Follow along as we report live from #Links22 London. If you haven’t already, sign up for the livestream 🎥ow.ly/h6jA50HZaIH
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Thanks for your patience! We're getting started in 10 minutes. #Links22
Co-founder & CEO @gronager kicks off our day by discussing what #Links22 is all about. Creating a link between the public & private sector so that biz & gov agencies can build better-regulated #crypto products & services that are safer for all customers. #Links22
“Our ability to be more than the sum of our parts will be what we need to get through this.” Sir Alex Younger on Ukraine 🇺🇦 #Links22
On #crypto: Authoritarians are completely conflicted…
What is our response going to be?
Former MI6 Chief, Sir Alex Younger joins our CSO & co-founder @jony_levin on stage for a fireside chat #Links22
"If we have data on our side, we can prevail." Sir Alex Younger #Links22
“We think consumer protection is very important & any legislation should have that at its heart…people want to access crypto & making it harder for the general public isn’t going to stop people. It will drive them to locations where they’re less protected.”@BSHalliday#Links22
On info sharing 👉
"You need two ingredients. A regulatory framework in a country and trust b/w public and private institutions."
Happening now: How should you get started w/ #crypto recovery? Aidan Larkin of @asset_reality & Carmel King of @GrantThornton give their take: #Links22
✅Dive in & take advantage of the resources available to upskill your team
✅Talk to the experts, so you know what to look for
@Caro_Malcolm@TheFCA "In web2, the vision is that everything is free, but we're on someone else's land. The vision for web3 is a democratic internet that we get to build ourselves."
Our Chief Economist @philip_gradwell & @LexSokolin of @ConsenSys on the future of crypto and more. #Links22
Yesterday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced extensive sanctions against Russian businesses and elites following the country’s invasion of Ukraine. This has prompted many to ask Chainalysis how Russia may attempt to use cryptocurrency to evade sanctions.
As is true in traditional finance, some may use crypto for sanctions evasion. But the inherent transparency of blockchains combined with Chainalysis data & tools gives governments and crypto businesses the ability to identify transactions by sanctioned entities and take action.
It’s unlikely that individuals designated in yesterday’s sanctions would move large quantities of crypto now. Russian elites and financial authorities have likely been preparing for sanctions, and would have carried out those transactions slowly over the past few months.
We can investigate 🔎 this by analyzing the balances of criminal whales. 🐋
Let’s break down how we define criminal whales, how we analyze them, and why tracking their activity is so important.
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What is a criminal whale? 🐋
We define a criminal whale as any private wallet holding $1M or more worth of #crypto that has received 10% or more of its funds from illicit addresses.
Over the last several days, we’ve seen media outlets publish faulty blockchain analysis related to the movement of funds by #DarkSide, the #ransomware group behind the Colonial Pipeline hack.
Blockchain analysis firms erroneously identified DarkSide’s movement of funds as a simple peel chain, without identifying the mixer involved. They incorrectly traced the funds to exchanges & other services based on that conclusion. bit.ly/3pSSDxU
A peel chain is a transaction pattern commonly seen in blockchain analysis, in which funds appear to move through several intermediate addresses. Peel chains occur naturally and aren’t inherently obfuscatory or evidence of money laundering. bit.ly/3pSSDxU
THREAD: Based on our blockchain analysis, we can confirm reports speculating that DarkSide #ransomware group has rebranded to BlackMatter. This is part of a trend in which ransomware groups shut down & reemerge with new names, often after law enforcement actions or media scrutiny
Chainalysis was able to confirm the financial connection between DarkSide and BlackMatter in late July '21 a few days before security researchers speculated there was a connection based on similarities w/ their encryption algorithms, decryptors, and more: bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/…
Sometimes following the money can provide an early indicator about a ransomware group’s revitalized operations. In this case, financial connections were made on the blockchain before any attacks were made public on BlackMatter’s blog therecord.media/an-interview-w…
THREAD: Here's a quick summary of our blog on on the Bitcoin donation made in December to alt-right groups and figures involved in last week's violence at the Capitol.
Alt-right personality Nick Fuentes, who was pictured outside the Capitol but denies entering, was by far the biggest beneficiary of the donation, receiving roughly $250K. bit.ly/38J9quj
Other far right figures who received Bitcoin in the donation include Patrick Casey, Vincent Reynouard, and Ethan Ralph, as well as platforms and websites like the Daily Stormer, VDARE, and Gab. bit.ly/38J9quj
THREAD: We published a response to Treasury's proposed rule re: unhosted wallets, analyzing data behind their use, what the industry would have to do to comply & offering thoughts on how the rule could better achieve its purpose to curtail illicit activity bit.ly/3mHLYS2
First, three clear trends from our blockchain data suggest unhosted wallets are primarily used by individuals and organizations to either store their cryptocurrency for investment purposes, or move it between regulated trading venues.
Our first chart shows the vast majority of bitcoin sent between unhosted wallets is sourced from Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs), primarily exchanges: