Crypto KYT Software for Exchanges and Money Transmitters

This guide is for the BSA officer, the head of compliance or the engineer who owns the deposit pipeline at a US exchange, a licensed money transmitter that moves bitcoin, an OTC desk, a kiosk operator or a payment processor. You already know you need "KYT". The harder questions are which vendor, at what price, and what the tool actually has to catch for your program to hold up in a state exam or a FinCEN review.

We sell Bitcoin on-chain data and an address screening module, so weigh our view accordingly. The regulatory points below come from the federal rules themselves, the exposure numbers come from our own read of the OFAC file and the chain, and where a bigger vendor is the better buy we say so plainly.

What crypto KYT software has to do for a US money transmitter

FinCEN's 2019 guidance on convertible virtual currency (FIN-2019-G001) settled the status question: if you accept and transmit bitcoin for others, you are a money transmitter and an MSB. That brings four obligations that KYT tooling has to support, none of them new.

• An AML program under 31 CFR 1022.210, with risk-based controls for the transactions you process. Wallet screening and transaction monitoring are how examiners expect that to work on chain.
• Suspicious activity reports under 31 CFR 1022.320, where the MSB threshold is $2,000, far below the $5,000 most banks work with. At bitcoin prices that is a small transfer, so the monitoring has to cover nearly everything.
• OFAC sanctions compliance, which is strict liability. OFAC's 2021 guidance for the virtual currency industry asks for screening at onboarding and on transactions, including the wallet addresses involved, and notes that listed addresses can be used to find related ones.
• The Travel Rule under 31 CFR 1010.410(f) for transfers of $3,000 or more, which is a data-sharing problem more than a blockchain one, but your KYT vendor's VASP directory often helps decide who the counterparty is.

Most state money transmitter regulators layer the same expectations on top through the licensing exam. The tool you pick has to produce a decision before funds move and a record you can hand over years later.

What a sanctions list check misses

To see why KYT is more than a list lookup, we downloaded the SDN XML that OFAC published on 8 October 2026 (19,416 records) and pulled every identifier typed "Digital Currency Address - XBT". That gives 534 entries and 532 unique addresses. One of them is a Tron address mislabeled as bitcoin, so 531 are valid on the Bitcoin chain. We then read each address on chain near block 970,519, including up to its 50 most recent transactions, and followed every output those addresses had paid to an address that is not on the list.

So one hop from the list sits about 4.6 times more bitcoin than on the list itself. Two caveats keep this honest. We read the full history of 373 of the 531 addresses and the most recent 10 to 50 transactions of the rest, so the real one-hop set is larger, not smaller. And an unlisted recipient is not automatically bad. Some are change addresses of the same blocked person, which is exactly what OFAC means by related addresses. Others are services: the largest holder in the set has 2.35 million transactions, the shape of a big exchange hot wallet. Four addresses that received 15,957.16 BTC from addresses on one SDN entry in October 2025 have not moved a coin since.

That spread is the whole job of KYT. A tool has to tell you that a deposit came one hop from a sanctioned address, show which transaction links them, and let an analyst decide whether it is the blocked person's own change or an exchange paying out to thousands of customers. Blocking everything one hop away would freeze half the market. Ignoring it is how a program fails an exam.

Is KYT required for crypto businesses?

Not by name, but in practice yes. No US rule says "buy KYT software". The rules require an AML program with transaction monitoring, SAR filing at $2,000 and OFAC screening of wallet addresses, and a money transmitter cannot meet those on bitcoin flows with a name-screening engine built for wires. Something has to read the chain for every deposit and withdrawal, and that something is what the market calls KYT.

Crypto KYT software compared

Six tools come up in most evaluations by US exchanges and money transmitters. The first three are full analytics suites, the next two sell monitoring to smaller crypto businesses, and the last is ours.

The suites attribute addresses to mixers, darknet markets, scams and thousands of named services, which lets them flag risk with no sanctions link at all. We do not do that. Our labels are a short, sourced list, and we do not cluster addresses by heuristics. What we do is the sanctions side carefully: the structured XML, every address validated, direct counterparties in both directions and the funding behind inbound coins, each finding tied to a transaction, a hop and a direction, and the list version and block the decision was made against. If AMLBot is on your shortlist, our AMLBot alternative and pricing comparison goes through it line by line, and our Chainalysis alternative page does the same for the largest vendor.

How much does KYT software cost?

For the large suites, there is no public number. Chainalysis, TRM Labs and Elliptic sell annual contracts by quote, priced on transaction volume, chains and seats. AMLBot publishes its plan structure but gives Pro and Pro+ prices on request. Scorechain's only public price is its QuickNode add-on from $50 a month for 100 checks. Our Enterprise plan, which carries the screening module, is $1,498 a month or $749 a month billed yearly, with 100 million API credits, and one screening costs 10 credits.

The useful way to compare is cost per decision at your volume. A money transmitter screening 3,000 deposits and withdrawals a day makes about 90,000 screenings a month. At 100 checks for $50 that volume is out of reach of a starter add-on. On a credit plan it is a rounding error, which matters when you also want to rescreen your whole customer address book every time OFAC updates.

How to choose KYT software for a money transmitter

1. List the chains you actually move. If more than a few percent of volume is USDT on Tron or tokens on Ethereum, you need a multichain vendor for those flows. If you move bitcoin only, a Bitcoin-only tool covers it with less noise.
2. Screen before credit and before signing. The decision has to land between the deposit being seen and the customer seeing the balance. Our Bitcoin webhook API fires on the deposit so the screen can run in the same step.
3. Ask how far the trace goes and whether it says when it stopped. A screen that read a fraction of an address history and calls it clean is worse than no screen. Ours states how much history it read and flags a partial trace.
4. Keep the evidence for five years. BSA recordkeeping runs five years. Store the transaction behind each finding, the list version and the block height, so a reviewer can re-perform the decision.
5. Rescreen on every list update. New designations land on addresses your customers already used. A book that rescreens automatically turns that into a short list of changed entries.
6. Route alerts to a person with a deadline. An alert nobody owns is a finding waiting to happen. Assign it, log the disposition and link it to any SAR.

When the examiner asks for the file behind an alert from three years ago, the screen result is only half of it. The analyst's notes, the emails with the customer and the SAR worksheet usually live in other systems, and an enterprise search tool that finds any document across your systems saves a lot of hunting during a review.

Where BitcoinDatabase fits in a KYT stack

On the Enterprise plan, GET /v1/screen/{address} matches an address against the newest SDN list we hold, reads its direct counterparties both ways and the funding behind its inbound coins, and returns a risk level with each finding tied to a txid. POST /v1/screening/book adds up to 1,000 customer addresses per call, the SDN XML is fetched twice a day, and every book entry is rescreened when a new version is published. Our Bitcoin address screening API page shows the response, and the crypto transaction monitoring page covers deposit and withdrawal flows end to end.

Many compliance teams run two layers: a broad vendor for attribution across chains, and a cheaper, high-volume Bitcoin screen with full evidence for every deposit and every rescreen. If you run kiosks, our guide to crypto ATM regulations and wallet screening covers the state rules, and banks should read our crypto AML compliance guide for banks.

What is KYT in crypto?

KYT, or know your transaction, is ongoing monitoring of the blockchain side of each customer transfer: who sent the coins, where they came from and where they are going, scored against sanctions and risk data. KYC tells you who your customer is at onboarding. KYT tells you what their money touched, on every deposit and withdrawal after that.

Does Chainalysis KYT support Bitcoin?

Yes. Chainalysis started with Bitcoin, and its KYT product monitors bitcoin alongside a long list of other chains and tokens. Pricing is by quote. If your flows are bitcoin only and you want published pricing with the transaction behind each finding, compare it with a Bitcoin-only screen before signing a multiyear contract.

Can a list check replace KYT for a small money transmitter?

No. Matching against the SDN list catches direct hits, and on our 8 October read only 87 listed addresses still held any bitcoin. The real risk sits one hop away, in the 650 unlisted addresses holding 42,992 BTC received straight from listed ones. A small program can keep costs low with a narrower tool, but it has to trace exposure, not just match a list.

BitcoinDatabase provides informational on-chain data and compliance tooling, not legal advice. A risk signal is context for your own review, not a determination about any person. Vendor facts were read from their public sites on 8 October 2026 and may change. Product names are trademarks of their owners.