The governments of Austria and Germany are funding a research initiative that aims at prevention and prosecution of “organized financial crime” committed with virtual currencies. The project will seek to develop actionable, internationally applicable and interoperable solutions for Europe and beyond.

The initiative, ‘BitCrime’, is being supported by a number of governmental agencies in the two countries, CoinDesk reported. It will assess the subject and its threat profile in order to develop innovative and workable approaches toward regulating virtual currencies in a way that is compatible with their fundamental nature.

“BITCRIME is a bilateral, German-Austrian research project with virtual currencies concerned with the prevention and suppression of organized financial crime and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) is promoted. The project is 25 months (October 2014 - October 2016) applied. The total project volume amounts to 2.4 million euros”, the website reads (Google-translated).

It is bifurcated into two sub-projects:

• German Subproject: It is developing technical and organizational approaches to enable effective criminal investigation. In addition, it explores regulatory approaches that prevent crime while protecting legitimate users.
   
• Austrian Subproject: It focuses on approaches to the effective discovery and analysis of patterns in criminal financial transactions. In addition, it will also concentrate on links to adjacent ecosystems, including references to accounts and addresses in social media platforms and the so-called “Darknet”.

The German subproject has a volume of 1.8 million euros, funded at a rate of 81% by the BMBF and the project funding is managed by the VDI Technology Center. The Austrian subproject has a volume of 635,000 euros, funded at a rate of 80% by the BMVIT and the project funding is managed through the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG).