Episode 44 of the Public Key podcast is here! In this episode, we talk with international terrorism consultant and founder and CEO of Cloudburst Technologies, Evan Kohlmann. He dives deep into the dark web world of organized market manipulation groups and provides us with intel on how they operate.
You can listen or subscribe now on Spotify, Apple, or Audible. Keep reading for a full preview of episode 44.
Public Key Episode 44 preview: Crypto market manipulation being coordinated by dark web groups
Imagine millions of people on a dark web chat group waiting in anticipation to pump a token 500% on a targeted crypto exchange, while unsuspecting investors, traders and regulators have no insights as to what is about to take place.
In this episode, Ian Andrews (Chief Marketing Officer, Chainalysis) is joined by former Flashpoint founder Evan Kohlmann, who is now the Founder and CEO of Cloudburst Technologies, a company tasked with scraping the dark web to identify potential pump and dump schemes and the associated illicit actors.
Evan explains the nuances of these targeted attacks, who the orchestrators are, and the countries being targeted. He explains how his technology can gather KYC information and shed some light on the extent these schemes have on the total illicit activity in the industry.
Quote of the episode
“There is $120 billion of volume per year that’s being sucked out by online crypto pumps and dumps. We’re working with an academic team at the University College London, and they looked at 5 million deep and dark web messages that we had gathered. They looked at the data from it. They processed it. They look at the market pricing, the volume, and the change in pricing and volume. They concluded it’s $120 billion in volume per year. That is six times the money that is lost in ransomware.” – Evan Kohlmann (Founder, CEO, Cloudburst Technologies)
Minute-by-minute episode breakdown
- (2:27) – Understanding cryptocurrency market manipulation in the crypto world and what Cloudburst Technologies is doing about it
- (4:35) – How to identify the illicit actors on dark web forums attempting to manipulate the markets
- (12:30) – How Evan got the name “The Terrorist Search Engine” and how he helped build up the leading dark web intelligence firm, Flashpoint
- (15:21) – How millions of people in dark web forums and Telegram are organizing themselves to pump certain tokens 50% up to 500%
- (20:49) – Applying Cloudburst technology to traditional commodity markets and large market cap tokens
- (28:00) – Are illicit actors targeting decentralized exchanges and protocols or just cryptocurrency centralized exchanges
- (30:05) – How Cloudburst can identify KYC on illicit actors across the dark web using OSINT
Related resources
Check out more resources provided by Chainalysis that perfectly complement this episode of the Public Key.
- Report: The Chainalysis 2023 Crypto Crime Report
- Blog: 24% of New Tokens Launched in 2022 Bear On-Chain Characteristics of Pump and Dump Schemes
- Conference: Chainalysis Links Conference 2023 in New York City
- LinkedIn Post: Cloudburst tracks almost 700,000 online actors involved in cryptocurrency price manipulation fraud and pumping and dumping
- Twitter: Chainalysis Twitter: Building trust in blockchains
- TikTok: Newly launched Chainalysis TikTok page
- YouTube: Chainalysis YouTube page is completely revamped
- Website: Careers at Chainalysis – Join us today
Speakers on today’s episode
- Ian Andrews * Host * (Chief Marketing Officer, Chainalysis)
- Evan Kohlmann (Founder and CEO, Cloudburst Technologies)
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