- Antinalysis, the dark web tool that checks crypto wallets for coins linked to crime, has returned
- Antinalysis was taken offline last week after being publicly exposed, but it’s back for Monero users
- The tool no longer allows Bitcoin wallets to be checked
The dark web tool Antinalysis, which was taken offline last week, has returned to service but only for Monero users. The purpose of Antinalysis is to analyze coins in a wallet and determine if they could be flagged as being the proceeds of crime if sent to an exchange. Antinalysis, which originally worked for Bitcoin wallets, was taken offline last week after its existence was made public, only to reappear this week to service Monero token holders. The tool has been criticized as being the preserve of the criminal underworld, but its founders have argued it serves a legitimate purpose as well.
Antinalysis is Resurrected
Antinalysis was brought to the public’s attention last week when Tom Robinson, co-founder of blockchain anti-money laundering service Elliptic, brought it to the world’s attention in a piece for the BBC. AML Bot, the company that unwittingly supplied the data for the tool, pulled the API associated with it, rendering it useless and forcing it to close. The team behind AML Bot also passed the addresses of all those wallets that used the service over to the authorities, leading to the Antinalysis founder to complain about “the unlawful warranted seizure of our data”.
However, Antinalysis wasn’t down for long, as Robinson revealed:
Antinalysis, the blockchain analytics tool built for criminals, by criminals, is back! It is “no longer dependent on any third party for address labelling”. Of course, only monero is accepted as payment: pic.twitter.com/ZXO8Qw7qrI
— Tom Robinson (@tomrobin) August 24, 2021
Despite boasting about no longer being “dependent on any third party for address labeling”, the fact that Antinalysis only works with Monero represents a victory of sorts for those who see tools like this as a means of facilitating criminal activity.
Prospective Users Should Think Twice
Monero is one of the more comprehensive privacy coins and is much harder to track than Bitcoin, although blockchain analysis company CipherTrace last year announced that they had found a way to trace Monero transactions.
Therefore, those using Antinalysis to legitimately check if any XMR tokens they have received are linked to crime should be fully aware of the potential ramifications of doing so.
