The Federal Bureau of Investigation is seeking $21 million in its Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2018 to combat cybercrime conducted through virtual currencies and other anonymizing technologies.

The agency is proposing a total of $8.77 billion in direct budget authority to carry out its mission relating to national security, criminal law enforcement, and criminal justice. According to the details of the proposed budget, the FBI is seeking $21.6 million and 80 positions for “Going Dark” initiative.

“The rapid pace of advances in mobile and other communication technologies continue to present a significant challenge to conducting court-ordered electronic surveillance of criminals and terrorists. There is a real and growing gap between law enforcement’s legal authority to access digital information and its technical ability to do so. The FBI refers to this growing challenge as “Going Dark,” the FBI said. “Some of our criminal investigators face the challenge of identifying online pedophiles who hide their crimes and identities behind layers of anonymizing technologies, or drug traffickers who use virtual currencies to obscure their transactions.”

The FBI has been closely watching bitcoin and other digital currencies for their use in illicit activities. Last November, it released a primer on DarkNet marketplaces. It noted that the payment for goods and services on the darknet is usually done through virtual currencies like bitcoin, which are designed to be anonymous.

In 2015, Brett Nigh, J.D., assistant general counsel in the FBI’s Office of the General Counsel in Washington, D.C and C. Alden Pelker, intelligence analyst in the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division in Washington, D.C., pointed out the key challenges identified by law enforcement officers when dealing with virtual currencies. These include regulatory and compliance disparities, transaction obfuscation and anonymity, and the global nature of the systems.

Earlier this year, the agency highlighted its concerns over the use of monero by criminals. Joseph Battaglia, a special agent working at the FBI’s Cyber Division in New York City, stated (as quoted by CoinDesk):

“There are obviously going to be issues if some of the more difficult to work with cryptocurrencies become popular. Monero is one that comes to mind, where its not very obvious what the transaction path is or what the actual value of the transaction is except to the end users."


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