The DOI matches its Crossref record; 21 of the 21 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
An inquiry into money laundering tools in the Bitcoin ecosystem
Abstract
We provide a first systematic account of opportunities and limitations of anti-money laundering (AML) in Bitcoin, a decentralized cryptographic currency proliferating on the Internet. Our starting point is the observation that Bitcoin attracts criminal activity as many say it is an anonymous transaction system. While this claim does not stand up to scrutiny, several services offering increased transaction anonymization have emerged in the Bitcoin ecosystem - such as Bitcoin Fog, BitLaundry, and the Send Shared functionality of Blockchain.info. Some of these services routinely handle the equivalent of 6-digit dollar amounts. In a series of experiments, we use reverse-engineering methods to understand the mode of operation and try to trace anonymized transactions back to our probe accounts. While Bitcoin Fog and Blockchain.info successfully anonymize our test transactions, we can link the input and output transactions of BitLaundry. Against the backdrop of these findings, it appears unlikely that a Know-Your-Customer principle can be enforced in the Bitcoin system. Hence, we sketch alternative AML strategies accounting for imperfect knowledge of true identities but exploiting public information in the transaction graph, and discuss the implications for Bitcoin as a decentralized currency.
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Cites
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Cited by
Where Is Current Research on Blockchain Technology?—A Systematic Review
Yli-Huumo, J., Ko, D., Choi, S., Park, S., & Smolander, K. (2016) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0163477 · Cited by 2,317
Bitcoin and beyond: a technical survey on decentralized digital currencies
Tschorsch, F., & Scheuermann, B. (2016) · IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials · doi:10.1109/comst.2016.2535718 · Cited by 1,690
A Review on the Use of Blockchain for the Internet of Things
Fernandez-Carames, T. M., & Fraga-Lamas, P. (2018) · IEEE Access · doi:10.1109/access.2018.2842685 · Cited by 1,078
Blockchain for the Internet of Things: A systematic literature review
Conoscenti, M., Vetro, A., & De Martin, J. C. (2016) · 2016 IEEE/ACS 13th International Conference of Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA) · doi:10.1109/aiccsa.2016.7945805 · Cited by 769
Hassan, M. U., Rehmani, M. H., & Chen, J. (2019) · Future Generation Computer Systems · doi:10.1016/j.future.2019.02.060 · Cited by 520
Metadata
- Authors
- Moser, M., Bohme, R., & Breuker, D.
- Venue
- 2013 APWG eCrime Researchers Summit
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Published
- 2013-09
- Pages
- 1-14
- OpenAlex
- W1994130174
- Cited by
- 386
- References
- 21
- FWCI
- 11.03
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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