Last week, operators of the Liberty Reserve currency exchange were indicted for laundering $6 billion.
Liberty Reserve was part of a growing industry of online payment systems that allow illegal enterprises, from child pornography to weapons trafficking, to move money within an unregulated system, creating a hub for criminal conduct that is both centralized and global.
Explaining that the indictment will serve as a temporary blow to money launderers and others moving money on the boundary of legality, Gurpreet Dhillon, a professor of information security at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Business, told Trend Lines that digital currencies are here to stay.