Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has launched Market Intel, a new website separate intended to inform investment decisions in crypto, rather than focusing in tracking illicit activity and enabling compliance. Market Intel is aimed at asset managers and financial regulators interested in monitoring the health of crypto markets.
Market Intel is currently only available in Beta, but already supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin. It seems more likely than not that this will expand over time to include other digital assets monitored through Chainalysis' other compliance products.
In the press release, Chainalysis says that:
Today, most of our customers use Chainalysis products to track illicit transactions conducted with cryptocurrency for compliance and investigation purposes. But illicit transactions only represent about 1% of all cryptocurrency activity. The data that powers our products also captures the other 99% of activity associated with investment, trading, and transactions.
The company says it believes that providing data insights into cryptocurrency activity will help government agencies, exchanges, and financial institutions to fuel the industry’s growth. While Market Intel is currently free, Chainalysis’s chief economist Philip Gradwell has commented in the media that while Chainalysis has no immediate plans to charge for the product:
We think the product market fit will take some time but we think it’s one worth playing for," said Gradwell. "If cryptocurrency does mature into a significant financial asset then it sort of almost follows that there's’ going to be a decent data and intel industry.
Chainalysis appears to have been developing this product for some time, and is clearly taking a long term view. Just one example of this is an algorithm in development for over a year which tracks exchange flows from crypto-to-fiat, which provides a framework for calculating the number of people cashing out, versus flows from one cryptocurrency to another. Perhaps we will see Chainalysis become the de-facto Bloomberg Terminal equivalent of the digital asset industry?