Understanding the blockchain analyst + agora

I'm interested in following bitcoin movement, but admit I know nothing about it. I've been watching wallets on Wallet explorer for markets like Agora, MEM, and Abraxas. Each of those within a few clicks can be brought right to Localbitcoin and other cash out sites.

Like, if my understanding is correctly Agora moved 119 bitcoin out of the main wallet, and it went into a wallet with 1200 bitcoins in the past 24 hours, and they've been cashing out quite a bit. Most of the funds are coming in from Bitcoin fog in the last 24 hours, so it seems like they are attempting to tumble in, but then you can just follow it out with some going directly into LocalBitcoin and btc-e.com

Is it that easy to follow them, or I am way off here and what I'm looking at really means nothing, and I just stumbled across one of there many known wallets?

Edit - found another wallet that I'm guessing is theres that has over 17k btc. Dumping 10k+ bitcoins into btc-e.com wallets as we speak.


Comments


[6 Points] Vendor_BBMC:

gYes, you're right. You followed the 119btc withdrawal to THIS wallet, right?

https://www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/0007fa0a5dca11b1

But you must remember that although it is definitely agora's owner who spent the 119btc, he could have paid it to another person (a hosting company for Agora 2, hopefully!). It would be unlike him not to tumble, having been a bitcoinfog admin (his job the first time I spoke to him, in Novenber 2013)

Agora was very clever the way it handled bitcoin in the second half of its life, but this coincided with the site having a lot of downtime. This is because the bitcoin system was totally ripped out of agora and a tumbler was erected in it's car park. Agora essentially became bitcoinless, and worked like a casino.

When you deposited bitcoin, it was exchanged at the door for "agora casino chips" or site credit. All the buying, selling, escrows, refunds etc were done with these imaginary casino chips which can't be seen on the blockchain. All the time this illegal business was going on in the casino, the bitcoin was going round and round in the tumbler in the car park. When a vendor withdrew his takings, his casino chips were exchanged for clean, freshly-laundered bitcoins which hadn't been anywhere near a drug deal.

Clever, eh? The trouble was that it was a botch-job rather than being built like that from the start, so sometimes the tumbler would get out of sync. Deposits and withdrawals would stop working, but all the onsite stuff would still work.

I assume if Agora's owner builds a new site, it will have this clever "bitcoinless" system built-in from the start so that it's reliable. however, its completely incompatible with multisig escrows, which require actual bitcoin to cross the site from the drug customer to the drug dealer he is buying from. It may as well be a bullet.

This is the first look I've taken at Agora since it closed, because it didn't scam. He's one of the good guys and we want him to get away scot-free and live a long and happy life. Its hard to remember just how hopeless everything seemed before Agora. He deserves his privacy, so its best to nosey around the bad marketplaces instead.


[1 Points] Funkiter69:

Did you tried to trace with others tumbler ?


[1 Points] None:


[-2 Points] None:

Great... Good job another "Gwern" I'm sure more attention is exactly what they needed , dumb fuxk let it die and let them enjoy your reward