# A Probabilistic Model of the Bitcoin Blockchain

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.05451 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05451/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 7 Nov 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Detecting Sybil Addresses in Blockchain Airdrops: A Subgraph-based Feature Propagation and Fusion Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09313/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The Bitcoin transaction graph is a public data structure organized as transactions between addresses, each associated with a logical entity. In this work, we introduce a complete probabilistic model of the Bitcoin Blockchain. We first formulate a set of conditional dependencies induced by the Bitcoin protocol at the block level and derive a corresponding fully observed graphical model of a Bitcoin block. We then extend the model to include hidden entity attributes such as the functional category of the associated logical agent and derive asymptotic bounds on the privacy properties implied by this model. At the network level, we show evidence of complex transaction-to-transaction behavior and present a relevant discriminative model of the agent categories. Performance of both the block-based graphical model and the network-level discriminative model is evaluated on a subset of the public Bitcoin Blockchain.