Category: 3. Business

Key insights:

• • • Blockchain’s transparency is a double-edged sword— While criminals use crypto for illicit activities, the permanent and public nature of the blockchain ledger creates an undeniable trail, making it a powerful tool for law enforcement to track and seize illicit funds.

    • The rise of crypto forensics— A growing industry of specialized firms and investigators is leveraging blockchain’s inherent design to unravel complex financial crimes, demonstrating that “lost” crypto funds can often be recovered.

    • An evolving battlefield— Despite the ongoing challenges posed by tools like mixers and privacy coins, blockchain technology is fundamentally shifting how financial crime is fought, turning the very system criminals exploit into the means of their capture.

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Cryptocurrencies and other digital assets are used by criminals, which is great for catching them. Indeed, the biggest criticism of crypto since its inception has been its criminal use, which was estimated to be almost half of all activity by the end of 2017. In the past three months alone, asset seizures and forfeitures of more than $22 billion in crypto have been made by authorities in the United Kingdom, the United States, and their international partners.

These historic interceptions of illicit funds prove that the fundamental architecture of blockchain — the digital ledger that underpins most virtual transactions — makes it the perfect tool for catching criminals, validating the hypothesis of Satoshi Nakamoto, the presumed pseudonymous of the person or persons who developed bitcoin, that fraud could be prevented through intentional system design.

While criminals assumed they could optimize their illegal activities using crypto to obfuscate fund flows, the blockchain ledger’s immutability has created a niche for financial crime investigators seeking to unravel these cases. Companies like Chainalysis, Elliptic, and TRM Labs have become synonymous with these investigations, joined by a growing network of smaller firms that are democratizing crypto investigations, combating terrorist financing and online child abuse. Ultimately working to secure seized assets and prevent further harm. By all measures, the ecosystem is expanding rapidly.

Every crypto transaction creates a permanent trail that allows investigators to catch criminals even years after their crimes. This is how, a digital exchange hack in 2016 that resulted in the theft of 120,000 Bitcoin worth $72 million (at the time) and was chronicled in the Netflix documentary Biggest Heist Ever was wrapped up years later with the seizure of $4.5 billion in crypto and the arrest of the two alleged perpetrators in 2022. Law enforcement may not move as fast as crypto, but if the whale is big enough, they will catch it.

Indeed, the scale of cryptocurrency-enabled crime threatens Western economic stability. The FBI received 149,686 crypto-fraud complaints in 2024, totaling $9.3 billion in losses, likely significantly lower than the true figure. More than 100,000 people are trafficked and forced to operate scams from compounds in Cambodia and Myanmar. The Prince Holding Group, a transnational criminal organization headed by Chen Zhi, generated $30 million daily at its peak, approximately $10.95 billion annually.

Financial crime as economic warfare

These are just headlines. Further research in the Netherlands shows that only 11.8% of fraud victims actually report being victimized. While many dismiss fraud and blame victims, crypto-related fraud is becoming economic warfare systematically draining wealth from Western economies while enslaving hundreds of thousands in forced labor camps across the Global South. With potentially $80 billion lost annually to crypto fraud, the impact extends beyond the 1.14% of the US federal budget it represents. This illicit outflow causes loss of productive capital, tax base erosion, and reduced economic activity.

Yet the technology accused of enabling this new generation of fraud simultaneously provides the tools to detect and combat these criminal organizations more successfully than any financial crime fighting technology in history. The Chen Zhi case, easily the largest asset forfeiture in US history at around $15 billion, demonstrates this perfectly.

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Every crypto transaction creates a permanent trail that allows investigators to catch criminals even years after their crimes.

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This is why I’ve spent the last four years studying the crypto ATM industry. While most financial crime professionals saw a problematic service in a problematic industry, I saw a massive dataset of criminal activity that could predict other illicit activity beyond crypto ATMs. This dataset helped identify terrorist financiers, vendors of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and countless scams and frauds. Layer data-rich sources like crypto ATMs with blockchain data, and a good investigator can achieve remarkable results.

Modern blockchain analytics leverage the features Nakamoto designed for trust and verification. Immutability makes evidence tampering impossible and investigations public; and verifiability allows investigators to validate every step of a criminal’s crypto trail. Consensus mechanisms create a distributed jury of millions, validating the evidence chain further. These features enabled authorities to map the Prince Holding Group’s entire criminal empire, revealing 76,000 fake social media accounts operated from facilities using 1,250 phones across 10 Cambodian compounds, and tie it to $15 billion in bitcoin.

The same technology facilitating billions of dollars in pig butchering scams annually enables law enforcement to catch the transnational criminals and recover funds. Traditional financial crimes disappear into offshore accounts and shell companies, often leaving investigators blind. However, as anyone in blockchain forensics knows, Locard’s Exchange Principle remains true: Every contact leaves a trace. Blockchain’s public ledger means every suspicious transaction leaves a permanent clue.

Nakamoto’s vision of “electronic transactions without relying on trust” inadvertently created a system for establishing criminal culpability. The blockchain’s public nature convinced criminals they could hide in plain sight, but Nakamoto saw that participants would be deterred from fraud by this transparency. The naive assumption that users had nothing to hide if doing nothing wrong quickly revealed plenty were doing wrong. Still, the system proved fit for purpose once tools were built to catch bad actors. Nakamoto’s white paper’s emphasis on preventing double-spending through public verification created a framework in which crime-spending leaves permanent evidence. All a good investigator needs is time.

The rise of crypto forensics

As crypto advances, tools like bridges, mixers, and privacy coins pose constant challenges for investigators, but claiming the money is gone when crypto is involved is simply false. As blockchain forensics advances, criminals face an uncomfortable truth: They’ve been conducting operations on a permanent, public, immutable ledger. Their only protection is time and cryptographic puzzles that an entire industry is working to unravel.

While some industry press reporting has been diligent in pointing out some of the challenges in the industry and some of what’s been missed, there are a lot more illicit fraud cases that never see the light of day because of what has been prevented by blockchain forensics. And while it may not be perfect, the fact that there is an industry working to build a safer financial system than what has gone before is commendable, and the accountability that public ledgers have enabled is energizing for those that must police it.

Unfortunately, the $15 billion Chen Zhi seizure isn’t the end but the beginning. With at least $64 billion stolen annually, these criminals have little incentive to stop. While some scam compounds have been dismantled, reports indicate they’re simply being relocated.

Nevertheless, blockchain is setting a new paradigm in financial crime, one in which the technology enabling crime will eventually become the weapon that defeats it.

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As 2025 draws to a close, tech companies have continued to pour an unprecedented amount of capital into data centers, unveiling multi-billion-dollar investments to meet the surging demand for compute capacity. The United States is expected to continue to lead the way in new infrastructure development and deployment, though Western Europe and Asia are emerging as regions poised for significant growth in investment and build out.

By 2030, analysts are projecting that there will be over 2,000 new data centers constructed worldwide. Global data center infrastructure spending is projected to approach $7 trillion over the next five years, with the bulk of that capital flowing into servers and the chips that drive modern data center performance.  

Evolving Financing Models

While the financial figures continue to rise, considerations for investors across capital markets become increasingly complicated. Location, build-out timelines, and load capacity requirements are key factors shaping project risk. Given the significant capital expenditure involved, investors have had to adopt strategies that not only address the upfront spending required but also account for long-term economic and debt considerations.

To meet the scale of today’s buildouts, investors are increasingly relying on layered capital strategies that combine long-term financing with mechanisms that provide early cash flow. These include tenant prepayment structures, joint ventures with infrastructure funds and pension investors, and real estate–focused arrangements, such as sale-leaseback transactions.

At the same time, traditional project finance lenders are playing a growing role in the sector, underwriting large, syndicated loans supported by long-term leases, stable power-supply arrangements, and other risk-mitigation measures that can anchor billion-dollar developments.

Energy and Power Considerations

Despite the growing clarity around investment pathways, power reliability remains crucial with regard to the future of large-scale data center build-out efforts. With respect to data center power needs, two principal considerations emerge: ensuring reliable power generation and determining the vehicles by which that power is procured. Many hyperscalers have adopted ambitious clean energy goals and are prioritizing low-carbon alternatives like nuclear and renewables paired with energy storage systems.

Ensuring resilient transmission from those power sources to the data center can present significant challenges, particularly given the regulatory hurdles involved. Co-location has emerged as an option for data center developers, siting the facilities alongside existing power generation sources, along with Bring Your Own Generation (BYOG). Still, these arrangements also raise regulatory concerns, as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state energy agencies have often scrutinized these efforts due to resource adequacy and reliability concerns.

Against this backdrop, nuclear power is quickly emerging as a central focus for data center operators seeking reliable, long-term, carbon-free power. Many hyperscalers are already forming partnerships with nuclear companies, exploring options that range from funding the development of new nuclear technology to the restart of previously retired plants.

Growing interest in new-build nuclear, both large-scale facilities and smaller, modular reactor designs, is positioning advanced nuclear generation as an increasingly viable component of future data center power strategies.

Server Connectivity

While reliable grid connectivity remains a necessity for any data center, so too is the high-capacity fiber connectivity that enables data centers to function at scale. Redundant, high-capacity fiber infrastructure is crucial to maintain a dependable connection between data centers themselves and with users and customers all over the world. Diversity in transmission connectivity can also boost overall reliability, with some data centers pairing multiple fiber lines with wireless or satellite point-to-point connections.

One of the primary ways global fiber networks are deployed is through submarine cables, which currently carry more than 98% of all international internet traffic and data. Hyperscalers have become the largest developers of these long-haul systems, leveraging direct ownership stakes and dedicated capacity arrangements to efficiently move data across their global facilities.

In contrast to the heavily regulated energy side, ownership and operation of data centers remain largely unregulated from a telecommunications perspective, at least in the United States. While licenses to operate data centers aren’t currently required by the Federal Communications Commission or most state telecom regulators, the network services provided by hyperscalers are often subject to various regulatory obligations. To secure connectivity, data center operators typically work with telecommunications carriers through established arrangements such as Indefeasible Rights of Use, capacity leases, and master services agreements that provide long-term access to fiber infrastructure.

As data center development accelerates, industry stakeholders will need to continue to navigate rising investment demands, evolving power strategies, and growing connectivity needs. Those able to balance these pressures with thoughtful planning and diversified infrastructure approaches will be best positioned to meet the next wave of global demand.

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Bruker (BRKR) just reported a classic mixed earnings result, topping quarterly profit estimates while simultaneously trimming its full year revenue and earnings outlook. This combination has clearly cooled investor enthusiasm.

See our latest analysis for Bruker.

The guidance cut comes after a sharp rebound in sentiment, with Bruker’s 30 day share price return of 19.8 percent and 90 day gain of 56.9 percent, in contrast with a weaker 1 year total shareholder return of negative 17.0 percent. This suggests that near term momentum is improving even as the longer term record remains underwhelming.

If this kind of volatility has you thinking about diversification, it may be worth exploring healthcare stocks as a way to uncover other healthcare names with different growth and risk profiles.

With earnings beating expectations but guidance moving lower, and the share price now hovering just below analyst targets after a strong rebound, is Bruker an underappreciated turnaround candidate, or is the market already pricing in any future recovery?

Compared with Bruker’s last close near 48 dollars, the most popular narrative pins fair value slightly higher, implying only marginal upside from here.

The analysts have a consensus price target of $46.727 for Bruker based on their expectations of its future earnings growth, profit margins and other risk factors. However, there is a degree of disagreement amongst analysts, with the most bullish reporting a price target of $65.0, and the most bearish reporting a price target of just $38.0.

Read the complete narrative.

Want to see what kind of revenue path, margin rebuild, and future earnings multiple are stitched together to justify this tight valuation gap? The answer might surprise you.

Result: Fair Value of $48.83 (ABOUT RIGHT)

Have a read of the narrative in full and understand what’s behind the forecasts.

However, persistent funding headwinds and execution risk around margin improvement could easily derail the constructive bookings story and reset expectations again.

Find out about the key risks to this Bruker narrative.

While the narrative fair value sits close to the market price, our DCF model paints a cooler picture, putting Bruker’s value nearer 36.72 dollars. This suggests the shares look overvalued at current levels. Is the market now leaning too heavily on the recovery story?

Look into how the SWS DCF model arrives at its fair value.

Simply Wall St performs a discounted cash flow (DCF) on every stock in the world every day (check out Bruker for example). We show the entire calculation in full. You can track the result in your watchlist or portfolio and be alerted when this changes, or use our stock screener to discover 910 undervalued stocks based on their cash flows. If you save a screener we even alert you when new companies match – so you never miss a potential opportunity.

If you see the story differently or want to dig into the numbers yourself, you can build a custom view in just minutes using Do it your way.

A great starting point for your Bruker research is our analysis highlighting 2 key rewards and 1 important warning sign that could impact your investment decision.

Before you move on, lock in a few fresh opportunities that match your style so you are not relying on just one turnaround story.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Companies discussed in this article include BRKR.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com

• Stablecoin could be used to collateralise government debt: Bilal.
• Pakistan seeks to be at forefront of digital innovation: crypto czar.
• “Why should we be at tail end when we have muscle and adoption?”

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Pakistan is set to launch its own stablecoin as part of efforts to embrace digital financial innovation, Bilal Bin Saqib, Chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), announced on Thursday.

According to CoinDesk, a digital media outlet focusing on cryptocurrency, blockchain, and the digital asset economy, a stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to another asset class, such as a fiat currency or gold, to stabilise its price.

Speaking at Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai, he said that the country is experimenting with both a stablecoin and a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), but stressed that the stablecoin initiative will definitely move forward.

The crypto czar highlighted that the stablecoin could serve as a tool to collateralise government debt, adding that Pakistan aims to be at the forefront of global digital financial developments.

“Why should we be at the tail end of it when we have the muscle and the adoption?” he remarked, underlining the country’s ambition to lead rather than follow in this emerging financial sector.

Separately, the Pakistan Crypto Council said that Saqib spoke on a high-level panel discussing the future of virtual assets and emerging-market regulation.

“He emphasised that for countries like Pakistan, clear and innovation-friendly crypto regulation is a key driver of economic growth. Pakistan’s work on stablecoins, data frameworks, and banking the unbanked can become valuable case studies for the world,” the council wrote on X.

Pakistan’s crypto market is estimated to have more than 40 million users with an annual trading volume exceeding $300 billion, making it among the most active frontier markets for digital assets.

Earlier in May, Bilal unveiled the country’s first government-led Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, marking a historic pivot in the nation’s digital and financial outlook.

Addressing a global audience that included US Vice President JD Vance, Eric Trump, and Donald Trump Jr in Las Vegas, he positioned Pakistan as a forward-looking digital hub, powered by its tech-savvy youth and strengthened by a shift toward decentralised finance.

Bilal revealed that the reserve would not be used for speculation or trading but would serve as a sovereign holding — signalling long-term commitment to blockchain-based finance. The national Bitcoin wallet already holds assets under state custody.

The journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology has formally retracted a sweeping scientific paper published in 2000 that became a key defense for Monsanto’s claim that Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate don’t cause cancer.

Martin van den Berg, the journal’s editor in chief, said in a note accompanying the retraction that he had taken the step because of “serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented”.

The paper, titled Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans, concluded that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weed killers posed no health risks to humans – no cancer risks, no reproductive risks, no adverse effects on development of endocrine systems in people or animals.

Regulators around the world have cited the paper as evidence of the safety of glyphosate herbicides, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in this assessment.

The listed authors of the paper were three scientists who did not work for Monsanto – Gary Williams, Robert Kroes and Ian Munro, and was held up by the company as a defense against conflicting scientific evidence linking Roundup to cancer. The fact that it was authored by scientists from outside the company, from seemingly independent researchers, gave it added validity.

But over the last decade, internal company documents, that came to light in litigation brought by plaintiffs in the US suffering from cancer, revealed Monsanto’s influence on the paper. The documents included an email from a company official discussing the research paper and praising the “hard work” of several Monsanto scientists as part of a strategy Monsanto called “Freedom to Operate” (FTO).

The corporate files showed how company officials celebrated when the paper was published.

In one email following the April 2000 publication of the Williams paper, Lisa Drake, then Monsanto government affairs official, described the toll the work of developing “independent” research papers took on multiple Monsanto employees.

“The publication by independent experts of the most exhaustive and detailed scientific assessment ever written on glyphosate … was due to the perseverance, hard work and dedication of the following group of folks,” Drake wrote. She then listed seven Monsanto employees. The group was applauded for “their hard work over three years of data collection, writing, review and relationship building with the papers’ authors”.

Drake further emphasized why the Williams paper was so significant for Monsanto’s business plans: “This human health publication on Roundup herbicide and its companion publication on ecotox and environmental fate will be undoubtedly be [sic] regarded as ‘the’ reference on Roundup and glyphosate safety,” she wrote in the email dated 25 May 2000.

“Our plan is now to utilize it both in the defense of Roundup and Roundup Ready crops worldwide and in our ability to competitively differentiate ourselves from generics.”

In a separate email, a company executive asked if Roundup logo polo shirts could be given to eight people who worked on the research papers as a “token of appreciation for a job well done”.

Monsanto’s Hugh Grant, who at that time was a senior executive on his way toward being named CEO and chairman, added his own praise, writing in an email: “This is very good work, well done to the team, please keep me in the loop as you build the PR info to go with it.”

In 2015, William Heydens, a Monsanto scientist, suggested that he and colleagues “ghost-write” another scientific paper. Monsanto could pay outside scientists to “edit & sign their names” to the work that he and others would do, Heydens wrote in an email. “Recall that is how we handled Williams Kroes and Munro 2000.”

The emails were spotlighted in jury trials in which plaintiffs suffering from cancer won billions of dollars in damages from Monsanto, which was bought by Bayer AG in 2018.

Gary Williams, one of the authors of the now retracted 2000 research paper, could not immediately be reached for comment. In 2017, Williams’s former employer New York Medical School said it found “no evidence” that a faculty member violated the school’s prohibition against authoring a paper ghostwritten by employees of Monsanto. The two other authors of the paper, Robert Kroes and Ian Munro, are deceased.

In explaining the decision to retract the 25-year-old research paper, Van den Berg wrote: “Concerns were raised regarding the authorship of this paper, validity of the research findings in the context of misrepresentation of the contributions by the authors and the study sponsor and potential conflicts of interest of the authors.”

He noted that the paper’s conclusions regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate were solely based on unpublished studies from Monsanto, ignoring other outside, published research.

Van den Berg did not respond to a request for comment.

When asked about the retraction, Bayer said in a statement that Monsanto’s involvement was adequately noted in the acknowledgments section of the paper in question, including a statement that referred to “key personnel at Monsanto who provided scientific support”. The company said the vast majority of thousands of published studies on glyphosate had no Monsanto involvement.

“The consensus among regulatory bodies worldwide that have conducted their own independent assessments based on the weight of evidence is that glyphosate can be used safely as directed and is not carcinogenic,” the company said.

An EPA spokesperson said that the agency was aware of the retraction but “has never relied on this specific article in developing any of its regulatory conclusions on glyphosate”.

The spokesperson said the EPA has “extensively studied glyphosate, reviewing more than 6,000 studies across all disciplines, including human and environmental health, in developing its regulatory conclusions”.

The updated human health risk assessment the agency is currently conducting for glyphosate is “using gold standard science”, the spokesman said. That assessment should be released for public comment in 2026 and will not rely on the retracted article.

“The retraction of this study is a long time coming,” said Brent Wisner, one of the lead lawyers in the Roundup litigation and a key player in getting the internal documents revealed to the public.

Wisner said the Williams, Kroes and Munro study was the “quintessential example of how companies like Monsanto could fundamentally undermine the peer-review process through ghostwriting, cherrypicking unpublished studies, and biased interpretations”.

“This garbage ghostwritten study finally got the fate it deserved,” Wisner said. “Hopefully, journals will now be more vigilant in protecting the impartiality of science on which so many people depend.”

News of the retraction of the study came in the same week the Trump administration urged the US supreme court to take up Bayer’s bid to curtail thousands of lawsuits claiming Roundup causes cancer.

In a brief filed at the court, the solicitor general, D John Sauer, said the company was correct that the federal law governing pesticides pre-empts lawsuits that make failure-to-warn claims over the products under state law.

Plaintiffs have said they developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other forms of cancer due to using Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides sold by the company, either at home or on the job.

This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group.