I will try to keep it short..
When thinking about a visualisation tool and when hearing about the bitfinex "incident" i recapped what i know about bitcoin and what it means for following the flow of bitcoins from addresses.
1. Bitcoins do not exist. Only transactions and address
2. An Address is like an account with a balance
3. The balance is calculated and approved through the transactions
So basically if i have 5btc it is because the transactions tell so.
So my questions:
1. Forward tracing: This means after one transaction to another address the value is actually mixed with all other values coming from other sources to this address. So no way to follow it? I don`t see one.
2. Backward tracing: I can track the origin of the 5 btc in transactions. But also only one reliable step? Beacause if someone uses a service where you could exchange btc to btc from one account to antoher and they move through a big "service address" it will automatically be mixed with those also. - something wrong with my thoughts?
3. Tracing big ammounts of btc "lost" or "stolen" like in bitfinex could only be traced to an interessting point if they somewhen cluster in other adresses which do not belong to a known entity which is likely to have a big throughput in btc?
And the most important question:
I thought about a visualization of "nodes/Adresses" and their flows. You could mark addresses if you think you know it belongs to X and then follow the transactions. But if my "feelings" are right you could not trace anything reliably for more then one transaction.
So is there anything you would like in terms of user-interface an visualasation and tracing of transaction which still would be interessting? Because my inital ideas won`t be worth alot but i still like visualisation and management of big data
Yours,
Alex
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