CRII: SaTC: Identifying Fraud in the Cryptocurrency Ecosystem

该项目将促进对网络犯罪如何在新兴的加密货币经济中蓬勃发展的理解。研究揭示了加密货币经济中的网络犯罪，欺诈率似乎有所上升。通过了解犯罪动机和建立有效监管模型，这项研究将在颠覆基于加密货币的犯罪方面取得进展。该项目将收集数据，以了解潜在的激励机制是如何导致欺诈行为的，以及生态系统是如何使欺诈永久化的。这项工作旨在影响加密货币的公共政策，使加密货币生态系统对消费者更安全。该项目将在这一研究领域培养学生并制作课程材料。该项目旨在纠正当前加密货币生态系统中的信息不对称，即消费者无法区分欺诈和合法业务。这个项目有两个部分。第一部分将分析生态系统中一个似乎充斥着投机的特定领域：替代货币和相应的货币交易所。双方都需要对方盈利：货币需要在交易所上市才能有价值，交易所需要货币在交易所上市才能从用户执行交易和（通常）每种货币的上市费用中提取费用。第二部分将收集有关加密货币相关服务的社交网络数据，以了解哪些服务很可能是骗局，以及与此相关的指标。这项工作将比较关于合法行业和欺诈的信息传播，以努力区分两者。该项目将采用纵向方法对加密货币生态系统如何演变成当前状态进行建模，并将继续随着犯罪分子的适应而调整模型。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will advance understanding of how cybercrime has been able to flourish in the emerging cryptocurrency economy. Research has revealed cybercrime in the cryptocurrency economy, and the rate of fraud has seemed to increase. By understanding the incentives for crime and by modeling effective regulation, this research will make progress towards upending cryptocurrency-based crime. The project will collect data towards understanding how the underlying incentives work to cause fraudulent behavior and how the ecosystem perpetuates fraud. This work aims to influence public policy on cryptocurrencies, making the cryptocurrency ecosystem safer for consumers. The project will train students in this research area and produce course materials. The project seeks to correct the information asymmetry in the current cryptocurrency ecosystem, whereby consumers cannot tell the difference between a fraud and a legitimate business. There are two parts to this project. The first part will analyze one particular sector of the ecosystem that seems to be rife with speculation: alternative currencies and the corresponding currency exchanges listing the currencies. Each needs the other to be profitable: currencies need to be listed on an exchange to be worth money, and exchanges need currencies to be listed on them to extract fees from their users executing trades and (often) listing fees for each currency. The second part will collect social network data on cryptocurrency-related services at large in order to learn which services have a high probability of being scams and what indicators are correlated with this. The work will compare the propagation of information about legitimate industries and frauds to work towards differentiating the two. The project will take a longitudinal approach towards modeling how the cryptocurrency ecosystem has evolved into its current state, and it will continue to adapt the models as criminals adapt.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.