Kingstown, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines - August 4th, 2026
ChangeNOW, a consumer-facing crypto super app, and CoinRabbit, a crypto asset management platform, today published a joint research report entitled "Financial Privacy in the Digital Age." The study maps both legitimate and illicit uses of privacy-enhancing tools in digital asset ecosystems and aggregates data assembled from multiple industry and institutional sources including TRM Labs, Chainalysis, the RAND Corporation, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Statista, and disclosures from the U.S. Treasury Department.
Purpose and framing
The research seeks to weigh the scale of criminal misuse of privacy technology against real-world needs for discretion. Rather than treating privacy as an optional feature, the authors argue that on-chain privacy has evolved from a niche preference into a core protective measure across several categories of users and use cases.
Use cases the report identifies as protected by on-chain privacy:
- Individuals - protecting high-net-worth holders from physical extortion and targeted kidnapping.
- Businesses - preventing competitors from observing treasury movements and sensitive financial deal flow.
- Humanitarian efforts - enabling civilians in conflict zones and sanctioned regions to receive medical payments, and supporting the operations of journalists and activists.
Regulatory posture and the enforcement thesis
The study’s principal conclusion is that privacy and compliance are not inherently opposing aims. Across every category the report examined, the decisive point of enforcement vulnerability is the fiat off-ramp - the moment crypto is converted into spendable currency - rather than privacy-preserving mechanisms embedded in transactional layers earlier in the flow.
"Privacy is a basic expectation in everyday life, but public blockchains leave all transactions in the open. Finding a balance here is simply about making digital capital safe to use. With that in mind, we at CoinRabbit believe it’s important to contribute to the conversation and share our research with the industry" - Walter Barrett, Chief Strategy & Growth Officer at CoinRabbit
Key findings and measured threats
The report compiles several headline data points to illustrate the scale and growth of criminal activity and exposure related to crypto payments and public data leaks:
- Pig-butchering fraud produced an estimated USD 75 billion in cumulative losses between 2020 and 2024.
- Data from CertiK indicates that USD 124.1 million in cryptocurrency was targeted in 52 verified physical "wrench attacks" in the first half of 2026 alone, representing a 33% increase in incidents and an nearly elevenfold surge in financial exposure compared to H1 2025.
- Crypto payments linked to human trafficking networks in Southeast Asia grew by 85% in 2025.
- Corporate data exposure remains a major governance concern: 36% of corporate board members cite internal financial data becoming publicly accessible as a top governance worry, and the average data breach now costs USD 4.44 million.
These figures are used to underline how on-chain visibility and off-chain data leaks can translate rapidly into physical risk for people and organizations.
Industry approaches to reconciling privacy with compliance
The report profiles two operational privacy architectures designed to preserve anti-money laundering (AML) compliance while enhancing user discretion. ChangeNOW describes its Private Crypto Transfers feature, which breaks deterministic links between sender and receiver without pooling user funds. CoinRabbit outlines a custodial approach using dynamic per-user deposit addresses to prevent the end-to-end reconstruction of a client’s holdings from public blockchain data.
"Financial privacy isn’t a feature request, it’s a baseline that every other financial system already provides," said Pauline Shangett, Chief Strategy Officer at ChangeNOW. "The question the industry needs to answer isn’t whether privacy should exist on-chain. It’s whether we build it responsibly or let bad actors define what it looks like by default."
Policy recommendations and closing guidance
The report concludes with five targeted recommendations for regulators, industry participants, analytics providers, and policymakers. The central policy thrust is to reallocate enforcement attention and resources toward monitoring and securing fiat off-ramps and improving cross-jurisdictional intelligence sharing, rather than imposing broad restrictions on transactional privacy that affect legitimate users.
The full report, "Financial Privacy in the Digital Age," is available online from the organizations that produced it.
About the organizations
ChangeNOW - described in the report materials as a personal crypto super app that offers fast, simple, and secure access to Web3 finance.
CoinRabbit - described as a crypto asset management platform built for long-term capital preservation. Since 2020, CoinRabbit states it ensures 100% reserve, keeping clients’ funds safe and never reused.
Contact
PR Team
CHN Group LLC
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