Huobi Group becomes latest crypto company to develop blockchain analytics tool
Huobi Group is launching an on-chain analytics tool for the monitoring of illicit cryptocurrency transactions.
Huobi's Star Atlas tool provides a method for tracking on-chain asset flows in real-time. With the launch, Huobi becomes the latest entrant in a market that has primarily catered to governments, law enforcement and financial analysts. As of last September, U.S. agencies had paid out nearly $10 million up to that point to analytics firms – with the bulk of that activity coming from the IRS and the FBI.
Such services are attractive because of cryptocurrency's pseudonymous anonymous nature and the perceived appeal to those conductive illicit activities online. Existing market players include Chainalysis, Elliptic and CipherTrace, among others.
According to a press statement shared with The Block, Huobi will utilize the tool to identify suspicious accounts on its exchange and temporarily restrict them from withdrawing assets.
"It's estimated that only a small percentage of cryptocurrency transactions are illicit, but any incident – regardless of size – is a stain on the entire industry,"said Ciara Sun, Huobi Group's VP of Global Business. "As one of the most active crypto exchanges on the market, we see it as our responsibility to take a leading role in preventing the minority of bad actors from ruining it for the vast majority that follows the rules."
The company said that it's working with regulators across jurisdictions to attain licenses and make sure that the tool complies with their local know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) requirements.
