Crypto compliance company now monitors 2,500 service providers globally

A crypto compliance software company says it is constantly unveiling new AML and KYT features — and now offers coverage across 70 countries for more than 2,500 service providers.

Crystal Blockchain was publicly launched in 2018 with the ambition of building a better, safer cryptocurrency industry. The brainchild of Bitfury Group’s software team, the company brings together experienced blockchain analysts, award-winning mathematicians and professional software developers.

The platform currently supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Tether, XRP and Litecoin blockchains. As well as serving cryptocurrency exchanges, the Crystal Blockchain analytics platform counts banks and financial institutions among its clients.

According to Crystal Blockchain, the goal is to help financial institutions to meet regulatory requirements set by the Financial Action Task Force in the United States and the 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive by the European Union. The company says its analytics are necessary, given how virtual asset service providers are coming under increasing pressure to clamp down on illicit transactions made using cryptocurrencies. As a result, Crystal aims to ensure its clients are fully compliant with Anti-Money Laundering and KYT (know-your-transaction) measures.

New insights

Crystal Blockchain has released a series of reports that shed light on the features it has developed, as well as some of the insights made by the team in recent months.

The company says its technology is able to assess the risk parameters for any new transaction made on blockchains in real time, and it can then automatically recalculate risk scores for any other associated activity at a reach of up to 100,000 connected hops back and forth, providing broad-reaching risk management. A risk value is automatically assigned as soon as a transaction enters the mempool even before it has been confirmed on the blockchain.

According to Crystal, regular monthly updates ensure that its compliance tools meet current global regulatory standards. The team says the whole process on its platform has been automated, meaning that it can be readily integrated with corporate collaboration software such as Slack. This means that, as soon as an account is set up on the Crystal platform, all important notifications and alerts are brought immediately to the attention of the client’s workforce in the space where they are working.

In a recent report covering 2013 to 2020, Crystal Blockchain also uncovered some crucial trends relating to digital assets. Over this period, it found that the total volume of Bitcoin (BTC) directly transferred between exchanges in H1 2020 stood at $33 billion — an increase of 35% from the same period 12 months earlier.

Further analysis also showed that the countries with the largest number of registered exchanges, as of H1 2020, were the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore and the United States.

“As FATF and 5AMLD regulatory procedures continue to progress, we expect that the number of exchanges operating with unknown countries of origin will continue to reduce. And as compliance costs increase, we also predict the number of registered exchanges will increase as well,” Crystal predicted.

Moreover, the company says it now takes just a few minutes to locate online entities that are extorting payments from affected users.

Crypto analytics software companies that are able to operate with such urgency could help the digital assets industry achieve legitimacy in the eyes of investors who may be interested in gaining exposure to Bitcoin and other digital currencies. It means that, should there be further hack attacks or security breaches in the future, there will be a greater chance that cybercriminals can be brought to justice quickly.