BitAnalysis: A Visualization System for Bitcoin Wallet Investigation

Yujing Sun, Hao Xiong, Siu Ming Yiu, Kwok-Yan Lam

Abstract: Bitcoin is gaining ever increasing popularity. However, professional skills are required if people want to check bitcoin transaction information from the blockchain. As pointed out in a recent study, there is a lack of tools to support effective interactive investigation of bitcoin transactions. Therefore, we present a novel visualization system, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">BitAnalysis</i> , for interactive bitcoin wallet investigation. The analytical and visualization functions of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">BitAnalysis</i> are defined and developed by following the advice and requirements of a group of entrepreneurs and regulators of bitcoin-related business. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">BitAnalysis</i> provides a rich set of functions and intuitive visual interfaces for the users, such as law-enforcement officers and regulators, to effectively visualize and analyze the transactions of a bitcoin wallet (i.e., a cluster of bitcoin addresses) and its related wallets, to track the flow of bitcoins, and to identify wallet correlation using our novel clustering functions. To achieve these functions, we have designed new visualization techniques for presenting bitcoin transactions information and introduced the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">connection diagram</i> and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">bitcoin flow map</i> as new ways of analyzing, tracking and monitoring the trading activities of a cluster of closely related wallets. We also present an extensive user study that validated the effectiveness and usability of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">BitAnalysis</i> .