In April, the militant group Hamas said it would stop raising money via Bitcoin, citing intensified prosecution of donors. It was a win for Chainalysis, whose data analytics helped authorities seize dozens of accounts. Founded in 2014 to bring visibility to anonymous blockchain ledgers, Chainalysis has become the go-to sleuthing firm for tracking crypto crimes like those allegedly committed by Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, whose bankruptcy lawyers hired Chainalysis to investigate after the firm’s bankruptcy. “At some point, bad actors will realize that blockchain is a really bad way of laundering money,” says chief product officer Pratima Arora.
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