According to a report from Chainalysis, 2022 cryptocurrency mixers use have reached an all-time high in 2022.

Chainalysis is a member of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Innovators community, Chainalysis is a leader in blockchain analytics. They are an extension of governments, they provide services to law enforcement agencies and hire former feds as employees.

According to the firm, crypto mixers are receiving record amounts of cryptocurrency in 2021 and 2022. According to the Chainalysis report published on July 14, 2022, on April 19, 2022, crypto mixers received “an all-time high of $51.8 million worth of cryptocurrency.” A chart provided by Chainalysis reveals that mixers received roughly $24 million worth of cryptocurrency on the same day in 2021.

Mixers are legal

In the report, Chainalysis laments that mixers are legal “despite their utility for criminals.” In 2020 FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said that cryptocurrency mixers are legal and considered money transmitters under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and they must comply with the same regulations as other money transmitting services. These regulations they must comply with include maintaining a strong anti-money laundering compliance program and following “Know Your Customer” (KYC) rules for Money Services Businesses.

“Given that increased privacy is the whole point of using a mixer, it seems unlikely that one could implement those compliance procedures and retain its user base. “

Types of Transactions

So far, in 2022, 23% of funds sent to mixers came from a cryptocurrency address associated with illicit activity. Illicit transactions accounted for just 12% of mixer activity in 2021.

According to Chainalysis these are the categories of illicit activity they tracked.

Terrorism financing

Scam

Fraud shop

Sanctions

Ransomware

Cybercriminal administrator

Stolen Funds

Darknet market

Child sex abuse material

“What stands out most is the huge volume of funds moving to mixers from addresses associated with sanctioned entities, especially in Q2 2022.”

In April 2022 (Q2), the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Hydra Market. Transactions from addresses linked to Hydra Market accounted for 50.4% of all funds moving to mixers from sanctioned entities in 2022.

Chainalysis, which is a neutral source when it comes to discussions about financial privacy, believes that mixers “present a difficult question” to “members of the cryptocurrency community.”

“Virtually everyone would acknowledge that financial privacy is valuable, and that in a vacuum, there’s no reason services like mixers shouldn’t be able to provide it. However, the data shows that mixers currently pose a significant money laundering risk…”

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have lead a new research that has traced two genetic variants to ancient Neanderthal relatives that can affect how well drugs are metabolized. It is hypothesized these ancient Neanderthal genes may account for some differences in therapeutic drug activity from person to person.

While Homo sapiens are currently the only species of humans who inhabit the Earth, that wasn’t always the case. For hundreds of thousands of years, a whole family of ancient humans shared the planet from mysterious “ghost” species and Denisovans, to the more commonly known Neanderthals.

Homo sapiens won the ancient evolutionary battle in the end, but there are still many traces of these ancient species in our DNA. You see, modern humans apparently got along very well with different species at various time in history, and traces of Neanderthal DNA is still found in many people around the world.

Sometimes these ancient Neanderthal genes are beneficial. A 2020 study, for example, found one in three European women carried a Neanderthal gene variant that codes for progesterone receptors in women. This meant those women were likely to experience lower rates of miscarriage and increased fertility.

Ancient Neanderthal

But sometimes these Neanderthal genes are less helpful, as highlighted in this new study which identified a pair of variants linked to decreases in drug metabolism. The two Neanderthal gene variants reduce the activity of key enzymes that metabolize a number of different drugs.

The research indicates carriers of these genes are “slow metabolizers,” and likely demonstrate decreased metabolism of drugs. This includes “antidiabetic drugs (e.g., pioglitazone), statins (e.g., cerivastatin), anti-inflammatory drugs (e.g., ibuprofen) and chemotherapeutic agents (e.g., paclitaxel).”.

Hugo Zeberg, lead researcher on the study, said there are possible clinical implications for carriers of these genetic variants. Standard doses of drugs such as blood-thinner warfarin and anticonvulsant phenytoin could become toxic in some people with certain kinds of low enzymatic activity.

“This is one case where the admixture with Neanderthals has a direct impact in the clinic,” said Zeberg. “Otherwise therapeutic doses can be toxic for carriers of the Neanderthal gene variant.”

It is estimated around 12 percent of people in Europe could be carrying these genetic variants. The researchers ultimately don’t indicate these findings should directly influence clinical practice, but instead can be used to help explain how different ancestries can effect therapeutic outcomes.

Source: https://newatlas.com/biology/ancient-neanderthal-gene-variants-slow-drug-metabolism/

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