US Office of Foreign Assets Control appeals for blockchain analysis tools

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The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is looking to bolster its blockchain analytics capabilities, according to details of a notice published by the agency.

The body, which oversees the implementation and enforcement of U.S. international sanctions, indicated it was on the lookout for “one to two tools that provide access to five (5) users each, either as individual licenses or one concurrent license.”

The details were unveiled in a “sources sought” notice published by the agency, soliciting bids from independent contractors.

As per the terms of the notice, the agency is looking for tools that can be used to “analyze and track virtual currency transactions.”

“The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) requires one or more commercial online blockchain tracing tools—depending on available funding. These tool(s) will be used to prepare investigators in OFAC’s Office of Global Targeting (OGT) group to analyze and track virtual currency transactions, e.g. Bitcoin, in order to gather attribution information on involved parties that OGT may put on the SDN List.”

“These tools will be used specifically to support cyber sanctions implementation undertaken by OFAC. More than one tool is preferred, in order to corroborate attribution of cyber actors, sufficient to meet legal requirements for use as evidence in OFAC designations determinations.”

Specific features wanted by OFAC include ways of “address clustering, transaction flow mapping and graphing, wallet explorer, analysis of user behavior, and exchange rate, trade, and market data.”

The notice sets a deadline for submissions of May 25, by which time all interested contractors are expected to have submitted their capabilities statements.

“All responsible sources may express their interest and provide capability statements in response to this notice. The deadline for submitting capability statements in response to the Sources Sought Notice is May 25, 2021, by 2:00pm EDT.”

See also: CoinGeek Live presentation, Blockchain Intelligence: Analytics, Forensics & Compliance Tools for Bitcoin SV