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Pattern Analysis of Money Flows in the Bitcoin Blockchain

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Complex Networks and Their Applications XI (COMPLEX NETWORKS 2016 2022)

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 1077))

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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.

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Acknowledgement

This project was partly founded by BITUNAM grant ANR-18-CE23-0004.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Blockchain & B2B Platforms Chair, École Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, 91120, Palaiseau, France

    Natkamon Tovanich

  2. Univ de Lyon, CNRS, Université Lyon 1, LIRIS, UMR5205, 69622, Villeurbanne, France

    Rémy Cazabet

Authors
  1. Natkamon Tovanich
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  2. Rémy Cazabet
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Natkamon Tovanich .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Burgundy, Dijon, France

    Hocine Cherifi

  2. Dipartimento di Fisica e Chimica Emilio Segrè, Università degli Studi Palermo, Palermo, Italy

    Rosario Nunzio Mantegna

  3. Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, USA

    Luis M. Rocha

  4. IUT Lumière - Université Lyon 2, University of Lyon, Bron, France

    Chantal Cherifi

  5. Dipartimento di Fisica e Chimica Emilio Segrè, Università degli Studi Palermo, Palermo, Italy

    Salvatore Miccichè

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Tovanich, N., Cazabet, R. (2023). Pattern Analysis of Money Flows in the Bitcoin Blockchain. In: Cherifi, H., Mantegna, R.N., Rocha, L.M., Cherifi, C., Miccichè, S. (eds) Complex Networks and Their Applications XI. COMPLEX NETWORKS 2016 2022. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 1077. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21127-0_36

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21127-0_36

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-21126-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-21127-0

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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