Hong Kong police are stepping up efforts to secure the city’s web3 space with new tools to track illegal code flows.
Hong Kong’s Cybersecurity and Technology Crimes Bureau again repeated the newly developed crypto tracing tool called Cryptotrace on Wednesday.
The tool, developed in collaboration with the University of Hong Kong and first announced at the Blockchain Security Summit 2025, is designed to provide “advanced intelligence and research support” to executives handling virtual asset cases, CSTCB said. The bureau added that it had already held training sessions in late March to improve the ability of frontline officers to use the system to investigate crypto crime.
In addition to its crime prevention goals, the CSTCB said it will work closely with stakeholders across the Web3 sector to “co-build a safer and more sustainable ecosystem” without going into detail.
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The University of Hong Kong, which co-developed the tool, claims that Cryptotrace uses “state-of-the-art blockchain analysis, graphing and visualization technologies” to allow investigators to track laundry funds, identify suspicious locations, and “rationalize probes to scams involved in cryptocurrencies.”
This initiative is due to the ever-increasing number of crypto crime in Hong Kong. In October 2024, police announced the arrest of 27 suspects in a Deepfark-led romance scam targeting victims across Asia. The group allegedly used AI-generated video calls and fake crypto platforms to fraudulent victims with more than $46 million in crypto.
A study led by Professor John Griffin, a University of Texas Finance, revealed that romance fraud caused more than $75 billion in losses from January 2020 to February 2024, with many of the fraudsters operating in Southeast Asia.
read more: Hong Kong police crackdown on cryptocurrency fraud including counterfeit currency
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