If a market (or tumbler etc.) was hacked and they tried to cover it up or was starting an exit scam would it be possible to find out by looking at the blockchain?
Looking back at Evo's exit scam was there any suspicious transactions that could have tipped us off that they were about to scam? Would it be possible to look for similar patterns in the blockchain for current markets and predict exit scams in the future?
I read this in a post by /u/J0NJ0NES
Recently Agora had significant downtime. The ability to withdraw coins was suspended. They claim they were under a DDOS attack. After dealing with the problem, they came back online and both users and vendors were eventually able to withdraw coins. We can assume that they are better off now because they've learned something from this experience, and are better able to deal with DDOS attacks. The end result is that they continue to occupy the "Superlist", and not the "Wall of Shame". Their business survives, and we keep a great market as a resource.
So what's the problem you ask? If Agora, by seeing what happened to Bitcoin Blender, realized that they couldn't be honest about what really happened to them, like say a security breach that cause coins to be stolen, because they would be effectively blacklisted and their business killed, they would make the wise yet dishonest choice of claiming all their problems were due to a DDOS attack. I'm not saying that's what happened, but if Agora was breached I can guarantee you that is the story they would spin, and I wouldn't blame them for obvious reasons.
If the recent problems with Agora were due to a hack would it be possible to determine with some blockchain analysis?
It is unlikely but it depends on the way they decide to spread their coins across addresses.