Identifying blockchain-based cryptocurrency accounts using investment portfolios
This addresses privacy concerns for cryptocurrency users by revealing vulnerabilities in blockchain anonymity.
The paper investigates whether a user's cryptocurrency accounts can be identified using their investment portfolio data from social media, finding that transactions are not always anonymous as commonly believed.
Cryptocurrencies based on decentralized systems, especially blockchain, are gaining popularity more than ever. Freedom advocates hail blockchain technology as a breakthrough in digital privacy and internet anonymity. Unfortunately, after recent studies conducted, it may come as a surprise that the transactions are, in fact, not always anonymous. In this short paper, the possibility of identifying a user's accounts in different cryptocurrencies given the user's portfolio of investment gained from social media is investigated. In this study, the generic elements of blockchain systems are briefly studied. In section \ref{sec:blocksim}, BlockSim which is a tool for simulating transactions, and an algorithm for answering this question is introduced.