TY - GEN
T1 - Temporal and Geographical Analysis of Real Economic Activities in the Bitcoin Blockchain
AU - Ramos Tubino, Rafael
AU - Cazabet, Rémy
AU - Tovanich, Natkamon
AU - Robardet, Céline
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.
PY - 2025/1/1
Y1 - 2025/1/1
N2 - We study the real economic activity in the Bitcoin blockchain that involves transactions from/to retail users rather than between organizations such as marketplaces, exchanges, or other services. We first introduce a heuristic method to classify Bitcoin players into three main categories: Frequent Receivers (FR), Neighbors of FR, and Others. We show that most real transactions involve Frequent Receivers, representing a small fraction of the total value exchanged according to the blockchain, but a significant fraction of all payments, raising concerns about the centralization of the Bitcoin ecosystem. We also conduct a weekly pattern analysis of activity, providing insights into the geographical location of Bitcoin users and allowing us to quantify the bias of a well-known dataset for actor identification.
AB - We study the real economic activity in the Bitcoin blockchain that involves transactions from/to retail users rather than between organizations such as marketplaces, exchanges, or other services. We first introduce a heuristic method to classify Bitcoin players into three main categories: Frequent Receivers (FR), Neighbors of FR, and Others. We show that most real transactions involve Frequent Receivers, representing a small fraction of the total value exchanged according to the blockchain, but a significant fraction of all payments, raising concerns about the centralization of the Bitcoin ecosystem. We also conduct a weekly pattern analysis of activity, providing insights into the geographical location of Bitcoin users and allowing us to quantify the bias of a well-known dataset for actor identification.
KW - Bitcoin blockchain analysis
KW - Weekly activity patterns
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85215956004
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-031-74643-7_17
DO - 10.1007/978-3-031-74643-7_17
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85215956004
SN - 9783031746420
T3 - Communications in Computer and Information Science
SP - 213
EP - 225
BT - Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases - International Workshops of ECML PKDD 2023, Revised Selected Papers
A2 - Meo, Rosa
A2 - Silvestri, Fabrizio
PB - Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
T2 - 23rd Joint European Conference on Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases, ECML PKDD 2023
Y2 - 18 September 2023 through 22 September 2023
ER -