Hong Kong police are ramping up efforts to safe town’s web3 area with a brand new tool to assist observe unlawful crypto flows.
Hong Kong’s Cyber Safety and Expertise Crime Bureau revaled on Wednesday its newly developed crypto tracing tool dubbed CryptoTrace, as a part of its efforts to fight rising crypto-related crime.
The tool, collectively developed with the College of Hong Kong and was first introduced on the Blockchain Safety Summit 2025, is designed to present “superior intelligence and investigative help” to officers dealing with digital asset circumstances, CSTCB stated. The bureau added it had already held coaching classes in late March to enhance frontline officers’ capacity to examine crypto crimes utilizing the system.
As well as to its crime-fighting targets, CSTCB stated it’s working carefully with stakeholders throughout the web3 sector to “co-build a safer and extra sustainable ecosystem,” with out going into particulars.
The College of Hong Kong, which co-developed the tool, claims that CryptoTrace makes use of “cutting-edge blockchain analytics, graph and visualisation applied sciences” to assist investigators hint laundered funds, establish suspect places, and “streamline probes into scams involving cryptocurrencies.”
The initiative comes as crypto crime continues to rise in Hong Kong. In October 2024, police announced the arrest of 27 suspects in a deepfake-driven romance rip-off concentrating on victims throughout Asia. The group allegedly used AI-generated video calls and a pretend crypto platform to defraud victims of over $46 million price of crypto.
A study led by College of Texas finance professor John Griffin revealed that romance scams prompted over $75 billion in losses from January 2020 to February 2024, with lots of the scammers operating out of Southeast Asia.
