Skip to main content

Characteristics of Bitcoin Transactions on Cryptomarkets

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Security, Privacy, and Anonymity in Computation, Communication, and Storage (SpaCCS 2019)

Abstract

Cryptomarkets (or darknet markets) are commercial hidden-service websites that operate on The Onion Router (Tor) anonymity network. Cryptomarkets accept primarily bitcoin as payment since bitcoin is pseudonymous. Understanding bitcoin transaction patterns in cryptomarkets is important for analyzing vulnerabilities of privacy protection models in cryptocurrecies. It is also important for law enforcement to track illicit online crime activities in cryptomarkets. In this paper, we discover interesting characteristics of bitcoin transaction patterns in cryptomarkets. The results demonstrate that the privacy protection mechanism in cryptomarkets and bitcoin is vulnerable. Adversaries can easily gain valuable information for analyzing trading activities in cryptomarkets.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Bitcoin-blockchain-parser. https://github.com/alecalve/python-bitcoin-blockchain-parser. Accessed 10 Mar 2019

  2. Bitcoin core. https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/. Accessed 10 Mar 2019

  3. Five surprising facts about bitcoin. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/21/five-surprising-facts-about-bitcoin. Accessed 10 Mar 2019

  4. How bitcoin lets you spy on careless companies. http://https://web.archive.org/web/20140209202222/www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/06/bitcoin-retail. Accessed 10 Mar 2019

  5. How to parse the bitcoin blockchain. http://codesuppository.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-to-parse-bitcoin-blockchain.html. Accessed 10 Mar 2019

  6. Mapping the bitcoin economy could reveal users’ identities. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/518816. Accessed 10 Mar 2019

  7. Running a full node. https://bitcoin.org/en/full-node#what-is-a-full-node. Accessed 10 Mar 2019

  8. Androulaki, E., Karame, G.O., Roeschlin, M., Scherer, T., Capkun, S.: Evaluating user privacy in bitcoin. In: Sadeghi, A.-R. (ed.) FC 2013. LNCS, vol. 7859, pp. 34–51. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39884-1_4

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. de Balthasar, T., Hernandez-Castro, J.: An analysis of bitcoin laundry services. In: Lipmaa, H., Mitrokotsa, A., Matulevičius, R. (eds.) NordSec 2017. LNCS, vol. 10674, pp. 297–312. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70290-2_18

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  10. Fleder, M., Kester, M.S., Pillai, S.: Bitcoin transaction graph analysis. arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.01657 (2015)

  11. Genkin, D., Papadopoulos, D., Papamanthou, C.: Privacy in decentralized cryptocurrencies. Commun. ACM 61(6), 78–88 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Gilbert, M., Dasgupta, N.: Silicon to syringe: cryptomarkets and disruptive innovation in opioid supply chains. Int. J. Drug Policy 46, 160–167 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Harrigan, M., Fretter, C.: The unreasonable effectiveness of address clustering. In: 2016 International IEEE Conferences on Ubiquitous Intelligence & Computing, Advanced and Trusted Computing, Scalable Computing and Communications, Cloud and Big Data Computing, Internet of People, and Smart World Congress (UIC/ATC/ScalCom/CBDCom/IoP/SmartWorld), pp. 368–373. IEEE (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Meiklejohn, S., et al.: A fistful of bitcoins: characterizing payments among men with no names. In: Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on Internet Measurement Conference, pp. 127–140. ACM (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Nakamoto, S., et al.: Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Ron, D., Shamir, A.: Quantitative analysis of the full bitcoin transaction graph. In: Sadeghi, A.-R. (ed.) FC 2013. LNCS, vol. 7859, pp. 6–24. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39884-1_2

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  17. Ruffing, T., Moreno-Sanchez, P., Kate, A.: CoinShuffle: practical decentralized coin mixing for bitcoin. In: Kutyłowski, M., Vaidya, J. (eds.) ESORICS 2014. LNCS, vol. 8713, pp. 345–364. Springer, Cham (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11212-1_20

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Spagnuolo, M., Maggi, F., Zanero, S.: BitIodine: extracting intelligence from the bitcoin network. In: Christin, N., Safavi-Naini, R. (eds.) FC 2014. LNCS, vol. 8437, pp. 457–468. Springer, Heidelberg (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45472-5_29

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Ziegeldorf, J.H., Grossmann, F., Henze, M., Inden, N., Wehrle, K.: CoinParty: secure multi-party mixing of bitcoins. In: Proceedings of the 5th ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy, pp. 75–86. ACM (2015)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xucan Chen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Chen, X. et al. (2019). Characteristics of Bitcoin Transactions on Cryptomarkets. In: Wang, G., Feng, J., Bhuiyan, M., Lu, R. (eds) Security, Privacy, and Anonymity in Computation, Communication, and Storage. SpaCCS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11611. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24907-6_20

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24907-6_20

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-24906-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-24907-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics