Bitcoin Blockchain Forensics: A Survey of Techniques and Tools

Abstract

Digital forensics practice shows that a digital currency widely appears in legal cases that involve digital evidence. As blockchain makes cryptocurrency transactions hardly traceable and de-anonymizable, there are a lot of tools and techniques that are created to help digital forensic investigators. In this paper, we study the current state of the blockchain forensics field focusing on tools and techniques that are used in digital forensic investigations of bitcoin transactions. We considered techniques and free and/or open-source tools.