INTERPOL experts reveal three key strategies for blockchain investigations.

As blockchain technology rapidly becomes widespread, crypto assets are increasingly becoming new tools for organized crime and money laundering activities. In the face of this borderless technological crime war, the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) is actively enhancing its capabilities in the field of blockchain intelligence and digital forensics. Vincent Danjean, head of INTERPOL's Cyber and Emerging Technologies Laboratory, shared his observations and strategies in combating crypto assets crime.

The biggest challenge: Anonymity and decentralization make investigation extremely difficult.

Danjean pointed out that the primary challenge faced by law enforcement agencies when investigating Crypto Assets crimes comes from the "pseudo/anonymity" of Blockchain. Although all transactions can be publicly queried on the chain, the addresses are not directly linked to real identities, making it difficult to track suspects.

In addition, criminals also use mixers, privacy coins, and decentralized finance (DeFi) tools to hide the flow of funds, further increasing the difficulty of tracing. Coupled with the regulatory discrepancies and procedural differences in cross-border cooperation, this often leads to obstacles in the progress of investigations.

In response to these issues, INTERPOL is promoting international cooperation and upgrading blockchain intelligence capabilities, aiming to enhance wallet address attribution analysis, on-chain evidence collection techniques, and unified investigation processes.

Public-private collaboration is key to solving cases: collaborating with blockchain analytics companies to track the flow of funds.

Blockchain analysis companies and Crypto Assets service providers (such as exchanges) play an important role. Law enforcement agencies often track illegal flows of funds through the tools of these partners, tracing from suspicious wallets all the way to identity-verified centralized platforms.

However, at present, such operations still rely heavily on manual analysis and data interaction, and are unable to cope with the rapid expansion of crypto crime. In the future, through more public-private cooperation mechanisms, such as jointly developing scientific and verifiable analysis standards and technologies, it will help improve investigation efficiency and accuracy.

Avoiding Duplicate Investigations: The Urgent Need for Cross-National Data Sharing and Establishing Common Standards

Danjean reminds that many cases are actually part of global cybercrime, but because the victims are distributed across different regions, it often leads to law enforcement agencies in different countries investigating separately, resulting in a waste of resources.

He advocates for the establishment of an operational mechanism for "data interconnectivity," such as sharing wallet address data, transaction patterns, and analysis results of criminal methods, further linking seemingly unrelated cases. This not only speeds up investigations but also helps identify larger criminal networks.

Strengthening this kind of cross-national real-time intelligence sharing requires reliance on a unified platform and common data standards in order to truly achieve the global integration of Blockchain investigations.

Automation and AI Assistance: Making Investigations Faster and More Accurate

With the explosive growth in trading volume and the increasing complexity of money laundering techniques, traditional manual tracking methods are no longer sufficient. Criminals have long utilized automation technology to accelerate the laundering of funds and obscure transaction paths, making it even more difficult to "follow the money."

To keep up with this wave of technological trends, Danjean emphasizes the need to integrate automation and AI technologies to assist in investigations. For example, using machine learning models to detect suspicious transaction patterns in real-time and quickly process large amounts of Blockchain data.

However, he also reminded that AI applications in judicial purposes must be particularly cautious. Because the sample data is still relatively limited, and the proportion of false signals such as wash trading is high, it is essential to maintain a manual review mechanism when using AI-assisted judgment to ensure that the evidence is verifiable and interpretable in court.

Summary of the three major strategies: Data-driven + Automation + International cooperation are key.

Regarding the development of future Blockchain law enforcement work, Danjean emphasized three core strategies:

Establish a global connected investigation model: break through geographical restrictions, connect cross-border criminal activities through data intercommunication and case correlation technology, and enhance overall case-solving efficiency.

Embracing Automation and Intelligent Technology: In the face of high-frequency trading and rapidly changing criminal methods, it is essential to implement AI and automated tools while ensuring that the investigative process is legally credible.

Data-Centric Investigation Logic: No longer relying solely on tools, but rather using structured, shareable Blockchain data as the core for case linkage and pattern recognition.

Danjean calls on the international community to jointly establish a set of empirically validated Blockchain data analysis standards and promote data interoperability among systems, which will be an indispensable foundation for combating Crypto Assets crime in the future.

This article reveals three key strategies for blockchain investigation by experts from the International Criminal Police Organization INTERPOL, first appearing in Chain News ABMedia.