An investigation of MMM Ponzi scheme on Bitcoin

10/27/2019
by   Yazan Boshmaf, et al.
0

Cybercriminals exploit cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, to carry out various illicit activities. In this paper, we focus on Ponzi schemes that operate on Bitcoin and perform an in-depth analysis of MMM, one of the oldest and most popular Ponzi schemes. Based on 423K transactions involving 16K addresses, we show that: (1) Starting Sep 2014, the scheme goes through three phases over three years. At its peak, MMM circulated more than 150M dollars a day, after which it collapsed by the end of Jun 2016. (2) There is a high income inequality among MMM members, with the daily Gini index reaching more than 0.9. The scheme also exhibits a zero-sum investment model, in which one member's loss is another member's gain. The percentage of victims who never made any profit has grown from 0 top-earning scammer has made 765K dollars in profit. (3) The scheme has a global reach with 80 different member countries, but a highly-asymmetrical flow of money between them. While India and Indonesia have the largest pairwise flow in MMM, members in Indonesia have received 12x more money than they have sent to their counterparts in India.

READ FULL TEXT

page 1

page 2

page 3

page 4

research
10/27/2019

Investigating MMM Ponzi scheme on Bitcoin

Cybercriminals exploit cryptocurrencies to carry out illicit activities....
research
03/01/2018

Data mining for detecting Bitcoin Ponzi schemes

Soon after its introduction in 2009, Bitcoin has been adopted by cyber-c...
research
12/27/2019

Characterizing and Detecting Money Laundering Activities on the Bitcoin Network

Bitcoin is by far the most popular crypto-currency solution enabling pee...
research
05/04/2020

Pump and Dumps in the Bitcoin Era: Real Time Detection of Cryptocurrency Market Manipulations

In the last years, cryptocurrencies are increasingly popular. Even peopl...
research
04/04/2018

On the Economic Significance of Ransomware Campaigns: A Bitcoin Transactions Perspective

Bitcoin cryptocurrency system enables users to transact securely and pse...
research
12/04/2017

On the linkability of Zcash transactions

Zcash is a fork of Bitcoin with optional anonymity features. While trans...
research
04/23/2023

Money Over Morals: A Business Analysis of Conti Ransomware

Ransomware operations have evolved from relatively unsophisticated threa...

Please sign up or login with your details

Forgot password? Click here to reset