IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2207.07315.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Pattern Analysis of Money Flow in the Bitcoin Blockchain

Author

Listed:
  • Natkamon Tovanich
  • R'emy Cazabet

Abstract

Bitcoin is the first and highest valued cryptocurrency that stores transactions in a publicly distributed ledger called the blockchain. Understanding the activity and behavior of Bitcoin actors is a crucial research topic as they are pseudonymous in the transaction network. In this article, we propose a method based on taint analysis to extract taint flows --dynamic networks representing the sequence of Bitcoins transferred from an initial source to other actors until dissolution. Then, we apply graph embedding methods to characterize taint flows. We evaluate our embedding method with taint flows from top mining pools and show that it can classify mining pools with high accuracy. We also found that taint flows from the same period show high similarity. Our work proves that tracing the money flows can be a promising approach to classifying source actors and characterizing different money flow patterns

Suggested Citation

  • Natkamon Tovanich & R'emy Cazabet, 2022. "Pattern Analysis of Money Flow in the Bitcoin Blockchain," Papers 2207.07315, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2207.07315
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.07315
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Natkamon Tovanich & Nicolas Soulié & Nicolas Heulot & Petra Isenberg, 2022. "The evolution of mining pools and miners’ behaviors in the Bitcoin blockchain," Post-Print hal-03610424, HAL.
    2. Matthias Lischke & Benjamin Fabian, 2016. "Analyzing the Bitcoin Network: The First Four Years," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-40, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Natkamon Tovanich & Rémy Cazabet, 2022. "Pattern Analysis of Money Flow in the Bitcoin Blockchain," Post-Print hal-03896866, HAL.
    2. Valentina Gatteschi & Fabrizio Lamberti & Claudio Demartini & Chiara Pranteda & Víctor Santamaría, 2018. "Blockchain and Smart Contracts for Insurance: Is the Technology Mature Enough?," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-16, February.
    3. Pietro Saggese & Esther Segalla & Michael Sigmund & Burkhard Raunig & Felix Zangerl & Bernhard Haslhofer, 2023. "Assessing the Solvency of Virtual Asset Service Providers: Are Current Standards Sufficient?," Papers 2309.16408, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.
    4. Milena Oehlers & Benjamin Fabian, 2021. "Graph Metrics for Network Robustness—A Survey," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(8), pages 1-48, April.
    5. Fantazzini, Dean, 2023. "Assessing the Credit Risk of Crypto-Assets Using Daily Range Volatility Models," MPRA Paper 117141, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. George Vlahavas & Kostas Karasavvas & Athena Vakali, 2024. "Unsupervised clustering of bitcoin transactions," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 10(1), pages 1-31, December.
    7. Bernhard Haslhofer & Burkhard Raunig & Pietro Saggase & Esther Segalla & Michael Sigmund & Felix Zangerl, 2023. "Assessing the Solvency of Virtual Asset Service Providers: Are Current Standards Sufficient? (Pietro Saggese, Esther Segalla, Michael Sigmund, Burkhard Raunig, Felix Zangerl, Bernhard Haslhofer)," Working Papers 248, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank).
    8. Bruzgė, Rasa & Šapkauskienė, Alfreda, 2022. "Network analysis on Bitcoin arbitrage opportunities," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    9. Nadia Pocher & Mirko Zichichi & Fabio Merizzi & Muhammad Zohaib Shafiq & Stefano Ferretti, 2023. "Detecting anomalous cryptocurrency transactions: An AML/CFT application of machine learning-based forensics," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 33(1), pages 1-17, December.
    10. Zhang, Yan & Wang, Si-Xia & Yao, Jian-Ting & Tong, Rui-Peng, 2023. "The impact of behavior safety management system on coal mine work safety: A system dynamics model of quadripartite evolutionary game," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    11. Francisco Javier García-Corral & José Antonio Cordero-García & Jaime de Pablo-Valenciano & Juan Uribe-Toril, 2022. "A bibliometric review of cryptocurrencies: how have they grown?," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 8(1), pages 1-31, December.
    12. Karau, Sören, 2021. "Monetary policy and Bitcoin," Discussion Papers 41/2021, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    13. Feyen,Erik H.B. & Kawashima,Yusaku & Mittal,Raunak, 2022. "Crypto-Assets Activity around the World : Evolution and Macro-Financial Drivers," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9962, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2207.07315. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.