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Our Bitcoin Big Bang visualization summarizes the entire six-year history of all bitcoin transactions – recorded in the 12 Gigabyte Blockchain ledger. What insights can be gleaned from the data and why are we doing it?
Elliptic works to counter the illicit use of Bitcoin by providing businesses with tools that can analyze cryptocurrency payments and determine whether they are likely to be criminal. By identifying dark markets, known thefts and other illegal activities on the Blockchain, we can help businesses prevent money laundering.
Importantly, we do not use this data to invade user privacy, and we have removed identifying information from many entities in the visualization. We don’t make any judgments about any activity either – we simply provide businesses with information about links to criminal activity to inform their compliance decisions.
Dark trades like silk have dominated media portrayals of Bitcoin – and it’s certainly true that in the early days of Bitcoin, there were significant transaction upheavals involving these base-based locales. They appear to be larger than those flows from exchanges, where bitcoins may have been purchased to make purchases in these markets:
Centrastiost Mt. Gox in the bitcoin network is also done very clearly. Mt. Gox was a Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange that filed for bankruptcy in 2014, with more than $450 million in customer funds either lost or stolen. Our data shows that Mt. Gox has been involved in large volumes of transactions with many different types of entities – although dark trades and gambling services predominate:
What is also becoming evident is the role of mixing services like Bitcoin Fog. These mixers are used to mask the source and destination of transactions. It is especially used when transacting on dark markets – as the visualization shows:
There is a huge amount to learn from this data, about an economy that has been largely opaque until now. We use this insight to build trust in the bitcoin ecosystem by providing compliance tools that enable businesses to meet their compliance obligations and deter illegal use of the cryptocurrency.
We will open our AML product API to a select group of test customers this summer. If you are interested in being among the first users to take advantage of this revolutionary technology, please contact us.
Compliance Financial Services Crypto Crime
