Level: MA
Responsible Person: Yu Zhang
Keywords: Illegal Users, Legal Users, Transaction Patterns

Bitcoin, invented by Nakamoto (2008), has been a great success since its appearance in 2009. As an innovative way of payment, it aims at “decentralized” payment anonymously, which also promotes its usage in illicit activities. According to Foley et al. (2019), 46% of bitcoin transactions are related to illegal activities, recognizing these illicit activities are significant to society. Illegal nodes usually use different methods to hide their illegal transaction and identity information, like using new address each time. So, we think that illicit activities have different patterns when comparing with other legal activities in transaction network.
In this project, we will provide some illegal nodes and legal nodes for students to start the research, but students also need to collect more data by themselves. The thesis goal is to find out different patterns between illicit activities and legal activities.

Reference:
[1] Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Decentralized business
How much Financial Studies, 32 review, page 21260, 2008.
[2] Sean Foley, Jonathan R Karlsen, and T ̄alis J Putni ̧nˇs. Sex, drugs, and bitcoin: illegal activity is financed through cryptocurrencies? The Review of (5):1798–1853, 2019.