Joe McGill, Founder & CEO of CyChain: How the Secret Service Fights Cybercrime and Tracks Stolen Crypto

— Joe McGill's path from Secret Service investigator to founder of Cychain, a risk-scoring tool for crypto wallet addresses built from his law enforcement experience tracking cybercriminals on the dark web.

— Criminal use of Bitcoin and crypto remains a single-digit percentage of overall transaction volume; law enforcement focuses on targeting individuals who launder proceeds of crime, not Bitcoin itself.

— Early 2017 ICO boom created an explosion of phishing scams and account takeovers, with attackers creating fake exchange websites and sending fraudulent transaction requests to projects.

— Privacy coins like Monero and Zcash present ongoing challenges for law enforcement, though Bitcoin's transparent ledger allows investigators to track criminal funds through wallet consolidation and exchange off-ramps.

— SIM swapping remains a critical vulnerability enabling account takeovers; carriers still struggle to implement robust authentication despite insider threat risks and social engineering attacks.

— Cychain's planned enterprise product and API aim to help financial institutions and regulators identify high-risk addresses and criminal patterns using machine learning and dark web scanning.

— Check wallet addresses twice before sending crypto and use tools like Cychain to scan addresses against known scam databases, dark web forums, and criminal wallets before transacting.

— Strengthen personal cyber hygiene by using unique, complex passwords; enabling hardware-based 2FA (not SMS); using VPNs on public Wi-Fi; and regularly checking haveibeenpwned.com to detect credential breaches.

— Consider the regulatory trajectory: clearer tax treatment for small-value crypto transactions and exchange-backed fraud insurance policies (beyond FDIC protections) may emerge as the industry matures, making crypto more practical for everyday use.