Sandia National Laboratories Joins the War on Bitcoin Anonymity

The Sandia National Laboratories, a major United States Department of Energy research and development facility, with campuses in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Livermore, California, managed and operated by the Sandia Corporation (a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin), is joining the war on Bitcoin anonymity.
Sandia researchers have created a set of requirements for an analysis tool that can be used to fight the use of bitcoin by criminals. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) directorate requested that Sandia set up a graphical user interface or a front end on the Sandia research environment so DHS agents can test the algorithms Sandia is using in actual investigations. The result of Sandia’s work could eventually be delivered to other federal law enforcement agencies.
It’s worth noting that Sandia, adopting a position that is now becoming widespread among financial operators, institutions and administrations, is persuaded that Bitcoin is here to stay and is poised to have a disruptive but positive impact on the economy. The problem is that the potential for anonymity offered by Bitcoin has been and continues to be exploited by criminals to escape detection.

This post was published at Bitcoin Magazine on Aug 25, 2016.