This is Why Criminals Prefer Less Anonymous Bitcoin to Privacy Coins

Privacy coins have come under a lot of fire in recent times, and many leading anonymity tokens, such as zcash (ZEC), and monero (XMR) have come under fire from regulators, who claim they are the token of choice for terrorists, drug dealers, and money launderers.

Many of these tokens have been delisted from major platforms in certain regions, such as Japan and more recently South Korea. But a new report (paid for by an anonymity coin operator) suggests that criminals are not that keen on privacy tokens after all.

The report was sponsored by the Electric Coin Company (ECC), the operator of Zcash, and conducted by RAND Europe, a nonprofit institution that claims that its publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. In either case, the report makes a number of claims about the way that criminals use (or rather, do not use) ZEC.

The authors claim that only minimal amounts of criminals show an interest in using…