National Institute of Informatics, SOKENDAI

Mizuno Laboratory

Research

Safe and secure cryptocurrency society
A study of remittance control systems for the cryptocurrency age

Undesirable flow of money

The use of Bitcoin, Libra and blockchain-based cryptocurrencies in society is said to be on the rise.

Although they make it easy to send money overseas, there is no way to regulate where money can be sent, no matter how socially undesirable. This can fuel problems such as investment fraud, illegal gambling, drug trafficking, and money laundering.

We need to think about systems that can create a healthy cryptocurrency society.

HYIPs
High-yield investment programs

Many cryptocurrency-based high-yield investment programs have appeared.

The operators of these schemes use online bulletin boards and the like to solicit investments with ultra-high rates of return. To begin with, they pay dividends to their investors.

These dividends attract new customers and investment by word of mouth. But the dividends often stop. What are the dynamics of money invested in a HYIPs?

Bad people have other bad people next to them

Even in complex and mysterious global cryptocurrency trading networks, there are rules that people follow. Certain types of illegal account have characteristic trading patterns.

In cryptocurrency trading networks, illegal accounts are concentrated near other illegal accounts.

We must develop systems to prevent cryptocurrencies from flowing to communities where illegal accounts are concentrated.

Money transfer restrictions for the cryptocurrency era

When using normal currency, money transfers take place between banks, which are able to checks the remittance destination. With cryptocurrencies, transfers can be performed directly with no intermediaries, so it will be necessary to include a checking function in each user’s money transfer application.

[1] Joomi Jun and Takayuki Mizuno (2020) 投稿中

Research topics

Mizuno Laboratory