Method and apparatus for identifying wallets associated with virtual asset service providers

An apparatus for identifying a wallet address associated with a virtual asset service provider comprising:

• a VASPs information management unit;
• a transaction information management unit;
• and
• a wallet address determination unit,
• wherein the VASPs information management unit manages information on a known wallet address of a VASPs and types,
• wherein the transaction information management unit collects and manages transactions related to the virtual asset from an external virtual asset trading network,
• wherein the wallet address determination unit, if the target wallet address is not stored in the VASPs information management unit,
• obtains a virtual asset transaction associated with the target wallet address from the transaction information management unit,
• obtains a list of the known wallet addresses of the VASPs from the VASPs information management unit, and
• identifies a type of the target wallet address by performing at least one of a plurality of wallet address determination routines for the target wallet address based on the transaction and the list of known wallet addresses of the VASPs.

A computer readable non-transitory storage medium comprising an instruction,

• wherein the instruction is executable by a hardware processor of a wallet address identification device, to cause the hardware processor of the wallet address identification device to perform steps comprising:
• receiving, from a wallet address inquiry device having a hardware processor, a target wallet address;
• obtaining, from an external network, a transaction of a virtual asset associated with the target wallet address;
• obtaining a list of a plurality of known wallet addresses of virtual asset service providers (VASPs), from a non-transitory memory database of the wallet address identification device, which collects and stores information regarding the plurality of known wallet addresses of VASPs;
• identifying a type of the target wallet address, by performing at least one of a cold wallet determination routine and a hot wallet determination routine for the target wallet address, based on the transaction and the list of known wallet addresses of the VASPs;
• transmitting, to the wallet address inquiry device, the type of the target wallet address and the associated VASP information;
• and
• if the target wallet address is a new VASP wallet address, adding information on the target wallet address as a new VASP wallet address and the type of the target wallet address as the type of the new VASP wallet address to a wallet information database or a service provider information database.