Some Crypto-Criminals Think Jumping Across Blockchains Covers Their Tracks. Big Mistake.
A popular cryptocurrency service that may appear to enhance anonymity actually doesn’t, according to new research
By Mike Orcutt
By now, savvy cryptocurrency users looking to cover their tracks are well aware that Bitcoin and blockchain systems like it are far from anonymous. Law enforcement officials can trace transactions and even identify who is making them.
Some users believed they’d found a way around this. They thought investigators could only track transactions within blockchains, so they could stay anonymous by moving from one blockchain to another. A number of startups have sprung up that offer exactly this service. Well, blockchain sleuths may have this avenue covered now too.
The hypothesis used to be that criminals using Bitcoin would eventually try to cash out into fiat currency, using an exchange. In 2013, Sarah Meiklejohn, now an associate professor of cryptography and security at University College London, helped pioneer blockchain tracking methods that rely on this theory.
The details of the approach are technical, but at a high level it involves creating network maps based on the movement of coins…
