Crypto Transaction Tracing Services Enter Crypto B2C Market

With Traceer, crypto users now have the possibility to pay for address and transaction tracking without buying expensive Crystal or Chainalysis subscription.

Traceer is introducing a new level of a crypto spying software business. Instead of offering the monthly subscription to corporations and governments like Chainalysis or Crystal Blockchain tend to do, Traceer offers the KYT service per the check directly to blockchain fans.

Launched in November 2019, Traceer already attracted 250 users. Their audience is Bitcoin traders (44%), seasoned investors (40%), and longtime investment professionals (16%). Among all the checked addresses, about 25% of them were found to be connected with illegal activity.

Traceer is taking one dollar per one detailed address check. Their service allows three free checks after signup. Also, you can look up the Address Alerts right on their website or within the mobile app for free. Per their website:

“The fastest solution for checking Bitcoin addresses and transactions. The friendly UX backed with the powerful Know Your Transaction (KYT) procedures provide the highest level of legal compliance and allow you not to think about fraud issues again.”

Traceer already attracted $75,000 in a pre-seed investment round. A syndicate of business angels will be considering adding 500,000 more onto this sum. If you use cryptocurrencies in legal ways. If you want your traders to send you the “clean” Bitcoins. Then this solution may be interesting to you.

You pay only per the number of addresses that you want to check, and the service gives visitors a free brief on any address. Interestingly, the tracing software thinks that, if bitcoins were put into a mixing service, then those are bad coins. The logic is that criminals presumably use such services to launder their coins. And law-abiding citizens don’t have such necessity so they do not use mixers.

Only Monero-like Coins are Untraceable

Cryptocurrency forums are full of users complaining about the exchanges blocking deposits. Those users don’t understand that their coins are “tainted”. If a user wants to avoid sending “bad” coins to the exchange or even receiving them from someone, he needs to have the tools to track the blockchain. Chainalysis and Crystal offer subscriptions that cost thousands per month. With Traceer, you can forget spending time on arguing with exchange support, business partners or some lawyers.

This is the fact that many OG bitcoiners don’t want to admit. But only a few cryptocurrencies have the protection against tracing and metadata espionage: Monero, Beam, Grin and maybe XEM. All because their blockchains are closed ones. Bitcoin’s blockchain is fully transparent, allowing data mining of different kinds.

However, many of the Bitcoin users typically don’t care where their bitcoins came from. Yet the automated means of tracing coins can spot that you had received or sent “dirty” coins in the past. If you still hold those coins, this can attract unnecessary attention. Also, it can lower the market price of such coins on some exchanges. Binance will freeze the account in several hours since the deposit when they think that you trade, transfer or launder dirty coins.

Tracing Coins is Huge and Dirty Business

English bitcoin crypto transaction tracing platform Elliptic acquired $23 million in investments. The U.S. -based Chainalysis got more than $30 million solely in February 2019. In September, Ciphertrace has attracted $15 million. Despite these firms only help the government catch a few virtual criminals, they consume millions of dollars. Chainalysis used to eat $100,000 per one criminal, and those are typically darknet cocaine kingpins and provocative hackers, not terrorists or mafia as the government likes to claim.

It is unclear how those firms are getting their investments since they take lots of time and effort to uncover commonly known facts and addresses. Those analytic firms are doing mid-level research that is compatible with what hash.fail maintainer James Edwards can do using only his head and search engines, for free. By the way, he claims that the tracing companies sometimes hide the addresses of scammers from exposure if those scammers are friends with the tracing firm’s upper management circles.

The regulators, however, are using the firms’ software as is to track and investigate possible virtual criminals. Here’s what we find on the Traceer official website:

“The new stage of the crypto market control will start on 10 January 2020 with the introduction of AMLD5 or the Fifth Directive of the EU developed concerning cryptocurrencies. Generally, the main purpose of the initiative adopted by the EU Committee, European Parliament, Council of the EU, and FATF is anti-money laundering and combating terrorism.”

Regulators Want to Finally Look at the Elephant in the Room

The regulators suddenly recall that they need to protect society from money laundering, right? All those seriously looking EU originated papers and “directives” made to make us believe that regulators care. Nice try, but in fact, the regulators know that cryptocurrencies are used to launder wild cash. Cryptos were in active use among government secret agents, deputies, spies, dirty rats of different kinds and sizes since 2010. And… that’s why cryptocurrencies were not banned and will not be banned. Even in Russia, Iran, China or Saudi Arabia, they promise hardcore responsibility but make almost no moves. The tool is too convenient to openly put it against the law.

But the users who understand how to use blockchains anonymously like to break the law. Imagine that you can be as famous as Johnny Depp, and the only thing you need to do is sit in your bedroom with a notebook and hit the buttons. If having enough time to learn, who would refuse such power?