‘Nakamoto Terminal’ selected prize winner of CFTC’s first science competition

A blockchain data platform has been selected the winner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s first science competition, offering yet another compelling sign that distributed ledger technology has burst onto the mainstream.

Nakamoto Terminal, a digital-asset analytics platform built by open-source intelligence company Inca Digital, has won the CFTC’s "Project Streetlamp" competition. Nakamoto Terminal was also named "Innovator of the Year" by the CFTC for its successful submission.

The Project Streetlamp competition challenged innovators to come up with an artificial intelligence solution that could help the CFTC “automate the process of identifying and adding unregistered foreign entities” to its Registration Deficient List. The RED List was created in 2015 to help consumers make informed decisions about whether to invest through such entities.

Since 2015, hundreds of companies have been placed on the RED List.

In an official statement, LabCFTC director and chief innovation officer Melissa Netram said:

“The CFTC is pleased to recognize NTerminal as our first Innovator of the Year. [...] Their development of an AI tool that automates the identification process of unregistered foreign entities not only helps the Commission but also will ultimately help investors make more informed decisions.”

Nakamoto Terminal’s winning submission automates deep metadata searches and aggregates them to determine whether a company should be placed on the RED List.

CFTC regulators already use Nakamoto Terminal’s technology for market surveillance and litigation support. Inca Digital, the company behind the platform, was founded by former INTERPOL analysts who have created natural language processors to track individuals and companies, monitor media outlets and scan global regulatory edicts.

Nakamoto Terminal was named after Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s (BTC) pseudonymous creator. The person or entity behind the pseudonym developed Bitcoin, authored the Bitcoin white paper and developed the first blockchain database before essentially disappearing.