Portrait of Bernhard Haslhofer, research group leader at Complexity Science Hub Vienna.

Short bio: EN | DE

Bernhard Haslhofer, Cryptoasset Analytics & Blockchain Forensics Researcher

I lead the Digital Currency Ecosystems research group at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna. My research develops computational methods for cryptoasset analytics and decentralized finance, digital crime and forensics, and large-scale disinformation.

I co-founded Iknaio Cryptoasset Analytics and serve as a court-certified expert in IT and cryptoasset forensics. I also teach courses on these topics at TU Wien.

Research Interests

Cryptoasset Analytics & DeFi: Quantitative methods for measuring cryptoasset ecosystems and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols at scale, from tracing fund flows across ledgers to analyzing investment strategies, risks, and structural dependencies.
Digital Crime & Forensics: Algorithms and open tools for tracing illicit fund flows and analyzing dark web ecosystems, producing forensic evidence that supports criminal investigations and prosecutions.
Large-Scale Disinformation: Network-analytic methods for understanding how disinformation spreads through online ecosystems and how coordinated campaigns can be detected at scale.

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Impact

Societal: supported the takedown of over 370,000 illegal dark web sites by the Bavarian Central Office for the Prosecution of Cybercrime.
Industry: the Iknaio spin-off and the open-source GraphSense platform.
Policy: evidence for central banks (BIS), international forums (INTERPOL), and European policy debate.
Standards: Europeana Linked Open Data, ResourceSync (NISO), and Open Annotation (W3C).

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Recent News

Jun 2026

We are hosting the upcoming 15th Illicit Networks Workshop at the Complexity Science Hub on June 29-30.

May 2026

I gave an invited talk on "The Privatization of Money: A Decade of Crypto, from Cypherpunk Utopia to Stablecoin Reality" at the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin.

May 2026

New pre-print: DeFi Yield Aggregators: Analysing Investment Strategies and Structural Dependencies is now available on arXiv.

May 2026

New pre-print: Modern Portfolio Theory in the Crypto-Wilderness is now available on arXiv.

May 2026

I am co-organizing this year's Frontiers in DeFi workshop at the Einstein Center Berlin.

Mar 2026

Research Impact: our investigation methods ultimately led to the crackdown of over 373,000 dark web sites.

Mar 2026

Our paper on Credibility Matters: Motivations, Characteristics, and Influence Mechanisms of Crypto Key Opinion Leaders has been accepted at ACM CHI 2026.

Mar 2026

We are hosting this year's edition of the Cryptoasset Analytics Workshop (CAAW), co-located with Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2026.

Feb 2026

The idCLUES project on identifying complex laundering and underlying exchange schemes has started.

Feb 2026

We are going to host the upcoming Illicit Network Workshop at the Complexity Science Hub from June 29-30. Call for proposals is open until March 2 2026.

Jan 2026

New preprint: Reuse of Public Keys Across UTXO and Account-Based Cryptocurrencies, will be presented at Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2026.

Jan 2026

Our paper on Linking Cryptoasset Attribution Tags to Knowledge Graph Entities: An LLM-based Approach just got published.