KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent and the Grenadines — ChangeNOW, a cryptocurrency super app, and CoinRabbit, a crypto asset management platform, have jointly released a research report titled "Financial Privacy in the Digital Age." The report examines the use, abuse, and regulation of privacy-preserving technologies — including coin mixers, zero-knowledge proofs, and privacy-focused chains — across the cryptocurrency landscape.

The report arrives amid an intensifying global debate over crypto privacy. In 2022, the U.S. Treasury's OFAC sanctioned the mixing service Tornado Cash, marking one of the most aggressive enforcement actions against on-chain privacy infrastructure. Several major exchanges have since delisted privacy coins such as Monero and Zcash, citing compliance pressures. Against that backdrop, the ChangeNOW–CoinRabbit report attempts to separate the technology itself from its misuse.

Privacy as an Essential Safety Measure

The research evaluates whether privacy technology causes more harm than good by comparing the actual scale of illicit exploitation against the legitimate need for privacy in real-world scenarios. The report's conclusion is unambiguous: on-chain privacy has evolved from a niche preference into an essential safeguard.

According to the findings, on-chain privacy currently protects:

• Individuals: Shielding high-net-worth holders from physical extortion and targeted kidnapping.
• Businesses: Preventing corporate rivals from monitoring treasury movements and sensitive financial deal flow.
• Humanitarian efforts: Enabling civilians in conflict zones and sanctioned regions to receive medical payments, while keeping journalists and activists operational.

Regulatory Approach

The report's central finding is that privacy and compliance are not a zero-sum trade-off. Across every category examined, the decisive enforcement vulnerability is located at the fiat off-ramp — the point where cryptocurrency converts into spendable currency through exchanges or payment processors already subject to KYC and AML obligations in most jurisdictions — rather than within the transactional privacy infrastructure upstream.

"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," said Walter Barrett, Chief Strategy & Growth Officer at CoinRabbit.

Key Findings and Threat Assessment

The report highlights several critical data points:

• Pig-butchering fraud — long-term social engineering schemes in which attackers build false relationships with victims before inducing them to invest in sham platforms — generated an estimated USD 75 billion in cumulative losses between 2020 and 2024.
• According to CertiK data, $124.1 million in cryptocurrency was targeted across 52 verified physical "wrench attacks" in the first half of 2026 alone — a 33% increase in incidents and a nearly elevenfold surge in financial exposure compared to H1 2025.
• Crypto payments linked to human trafficking networks in Southeast Asia grew 85% in 2025.
• Corporate data exposure remains a significant threat: 36% of corporate board members identify internal financial data becoming publicly accessible as a top governance concern, with the average data breach now costing USD 4.44 million.

These cases illustrate how on-chain visibility and off-chain data leaks can rapidly translate into physical threats — a dynamic that has prompted growing interest in privacy-preserving tools not only from individual users but also from institutions managing treasury operations on public chains.

Industry Solutions for Compliant Privacy

"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."

The report profiles two operational examples of privacy architecture designed to preserve AML compliance:

• ChangeNOW's Private Crypto Transfers: Breaks the deterministic link between sender and receiver without pooling user funds.
• CoinRabbit's custodial model: Uses dynamic per-user deposit addresses to prevent end-to-end reconstruction of a client's holdings from public blockchain data.

Recommendations for Policymakers

The report concludes with five recommendations directed at regulators, industry participants, analytics firms, and policymakers. These recommendations focus on shifting enforcement resources toward fiat off-ramps and enhancing cross-jurisdictional intelligence sharing. They do not seek to restrict transactional privacy for general users.

The full report, "Financial Privacy in the Digital Age," is available online.

About ChangeNOW

ChangeNOW is a personal crypto super app providing clients with a fast, simple, and secure way to access Web3 finance.

About CoinRabbit

CoinRabbit is a crypto asset management platform built for long-term capital preservation. Since 2020, it has maintained 100% reserves, keeping clients' funds safe and never reused.