilized crypto as part of their scheme to commit a crime.
According to a study titled “Crime and Cryptocurrency in Australian Courts,” which was released on Monday in the Monash University Law Review, the use of crypto in criminal activity was viewed as indicating a higher “degree of planning” and sophistication, prompting the court to “consider general deterrence above other sentencing purposes:”
Criminals that engage in illegal cryptocurrency use in Australia are more likely to face harsher punishment.
“Obtaining and using cryptocurrency for payments does require a greater degree of technical skill compared to the general population which may be unfamiliar with these payments.”
With a focus on 59 criminal cases and their sentencing processes, the study examined 103 instances that were brought before Australian courts between 2009 and 2020.
Minimal sophistication
According to research by Aaron Lane and Lisanne Adam, Australian courts generally view the employment of cryptography as a sign of “technological sophistication” and “deliberate obfuscation.”
The two countered that not all crypto use can denote the same degree of complexity, asserting that Australian courts may be “too ready to adopt a very simplified definition” of crypto use in criminal activity:
“Sophistication exists on a spectrum.”
As the usage of digital assets spreads more, courts must be able to distinguish between the many kinds of crypto transactions that offenders employed.
Criminals who used centralized digital currency exchanges, where Know Your Customer (KYC) rules make it possible to quickly establish identification, cannot be penalized in the same way as those who used mixing services or anonymous noncustodial wallets on purpose to hide transaction data.
Some people in the general public have a long-standing perception that cryptocurrency and digital assets are connected to criminal behavior; this perception most likely stems from Bitcoin’s original relationship with the famed darknet black market Silk Road.
The quantity of cryptocurrency used for illegal behavior has never been lower, despite the fact that this bad reputation still hangs over the digital asset sector, according to a recent analysis from CipherTrace.
According to the research, criminal activity made up between 0.62 percent and 0.65 percent of total bitcoin activity in 2020. By 2021, that percentage had dropped to between 0.10 percent and 0.15 percent.
