Blockchain Intelligence Group (BIG) (CSE: BIGG; OTCQB: BBKCF; WKN: A2PS9W), a digital forensics firm which supplies a suite of blockchain analytics and risk assessment services, announced today it would add Bitcoin SV (BSV) to its list of supported blockchains. In a statement, the company recognized Bitcoin as “a protocol for the world’s data network similar to the Internet,” and “dedicated to unbounded scaling and massive on-chain transaction throughput by enterprise.”
A subsidiary of the publicly-listed BIGG Digital Assets Inc., Blockchain Intelligence Group offer two primary products, QLUE (Qualitiative Law Enforcement Unified Edge), and Bitrank Verified, both of which are aimed at large corporations and government agencies wishing to perform due diligence and other investigative tasks using blockchain data.
BIG President Lance Morginn told CoinGeek on the decision to add Bitcoin SV support that it was necessary for his company to have “visibility into the top cryptocurrencies in the marketplace.” Other blockchains/assets supported on BIG’s suite of services include BTC, ETH, LTC, and ERC-20 tokens.
The Vancouver-based, CSE-listed company launched five and a half years ago, filling an emerging market void for data intelligence on digital asset transactions. According to Morginn, there was also a “lack-of-knowledge state” in industries that would inevitably encounter and engage with the digital asset community.
He says that they initially received the most expressions of interest from law enforcement agencies, with banks and more specific digital asset-oriented companies like exchanges and payment processors following further down the line. In recent years, there have been increasing obligations on these companies to gather data on their customers (KYC).
Still, some exchanges believe that moving between “crypto-friendly” jurisdictions or having ambiguous corporate structures protects them from fulfilling these obligations—or from regulatory intervention altogether. But this is becoming increasingly more difficult to do, demonstrating that governments have little-to-no tolerance for digital services that facilitate money laundering or allow parties to move and shuffle large amounts of money across borders without detection.
“Our tagline since day one has been ‘bringing cryptocurrencies mainstream’ and we feel that these tools will allow regulators and law enforcement to be able to perform their traditional duties in this new realm,” said Morginn.
“With that, regulation will be passed, making crypto on-ramps easier, making adoption greater.”
Blockchain Intelligence Group services and products
BIG has tailored its services to serve a number of different business models, and provides blockchain forensics training for its users and others. Morgan said representatives from over 550 firms have been through the course, including JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, CIBC, and Royal Bank.
It also operates the Crypto Fusion Center, an information-sharing hub that brings together representatives from law enforcement and the financial world. Participants are able to submit known addresses used in ransomware attacks and other crimes, and includes a push API.
“[Crypto Fusion Center] is a platform that unites law enforcement and the financial world in a single portal that allows submissions of ransomware addresses and blacklist addresses,” Morginn explained.
“This is sort of our social responsibility component to being a part of the industry and that’s a free service that we offer.
Bitcoin Association Founding President Jimmy Nguyen said BIGG’s decision highlighted the BSV industry’s commitment to legal compliance, adding that this is necessary to gain mass adoption.
“Unlike other digital currency camps, the Bitcoin SV ecosystem strongly advocates for building a lawful and regulation-friendly industry, in order to win the confidence of enterprises, governments and consumers.”
“Blockchain Intelligence Group advances that mission by providing practical tools to help businesses satisfy AML, KYC, CTF and OFAC compliance, tracking mechanisms to investigate and stop crime, and forensic investigation services that enable law to be enforced over digital currency activity. Its solutions will make it easier for more businesses globally to offer BSV services. We welcome Blockchain Intelligence Group to the Bitcoin SV ecosystem, and look forward to collaborating with its team to promote a lawful blockchain future.”
Bitrankverified produces blockchain address reports for AML/CFT compliance and other due diligence. It includes a set of APIs that can be integrated with in-house software, and produces assessed risk scores for addresses and transactions. In contrast, QLUE was developed in partnership with anti-money laundering specialists and senior law enforcement investigators. It includes several blockchain analytics tools including advanced search algorithms and transaction/address links, automatic flagging for suspicious activity and attempted concealment, and monitoring. As well as law enforcement, QLUE may be used by regulators, researchers, exchanges, banks, and other government agencies – a number of whom had requested that BIGG offer Bitcoin SV support.
“We’ve had requests from both law enforcement and financial institutions for [Bitcoin SV support], so we’re very excited to bring this to market,” explained Morginn.
“Bitcoin SV has the sixth largest market cap out there and is trading over one billion dollars per day. It’s kind of hard not to realize that this is a cryptocurrency that’s here to stay. We think that Bitcoin SV has made significant advancements over Bitcoin itself in the amount of transactions that can occur and so we feel that it is a crypto that’s going to be in great demand—and for it to be included in tools like ours.”
Forensics is the future for blockchain, only Bitcoin can do it
Though many in the digital asset and blockchain industries have sometimes decried data analytics firms’ entry into the space due to their pursuit of anonymity and wish to skirt around laws, Bitcoin was designed with a structure that makes financial crimes easier to trace, not harder. Its open blockchain, which records every transaction into perpetuity, is ripe for anyone wishing to analyze the data it contains and draw links that may aid in investigations.
“In the traditional fiat world, there are similar tools available to law enforcement that allow them to go and track. In order for law enforcement to be comfortable and to be able to tell regulators that they can do their job, tools like these needed to be built for cryptocurrencies,” Morginn explained.
“Bitcoin is a public ledger. I think everyone knows from Satoshi Nakamoto that the launch of Bitcoin was because of the lack of transparency in the financial system. What our tools do is give further visibility into the flow of files and make it easier for people to track these transactions.”
Attempts to move transaction data off-chain, or build new chains that obfuscate transaction information, are doomed to fail. Even if the technology works as advertised, forensics technology is also becoming more advanced and accessible. Systems that promote anonymity over compliance will find themselves on the fringes, untrusted by large users and regarded with suspicion by governments. Like tax haven countries in years past, they will eventually be brought into compliance or shut out of the system. Only Bitcoin, which keeps its transaction on-chain (with the massive scaling capacity required to do so) can be trusted to process the world’s data in a way that satisfies everyone’s needs. And that one chain is Bitcoin SV. With the new suite of tools now on offer utilizing the digital currency, Morginn is confident that another wave of development in the ongoing Bitcoin SV success story could be just around the corner.
“Developers should be thrilled that we are introducing these tools, because anything that they’re developing that helps the overall ecosystem will eventually touch paths with what we have here. So together, we can further ensure the success of Bitcoin SV,” he said.
“The only way that an exchange or financial institution in a country that has proper regulation of AML is to have the types of tools that we offer in order to meet their various regulatory requirements, be it for banking, broker-dealers or OTC businesses, these tools are required in order to allow trading to take place. This is going to further empower Bitcoin SV and their mission to become the cryptocurrency of choice.”
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