TY - GEN
T1 - Investigating MMM Ponzi Scheme on Bitcoin
AU - Boshmaf, Yazan
AU - Elvitigala, Charitha
AU - Al Jawaheri, Husam
AU - Wijesekera, Primal
AU - Al Sabah, Mashael
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 ACM.
PY - 2020/10/5
Y1 - 2020/10/5
N2 - Cybercriminals exploit cryptocurrencies to carry out illicit activities. In this paper, we focus on Ponzi schemes that operate on Bitcoin and perform an in-depth analysis of MMM, one of the oldest and most popular Ponzi schemes. Based on 423K transactions involving 16K addresses, we show that: (1) Starting Sep 2014, the scheme goes through three phases over three years. At its peak, MMM circulated more than 150M dollars a day, after which it collapsed by the end of Jun 2016. (2) There is a high income inequality between MMM members, with the daily Gini index reaching more than 0.9. The scheme also exhibits a zero-sum investment model, in which one member's loss is another member's gain. The percentage of victims who never made any profit has grown from 0% to 41% in five months, during which the top-earning scammer has made 765K dollars in profit. (3) The scheme has a global reach with 80 different member countries but a highly-asymmetrical flow of money between them. While India and Indonesia have the largest pairwise flow in MMM, members in Indonesia have received 12x more money than they have sent to their counterparts in India.
AB - Cybercriminals exploit cryptocurrencies to carry out illicit activities. In this paper, we focus on Ponzi schemes that operate on Bitcoin and perform an in-depth analysis of MMM, one of the oldest and most popular Ponzi schemes. Based on 423K transactions involving 16K addresses, we show that: (1) Starting Sep 2014, the scheme goes through three phases over three years. At its peak, MMM circulated more than 150M dollars a day, after which it collapsed by the end of Jun 2016. (2) There is a high income inequality between MMM members, with the daily Gini index reaching more than 0.9. The scheme also exhibits a zero-sum investment model, in which one member's loss is another member's gain. The percentage of victims who never made any profit has grown from 0% to 41% in five months, during which the top-earning scammer has made 765K dollars in profit. (3) The scheme has a global reach with 80 different member countries but a highly-asymmetrical flow of money between them. While India and Indonesia have the largest pairwise flow in MMM, members in Indonesia have received 12x more money than they have sent to their counterparts in India.
KW - MMM
KW - Ponzi scheme
KW - analysis
KW - bitcoin
KW - e-crime investigation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096390945&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3320269.3384719
DO - 10.1145/3320269.3384719
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85096390945
T3 - Proceedings of the 15th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security, ASIA CCS 2020
SP - 519
EP - 530
BT - Proceedings of the 15th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security, ASIA CCS 2020
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
T2 - 15th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security, ASIA CCS 2020
Y2 - 5 October 2020 through 9 October 2020
ER -