Mastercard’s blockchain analytics company CipherTrace has reportedly paused some of its key services due to concerns about data reliability. CipherTrace, acquired by Mastercard in 2021, is discontinuing certain services, as reported by Fortune. The exact reasons for this decision are unclear, but the California-based firm has suspended the following services:

– Armada: A tool that assists banks, payment providers, and regulators in identifying virtual currency-related transactions for risk and fraud models.

– Inspector: A repository of attribution data linking crypto-addresses to real-world organizations, sanctioned entities, IP addresses, and events.

– Sentry: A real-time tool for tracking “know your transaction” (KYT) to comply with anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CFT) regulations.

This development comes after Mastercard’s decision to withdraw the expert testimony of Jonelle Still, CipherTrace’s Director of Investigations and Intelligence, in a recent case involving Bitcoin Fog. Still had previously raised concerns about Chainalysis’ attributions and the prosecution’s investigation. However, Mastercard later retracted Still’s testimony, citing data reliability issues from pre-acquisition practices.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has also highlighted discrepancies in blockchain data mapping among various analytics providers. In a report issued in July 2021, FATF compared data from seven blockchain analysis firms, including Chainalysis, CipherTrace, Coinfirm, Elliptic, Merkle Science, Scorechain, and TRM Labs. The report revealed significant differences in the data provided by these companies, making it challenging to draw definitive conclusions.

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