Transaction monitoring can help law enforcement link illicit blockchain transactions to real-life entities. Our review of crypto transaction monitoring tools combines extensive research with our direct experience using many of these platforms.
Having worked closely with forensic and AML tools from several companies on this list, we’ve gained valuable insights into how these solutions perform in investigative and compliance settings.
In this guide, we’ll outline the capabilities of these platforms, focusing on how they empower users to track, assess, and flag transactions in real-time for enhanced security and regulatory compliance.
Real-time Transaction Monitoring
Criminals versed in cryptocurrencies use creative methods to obfuscate their transactions on the blockchain. Real-time transaction monitoring tools allow investigators to detect financial crimes and keep organizations safe, secure, and compliant.
Crypto exchanges, law enforcement agencies, and regulators use these tools to provide business oversight, AML compliance, and crypto crime-busting. Transaction monitoring tools can:
- Determine transaction risk. They analyze the sources of funds, transaction patterns, and known entities involved in transactions to assign them a risk score.
- KYT. Know Your Transaction capabilities allow users to analyze the context of various transactions in addition to the entities involved in them.
- Provide alerts for suspicious activities. Transaction monitoring tools can generate alerts when they detect a transaction to or from a known darknet address or other suspicious addresses.
- Screen addresses. Transaction monitoring tools can check addresses against databases of global sanctions, watch lists, or privately compiled blacklists of addresses.
- Monitor suspicious addresses. Once investigators flag an address as suspicious, these tools can continuously monitor it and alert users when transactions happen.
- Generate reports. Monitoring tools can compile data into reports for easy interpretation, compliance reviews, and audits.
Here’s our list of the most powerful real-time crypto transaction monitoring tools.
BitRank Verified
BitRank is a transaction monitoring tool from Blockchain Intelligence Group that collects no data from clients, ensuring privacy and security. It offers a complete suite of features for organizations, exchanges, and law enforcement agencies, allowing operations to approach the issue of blockchain security proactively.
BitRank is our top choice for real-time transaction monitoring due to its capabilities and easy API integration. The BitRank support is among the best in the business. Here’s what BitRank can do for your business:
- Score transaction risks
- Provide real-time transaction monitoring and alerts
- Provide blockchain analysis
- Assess the risk profiles of crypto addresses
- Geo-track addresses
- Integrate KYC rules
- Create customizable reports for audits and regulatory reporting
- Analyze historical data
- Provide a user-friendly dashboard
BitRank’s Risk-Scoring
BitRank’s risk-scoring algorithm considers factors like an address’ association with known entities and high-risk wallets to determine its risk profile. With a large database of darknet-exposed entities and addresses at its disposal, the tool assigns a “safe,” “caution,” or “risk” ranking to addresses, allowing users to make quick decisions about transactions.
Supporting several cryptocurrencies and blockchains, Bitrank can provide a relevant security-focused snapshot across several ecosystems.
Bitrank’s Real-time Transaction Monitoring
BitRank can keep an eye on transactions as they happen in real time. It can point out and flag transactions involving suspicious addresses. Its instant notifications help institutions adopt a proactive stance on crypto security, heading off potentially problematic transactions and nipping security breaches in the bud.
BitRank’s main selling points are its ease of use and simplicity coupled with its feature-rich investigative capabilities.
Chainalysis KYT
A well-established name in the blockchain analytics industry, Chainalysis helps exchanges, financial institutions, businesses, and governmental agencies monitor and risk-profile transactions and addresses across multiple blockchains. AML compliance is also among the strengths of the analytics company.
KYT (Know Your Transactions) is a tool from Chainalysis that allows its users to monitor crypto transactions in real-time and get real-time alerts about suspicious transfers.
Like other tools of its kind, KYT looks at several variables to determine whether a transaction or an address represents a regulatory or otherwise risk. Such factors include wallet associations, entity associations, behavioral patterns, and transaction history.
If KYT finds that a transaction uses an address associated with a scam, fraud, darknet operation, or money laundering scheme, it flags it, alerting the user. The software assigns risk scores to crypto addresses and continuously updates them. The entities using KYT can thus survey suspicious addresses, heading off compliance-related risks and fraud.
Compliance is one of KYT’s strengths.
KYT’s Global Compliance Support
With its peerless real-time analytics capabilities, KYT allows organizations to generate complex alerts, visualizations, and reports. Businesses and exchanges can, therefore, use KYT to navigate the increasingly complex international regulatory frameworks, from AML rules to FATF (Financial Action Task Force) recommendations.
The Ideal KYT User
Due to its complexity and powerful monitoring features, KYT is more suitable for larger organizations like exchanges and financial institutions that maintain dedicated compliance departments. Its blockchain-focused intricacies make it difficult to use for those unfamiliar with blockchain technology and the finer points of blockchain transactions.
Elliptic
Fraudsters often move stolen digital assets between blockchains and cryptocurrencies to obfuscate their origins. Elliptic’s transaction monitoring tool supports an impressive number of blockchains, allowing investigators to trace funds over several crypto ecosystems.
The Elliptic transaction monitoring solution is not cheap, but it is reliable, innovative, and far-reaching.
Some scammers have taken to posing as Elliptic representatives. The negative Elliptic reviews you may read online in which people complain about having had their funds stolen are likely the results of the activity of these fraudsters. Do not fall for scams involving the Elliptic brand name. Remember the following:
- Elliptic does not deal with the recovery of stolen digital assets.
- It does not mine cryptocurrency or invest in crypto projects.
- It does not reach out to peddle investment opportunities.
- It does not use email accounts other than its official one available at elliptic.co.
Here’s what Elliptic offers its clients:
- Holistic transaction monitoring, screening entire crypto ecosystems to establish risk profiles
- Virtual asset service provider screening, including crypto exchanges and other crypto-based businesses
- Transaction monitoring across multiple blockchains in real time to combat money laundering and financing of sanctioned entities.
- Real-time crypto wallet screening to uncover links to illicit activities like money laundering
- Wallet risk scoring
- Single-click investigations across multiple crypto ecosystems
- Entity on-chain data and activity trends
Elliptic’s Regulatory Compliance
Businesses worldwide use Elliptic’s solutions to ensure compliance with global AML rules and local regulations. Compliance teams can take immediate action based on the information Ellipic’s real-time transaction monitoring generates. Elliptic users gain access to reports and insights they can use to refine their compliance efforts and processes.
Elliptic’s Investigation Tools
Criminal investigators can use Elliptic’s tools to trace the flow of funds from one wallet to another, assigning these wallets and the addresses they generate to entities and crime rings. Elliptic’s data visualization tools allow investigators to identify high-risk address clusters, enabling law enforcement agents to wrap up complex criminal networks.
Crystal Blockchain
Bitfury’s Crystal Blockchain is a comprehensive crypto analytics platform covering compliance, real-time monitoring, and risk assessment.
Multi-blockchain coverage is one of Crystal Blockchain’s standout features. With it, investigators can unravel intricate crypto obfuscation schemes, tracing transactions, addresses, and wallets through Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as many altcoin and stablecoin blockchains.
Here’s what the Crystal Blockchain crypto analytics suite offers:
- AML and KYC compliance
- Historical data analysis
- Real-time transaction monitoring
- Handy API integration
- Geolocation and entity due diligence
- Risk scores and address monitoring, complete with real-time alerts
- Regulatory reports
- Fraud detection
- Screening for activities involving sanctioned addresses
- Blockchain analytics and advanced data visualization
Do not fall for scams using the Crystal brand name. The analytics platform provider does not deal with crypto mining or other scam-suspicious activities. Only interact with Crystal Blockchain through official channels.
Crystal Blockchain’s Visualization Tools
Crystal Blockchain’s user-friendly interface makes it accessible, highly functional, and intuitive. Crystal’s analytics solutions suit the needs of larger organizations and their compliance and crypto security departments. They may not work well for small-budget users.
Its visualization tools provide a comprehensive and relevant picture of transaction flows through multiple blockchains. Investigators can identify clusters of suspicious addresses with this tool, track the movement of funds, and, eventually, identify the criminals behind the transactions.
Crystal Blockchain’s Risk-scoring and Alert System
The powerful scoring algorithm Crystal Blockchain uses assigns a score to addresses and transactions. Activities found suspicious generate relevant risk scores and result in real-time alerts that investigators or compliance officers can use to weed out problems proactively.
Scorechain
Scorechain helps financial organizations and crypto exchanges navigate the complex landscape of global and local crypto regulations. Offering a comprehensive suite of monitoring, tracing, and analytics tools, Scorechain can trace transactions through multiple blockchains, giving investigators the ability to peer through complex obfuscation schemes.
Like most top transaction monitoring solutions, Scorechain has been targeted by scammers. Criminals may claim they represent Scorechain and cold call potential victims with offers to recover fabulous crypto sums purportedly lost to thieves. Do not fall for such schemes. Scorechain is not a crypto recovery firm.
You can book a demo of their crypto intelligence suite at their website and assess its capabilities. You can also buy reports from the company.
The Know-Your-Address and Know-Your-Transaction reports Scorechain provides are the bread and butter of the platform. They package financial data with AML risk scoring for incoming and outgoing transactions. They also provide information on the source and destination of funds, analyzing additional risk indicators.
Scorechain’s Intuitive Dashboard
The dashboard displays a selection of relevant information including alerts, risk scores, and historical analysis. Investigators can navigate the system easily, taking immediate action if necessary or subjecting suspicious transactions to additional reviews.
Scorechain’s Real-time Risk Scoring
To determine a risk score associated with transactions and wallets, Scorechain considers the following variables:
- Darknet market activities
- Terrorist financing
- Money laundering
The risk scores play a central role in Scorechain’s analysis and alerts. They allow compliance officers to take action before their organizations process the transactions. Like most solutions we have reviewed, Scorechain is geared toward larger organizations rather than individual users.
TRM Labs
TRM Labs offers scalable solutions for financial institutions, crypto exchanges, and other businesses looking to address their compliance and crypto security needs. TRM Labs’ services include real-time transaction monitoring, wallet screening, and crypto forensic tools. The TRM Labs package is complex and better suited for larger organizations.
TRM Labs’ strengths include:
- Highly customizable alerts and risk rules. TRM Labs allows users to set alerts based on specific wallet behaviors, transaction types, etc.
- Global reach. The crypto monitoring powers of TRM Labs span across jurisdictions, allowing investigators to trace funds anywhere.
- Analytical prowess. Above and beyond risk scoring, TRM Labs provides a deeper look into transaction patterns and historical data.
TRM Labs’ Real-time Risk Scoring
TRM Labs looks at variables like transaction histories, sanctioned or high-risk entities, darknet markets, transaction histories, and wallet activity to determine whether a transaction represents a security risk. Users are free to fine-tune the settings around these variables. The software then assigns a relevant score to transactions to reflect their security status. Investigators can use this score to draw relevant conclusions.
TRM Labs’ Wallet Screening
TRM Labs uses a wealth of data to screen crypto wallets for dubious connections. In addition to transaction histories, it gets data from law enforcement agencies. It can use this data to refine its screening of suspicious entities, generating high-quality profile data on individual wallets.
Coinfirm
Confirm may be the right choice for large organizations looking to trace digital assets and monitor transactions over a wide range of blockchains. Alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum, it supports over 40 altcoins. It also offers comprehensive risk management tools.
Coinfirm may not be the right choice for smaller businesses.
In addition to its outstanding blockchain support, Coinfirm also offers:
- An intuitive interface. The Coinfirm dashboard features clear insights and straightforward ways to access its multitude of features.
- Solid blockchain forensics. Coinfirm’s transaction tracing capabilities are outstanding. In business since 2016, the platform has helped its users identify the sources and destinations of funds, creating easy-to-understand maps of transactions.
- Customizable alerts. Like its reports, Coinfirm’s alerts are customizable. Users can fine-tune alert trigger variables like transaction sizes, wallet behavior, and transaction risk scores to achieve optimal outcomes.
On the downside, Coinfirm doesn’t offer visualization features on the same level as Elliptic or some of the other platforms we have reviewed.
Coinfirm’s Real-time Transaction Monitoring
Coinfirm can flag suspicious transactions as they happen, based on user settings. It allows investigators to be proactive about fending off threats like ransomware payments and money laundering attempts.
Coinfirm’s Compliance Reporting
Coinfirm handles international compliance automatically. It observes the FATF Travel Rule in combination with various local AML laws. It also screens activity against the EU’s 5th AML Directive. It compiles reports automatically, lifting the burden of compliance from the shoulders of businesses.
Merkle Science
Merkle Science offers AI-based transaction monitoring, compliance services, and crypto crime prevention. With its focus on predictive risk management, it takes a proactive approach to crypto security.
It also boasts solid forensics capabilities and allows its users to customize alerts and real-time risk assessment.
Like the platforms we have reviewed, Merkle Science is a solution for bigger businesses.
Above and beyond predictive risk detection, Merkle Science also excels at:
- Risk scoring. The customizable alerts and risk scoring provide enough flexibility for businesses to respond to crypto-threats as quickly as possible.
- The Merkle Science interface provides actionable insights, delivering its alerts in real time. It offers easy access to regulatory reports, transaction data, and past alerts.
On the downside, Merkle Science isn’t as well-established a brand name in the crypto analytics industry as Elliptic or Bitrank. Its visualization tools leave some room for improvement.
Merkle Science’s Predictive Analytics
In addition to analyzing historical data, Merkle Science’s predictive engine uses artificial intelligence to predict suspicious wallet behaviors and transactions. It can peek into the future, enabling investigators to stay one step ahead of crypto crime.
Merkle Science’s KYT
Merkle Science users have access to global crime intelligence data. The platform enables them to screen for darknet links, money laundering attempts, and fraud. The KYT system keeps a perpetual virtual eye on wallet addresses, looking for and flagging suspicious behavior.
Crypto Transaction Monitoring Tools: Bottom Line
Real-time transaction monitoring allows investigators to adopt a proactive approach to making crypto safer. AI-powered tools with their predictive capabilities can set the stage for preemptive action.
Live transaction monitoring lends crypto security and compliance an entirely new dimension.
We here at CNC Intelligence Inc. are steadfast advocates of compliance, safety, and security. By recovering stolen digital assets, preventing illicit activity, and ensuring compliance, we hope to hasten crypto adoption.
The nascent crypto industry is still home to illicit activities and crime, but thanks to our efforts and those of the people behind the platforms we’ve reviewed, criminals have less and less room to maneuver.
Enroll in our Certified Cryptocurrency Investigator (CCI) course and become part of the solution.
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