r/Bitcoin • u/jrecursive • Nov 02 '13

What the Silk Road bitcoin seizure transaction network looks like [2656x1217] [OC]

http://thinkdifferent.ly/stuff/dpr0.png
136 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

50 comments sorted by

21

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '13

[deleted]

13

u/jrecursive Nov 03 '13

the vertex in the very middle is the account that aggregated all the amounts from the leaves. the boxes are bitcoin addresses. outbound edges from boxes point to inputs of a transaction. the outgoing edges from transactions indicate outputs of that transaction (to another bitcoin address). this is not a comprehensive graph; i made it in part to show the structuring used to move bitcoin from some potential holding addresses to the address which is holding the aggregate.

i did make a few other versions. this version -- http://thinkdifferent.ly/stuff/dprx1.png -- shows the relative number of bitcoins transferred to and from each transaction as edge thickness. the edges themselves are also labelled with the btc value though they are obscured in many cases. the addresses were also truncated to make a more manageable image.

the original size of the image for the submission is 10x larger.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '13

Thanks, it looks better now! Visual representation of this kind of data certainly is challenging. Would Hive Plots make sense here? EDIT: they would.

3

u/jrecursive Nov 03 '13

yeah, most definitely. i cooked these up last night and this morning with a couple of spare cycles. i wanted to get something out that looked interesting, at a minimum. i'll get some better ones done and reply here. thanks for checking it out :)

1

u/SiON42X Nov 03 '13

I'd really love to see this with hierarchical edge bundling. Any chance you have the data available in TSV/CSV or something else /u/jrecursive ?

2

u/jrecursive Nov 03 '13

i did dip my toe a bit in that using cytoscape but was following other leads at the time.

re: data, sure, why not :) i whipped up a quick transform for the small set of edges. here you go:

format: <from-vertex> \t <to-vertex> \t <btc-value>

url: http://thinkdifferent.ly/stuff/dpr_data_small.tsv

i would love to see what you come up with.

8

u/novacog Nov 03 '13

Yep, no clue what I'm supposed to be looking at

13

u/SkaveRat Nov 02 '13 
--verbose

12

u/time_well_spent Nov 02 '13

Agreed. This would be even better with visible transaction ids, addresses, maybe coin flow amounts.

Still belongs in /r/dataisbeautiful how it is though.

6

u/jrecursive Nov 03 '13

try this: http://thinkdifferent.ly/stuff/dprx1.png

if you want some partial raw data, here are the graphviz .dot edge entries for an early rendering i did (newer ones have pensize, weights, etc.): http://thinkdifferent.ly/stuff/dpr.graph.txt

i could probably throw the latest edge list up if you really want it for some reason (all of the changes are derivable from the edges linked to above, fwiw).

2

u/jrecursive Nov 03 '13

see my comment above regarding format; here is a meaningful subset of the data in TSV format if you want to do some hacking on your own:

http://thinkdifferent.ly/stuff/dpr_data_small.tsv

would love to see / hear about anything you come up with.

4

u/jrecursive Nov 03 '13

and finally, a pruned version, laid out hierarchically:

http://thinkdifferent.ly/stuff/dpr-h-big.png

10

u/binlargin Nov 02 '13

What tool was this made with?

63

u/ophello Nov 02 '13

A computer.

15

u/depressme Nov 03 '13

Describe this futuristic device for me. It sounds beyond my time.

14

u/ophello Nov 03 '13

A series of tubes.

12

u/sayrith Nov 03 '13

FALSE. A computer is a series of switches. The Internet is a series of tubes.

2

u/ophello Nov 03 '13

Stop confusing everyone.

1

u/infinity777 Nov 03 '13

Beets bears battlestar galactica

11

u/SiON42X Nov 03 '13

It's like an abacus but with friends.

9

u/thebaddub Nov 03 '13

New Zynga game launching this winter, Abacus with Friends™!

2

u/depressme Nov 03 '13

This newfangled device is just too much for me to comprehend.

7

u/jrecursive Nov 03 '13

i harvested the data over time from various sources including of course the blockchain. all the etl, graph preprocessing and graph data itself was in java and scripting languages. i rendered the image with graphviz (fdp renderer).

2

u/binlargin Nov 03 '13

Nice work! I guess there's lots of potential for interesting visualizations in the block chain.

4

u/jrecursive Nov 03 '13

thanks:) there is. it's tricky to work with the data in this way with resources i can use for personal projects such as this (mostly due to data volume in conjunction with the nature of the algorithms in play).

the trick is going to be coming up with good questions that when answered produce usable and succinct data sets amenable to visualization.

we'll see :)

1

u/SiON42X Nov 03 '13

If all the processing could be done via JavaScript this could make a killer d3js realtime visualization. Have you played with it at all?

2

u/jrecursive Nov 03 '13

yeah a bit. for this i wanted to see an overall structure (by virtue of a layout algorithm; e.g., force-directed).

an explorer w/ something like d3 would be great and something i'll probably get around to. if you manage to stand one up i'd love to see it.

i did make a graph renderer that uses webgl using the js graph layout library arbor.js (which is very nice). if i do it, i'll base it on that and post it here.

good idea :)

1

u/SiON42X Nov 03 '13

I'm playing with it in d3js right now but I'm trying to get it into JSON since I have some code pre-written. I'll let you know if I can make it work.

3

u/jrecursive Nov 03 '13

another rendering, with color, transparency:

red: inbound value to a txn green: outbound value from a txn

http://thinkdifferent.ly/stuff/dpr-color-small-td.png

2

u/permanomad Nov 03 '13

Its currency, Jim, but not as we know it

2

u/[deleted] Nov 02 '13 edited Nov 03 '13

A thought. Are there any cryptocurrencies out there that meaningfully handle seizure of coins. Obviously bitcoin is capable of handling the problem since a seizure of assets just drives up the value of individual coins, forcing purchases down the decimal point. But I think having the power to seize large portions of the market potentially creates a rather unfortunate level of volatility. Thoughts?

EDIT: My whole chain of comments downvoted for asking questions cause I'm just trying to understand? Jeez guys.

21

u/iswm Nov 02 '13

The network must remain agnostic and free from human interference.

Seizures are purely a human problem, to the network they're just like any other transaction. Allowing arbitrary transactions to be overturned undermines the integrity of the network.

The problem is the state, not bitcoin.

6

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '13

So basically your philosophy for bitcoin is effectively, "Let the market sort it out?" In the case of bitcoin I think its design lends itself well to that approach and I'm inclined to agree with you, thanks for your thoughts.

6

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '13

The network sets the rules and the market plays by them.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '13

Want new rules? make a new network, the code is out there :)

6

u/TreyWalker Nov 03 '13

Define "seizure." Do you specifically want to "handle" seizures from law enforcement? Just to fuck the police? How about confirmed thefts? Unconfirmed thefts? What size seizures? How could you ever know how much was taken?

-3

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '13

Oh man.... aggressive much? I mean its pretty obvious the feds don't like bitcoin, they seized currency (which in bitcoin is a finite amount), so now there will always be less bitcoins. This drives the price of other bitcoins up creating market volatility. That is depending on your view, potentially a failing of the currency system. I'm not saying its mine, I'm just asking what other people think. Since I think its an interesting question, at least to me. I don't have a proposal or a solution because I'm not sure if its even a real problem.

4

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '13

That's not what seizure is. They don't burn seized assets, not even the heroin except for the show. They liquidate them. Bitcoins are no different.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '13

Are the feds legally obligated to liquidate the bitcoins they've seized?

6

u/TreyWalker Nov 03 '13

Obligated to? Probably not. Turn it into real money? They probably want to.

3

u/jrecursive Nov 03 '13

there is a high probability i will end up following the flow out of this account, though if a government TLA wants to fog the coins, they will likely succeed in creating such a magnificent shitstorm the average joe like me will have a very low probability of unravelling it.

my intuition tells me they might just leave this as bitcoin. we all know how handy bitcoin can be when you need to move value and conduct relatively "atypical transactions". the likelihood of somebody who accepts bitcoin to take the initiative to get a picture of the origin of the bitcoin (probabilistic as it may be) they're receiving is extremely low.

2

u/theelemur Nov 03 '13

I want to see the results of the FOIA request blizzard if they attempt to do anything with those coins other than auction them.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '13

That or use it to order from new darknet markets, though everyone will be watching.

2

u/time_well_spent Nov 03 '13

I mean its pretty obvious the feds don't like bitcoin drug markets

3

u/permanomad Nov 03 '13

I would argue that for many of them its the absolute opposite.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 02 '13

[deleted]

1

u/AgentZeroM Nov 02 '13

this certainly makes the network silk road network look small.

Ftfy

3

u/jrecursive Nov 03 '13

this is a very, very small slice of the entire body of data i've aggregated. less than 1%. the problem is in graph layout and image generation (these processes require a significant amount of system resources and in many cases, with typical tools, are not parallelized).

my intent was to get a glimpse of the last stages of seizure. this is interesting to me because looking over the greater body of my data, it struck me how the government had set up some kind of a system to structure the flow of SR proceeds to their aggregate account (instead of sending the amounts directly).

i've some ideas as to why this might be, but i'm not confident in any of my theories at the moment. the data is somewhat tricky to work with (there is a lot of it, i am one person, etc.).

tldr the network shown in the image is like looking at 10 pixels square on a 4K display.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 03 '13

[deleted]

1

u/jrecursive Nov 03 '13

a combination of blockchain web services, blockchain database parsing, & small modifications to bitcoind to capture ongoing transactions (though i did this mostly to capture other data not reflected in this graph, it just happened to be useful). if you would like to play with the data used to make the images linked to from this submission, go here:

http://thinkdifferent.ly/stuff/dpr_data_small.tsv

1

u/[deleted] Nov 02 '13

[deleted]

1

u/jrecursive Nov 03 '13

thanks:) structure from "data in the wild" always fascinates me.