The Arkham Theses
The crypto world is covered in darkness. Darkness breeds fear and uncertainty, which bring down confidence and growth. The solution is to bring light, and this is what Arkham does: provide total crypto intelligence by deanonymizing the blockchain.
Crypto-based technologies will become a core part of the global financial system. This development, already well underway but still in its early stages, is inevitable no matter what obstacles hinder its progress.
The shroud currently covering many crypto transactions is one such obstacle that will be overcome, and it will be overcome in a particular way: entity based intelligence sourced from the community at scale, made available to everyone.
This vision is founded on a set of propositions, theses about crypto and the role intelligence plays in it:
Theses
Deanonymization is destiny.
In the early days of the internet everyone was pseudonymous. Now, people use their real identity online. MySpace to Facebook was a microcosm of this transition. The same process is happening with blockchain identities - consider the rise of ENS and of NFT profile pictures. Eventually, everyone's blockchain identity will be linked to their real-world identity.
Access to crypto data will be decentralized.
In traditional finance, data is hidden in black boxes guarded by established players such as brokers, exchanges, regulators, and banks. In crypto, raw transaction data is visible to everyone due to the public nature of blockchains, but in practice, it only becomes usable once processed, aggregated and analyzed by data platforms. Existing tools are expensive and limited to only a select few, but ultimately they will be disrupted by tools available to everyone.
Crypto is becoming a core part of the global financial system.
Crypto will reach mass global adoption because it is a more efficient, reliable, and robust financial system. Once you use crypto, there's no going back. Explaining to your bank on a wire form who you want to send your money to and why becomes intolerable after you've seamlessly made large transfers in a browser wallet. Any foundational technological shift encounters resistance and other difficulties, but overcomes them through a process of creative destruction. It will be the same with crypto.
Crypto intelligence will be widely adopted.
Depending on their production cost and use, technologies vary in how widely they are adopted. Only governments and major corporations own rockets, but billionaires use the same smartphones as everyone else. In a world where crypto is used by all, crypto intelligence tools are more like smartphones, because they are useful for anyone using crypto, from those tracking their stablecoin remittances back home, to multibillion dollar firms trading complex derivatives.
The crypto intelligence economy will be $30B+ annually.
As tools become more powerful and crypto reaches global adoption, crypto intelligence tools will serve as a real-time map of the new financial system and a utility for serious participants and observers. The market for conventional financial data is $30 billion annually, led by companies such as Bloomberg and Palantir. Compared to traditional financial data, on-chain data allows for more useful analysis, especially when augmented by new AI-based analytics. These factors will make the market for crypto intelligence at least as large as its traditional predecessor.
The future of crypto data is entity based.
Of the five Ws, Who comes first. To best understand crypto activity one must first and foremost know who is behind it. This is why Arkham provides intelligence at the entity level. Entity-level intelligence provides a general purpose tool that verticalizes the crypto data industries for trading, compliance, research, and portfolio tracking. It is the key to providing an all-in-one platform.
Crypto intelligence will power self-regulation.
Self-regulation is necessary for any industry to be healthy, irrespective of the decisions and laws of external rulemakers. It involves founding institutions to safeguard trust and quality in an industry by monitoring, promoting and enforcing standards of conduct. This concept is not new - for centuries, working communities such as guilds have machined standards and guidelines for practitioners to abide by. These institutions will develop naturally in crypto as users learn where to place their trust, reducing the need for external regulation, and allowing the industry to better meet the challenges it faces. The investigation and verification of on-chain activity is the foundation of crypto self-regulation, and crypto intelligence tools will play a central role in this process.
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Closing
Like all breakthrough technologies in their early stages, crypto is a frontier. That's what makes it risky, but it's also what makes it dynamic, invigorating, and full of opportunity. People are in crypto because they prefer the vitality of the frontier to the deadness of the normal world. But as with any frontier, good information is harder to come by and that makes it more valuable. Much of the territory hasn't been mapped, and what has been mapped is often inaccurate or unexplored. Arkham's mission is to map the entire blockchain so that everyone can move on the frontier with confidence.
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