Chainalysis unveils 'storyline' product to track money in cryptocurrencies

Chainalysis unveils 'storyline' product to track money in cryptocurrencies

"They have a full investigation that tells the whole story of what happened," said lead scientist Jacob Illum.

NEW YORK - Chainalysis is launching an on-chain visualization tool that the company says will help investigators follow the money in cryptocurrency.

The new analytics software, Storyline, sifts through the smart contracts that power decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFT), two hotbeds for crypto transactions of all kinds - including criminal ones. According to Chainalysis, DeFi protocols have already lost well over $1.5 billion to crypto thieves this year.

Storyline is helping to combat this trend by creating a simple, timeline-based visualization of money flows for investigators.

In a presentation Wednesday at the Chainalysis LINKS conference in New York, lead researcher Jacob Illum showed the audience how the transaction hash of a single NFT theft from Bored Ape can lead through a web of wrapped assets, stablecoins, chain hops and exchanges to uncover multiple suspects.

"You have a complete investigation that tells the entire story of what happened," Illum said on stage.

The software adds another tool to Chainalysis' expensive investigative suite, which has been popular with investigators who want to see through transparent, if opaque, crypto transactions. Some of that appeal was on display at Wednesday's conference: Name cards flashed various federal agencies and major New York banks.