For Noctua, the complete Bitcoin (“BTC”) database is available with all transactions from the start. The advantage is that it allows a simple and deep search for the flow of transactions and the IP addresses from which they took place.
Background Bitcoin
The design of the BTC protocol was the result of libertarian anarchist ideas. Confidence in the financial world had fallen sharply in 2007, which caused BTC to take a strong wind. The developers of the protocol made it accessible.
Government control is lacking, BTC and other alternative coins are not under the supervision of central banks. Abuse by central banks is therefore not possible, is the underlying thought of the developers.
Of the many new possibilities that the BTC offers, the accessibility is the most discussed. The fact that anyone can create an account without an identity check for minimal costs is unique. The moment other currencies are exchanged for digital bitcoin, the buyer’s account number is known. This makes the bitcoin pseudo anonymous. However, this is difficult to determine.
“The (pseudo) anonymity means that criminals make extensive use of BTC to launder money and carry out cross-border transactions.“
Supervisory authorities and central banks (e.g. the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets, the European Central Bank and the Chinese central bank) have long warned against the use of BTC for speculative purposes. Research into the transaction patterns at BTC shows that BTC is mainly used for speculative purposes by private individuals and not as a payment method.
Advantage of the Bitcoin database.
A practical example: the police have confiscated a computer or mobile phone from a suspect of criminal activity. The account has BTC addresses as well as transactions from BTC. These BTC addresses can be loaded into the Noctua software to find other connected persons, partners of the suspect. The transactions do not disappear from the BTC ledger, so tracing is still possible years later.
Other databases?
There are other databases on the internet that contain information about BTC transactions, however the search is laborious and the information poor. Examples:
- https://www.blockchain.com/nl/explorer
- https://live.blockcypher.com/btc/
- https://btc.com/
These databases offer much less than Noctua in terms of research features and relevant information. It is also not possible to perform advanced queries on the database (complete transaction structure of an address), so that suspicious patterns may be discovered in order to reach a conclusion.
What does our BTC database consist of?
In bullets:
A copy of the full BTC ledger with all transactions.
Information includes besides BTC address:
- transaction hash
- date BTC with two dates
- The database is freely searchable: not limited like the “official sites”. These are web portals that also offer search options.
- The BTC database is located on a local server. Example of what is possible: all amounts greater than a certain amount at a certain time, or transactions in a time frame. All transactions to and from an address. All direct transactions or up to x were deeply related to a BTC address
- The database is updated daily
- Historical value of the currency: this can be displayed to find out the Euro value of the transaction
Links are currently under consideration with Maxmind (a Massachusetts-based digital mapping company that provides location data for IP addresses) and Shodan (a search engine that allows the user to find specific types of computers connected to the Internet using various filters).
