Chainalysis Raises US$16M; Launches Real-Time Transaction Analysis Offering

Image: Chainalysis Cryptocurrency compliance startup Chainalysis has raised a US$16 million Series A from Brenchmark as it looks to expand its offering and cover additional cryptocurrencies. Benchmark general partner Sarah Tavel has joined the board. Chainalysis develops investigation and compliance software for cryptocurrency exchanges, banks, international law enforcement agencies and other clients, helping them detect fraud and prevent money laundering. The platform was used to help track the missing Mt. Gox bitcoins. The company’s software helped bring about at least one arrest, according to CEO and co-founder Michael Gronager. Chainalysis has also worked with by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to track and identify Bitcoin users who fail to report profits. The company claims it has information on 25% of all Bitcoin addresses, accounting for approximately 50% of all the Bitcoin activity. It has reviewed more than US$15 billion of transactions and works with firms including Barclays.  Until now, Chainalysis had only allowed clients to analyze transactions retroactively. But the newly launched Chainalysis KYT (Know Your Transaction) product enables real-time transaction analysis. The solution provides instant feedback on the underlying purpose of transactions and feeds that feedback into exchanges’ transaction processing engines. Compliance personnel use the Chainalysis dashboard to generate alerts on risky customers and export suspicious activity reports. “We have opened KYT to a small group of early customers, and they have already seen a 20x improvement in the speed of account reviews,” the company said in a statement. “We’re excited to officially open this solution to exchanges and financial institutions everywhere, which represent the fastest growing segment of our business today.” Additionally, the company is introducing multi-currency support, starting with BCH. The cryptocurrency was added to Reactor, Chainalysis’s investigation software, and will be made available to the company’s law enforcement and government customers. Chainalysis plans to expand to at least ten cryptocurrencies by the end of the year. Both Reactor and Chainalysis KYT will feature all the cryptocurrencies that it supports this year.