Elliptic launches new blockchain analytics solution
UK-based Elliptic, a global player in crypto asset risk management, has launched a new solution for blockchain analytics, allowing crypto assets to be tracked across all blockchains and assets simultaneously.
Holistic screening brings a new approach to crypto-compliance and risk management, by allowing businesses to achieve cross-chain compliance, eliminating the need for manual multi-asset investigations, and instead providing automated risk insights.
Dr. Tom Robinson, co-founder and chief scientist at Elliptic acknowledges that the paradigm has shifted. The company has been helping crypto businesses and financial institutions meet their AML, CTF and sanctions obligations for nearly a decade. However, the company now needs to accommodate the fact that individual cryptoassets and blockchains are no longer isolated systems, and have become part of a larger, interconnected cryptoeconomy.
New innovations such as decentralized exchanges and cross-chain bridges have removed many of the barriers between assets, allowing the free flow of capital and making crypto more useful and valuable. This also opens new avenues for cross-chain crime.
Is crypto that safe?
As revealed in new Elliptical research, hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto assets from ransomware and North Korean cyber activity are being laundered through cross-chain bridges. Decentralized exchanges are being exploited to avoid seizure of billions of dollars in stolen assets, and coin exchange services, especially in Russia of late, are being used for money laundering and sanctions evasion.
Holistic screening allows this activity to be screened and tracked. This is achieved automatically and in milliseconds through Elliptic’s APIs, so that companies can screen customer activity on a large scale, and consequently be followed. Holistic screening goes beyond simple chain analysis to include a variety of techniques, including advanced smart contract and cross-chain bridge tracking.
Holistic Screening is powered by Nexus, Elliptic’s new blockchain analytics engine. Developed over the past three years, Nexus is designed to track crypto asset flows programmatically and rapidly across and between all assets and blockchains. It takes Elliptic’s proprietary data for each cryptoasset and blockchain, and merges them into a single financial network, representing the entire cryptoecosystem. Compliance teams can screen crypto transactions and wallets. Elliptic will identify the risk, regardless of asset or blockchain, the company says.
Can fraud be deleted?
Fraud is caused by people and can be stopped by them. Solutions like the one offered by Elliptic can help a lot with that, but what happens when people choose to ignore the signs? Hopefully regulators step in then, as happened in WazirX’s (Binance’s Indian arm) case.
The branch had its assets frozen by the country’s Economic Crime Investigation Unit, under the Money Laundering Prevention Act. The total value of the frozen assets amounts to USD 8.15 million in bank deposits. The freeze stemmed from India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) investigation into predatory lending companies that allegedly used local crypto exchanges to launder their ill-gotten gains.
