Privately Regulated Public Blockchain Achieves Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorist Financing and Anti-Theft Goals

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 15, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The appearance of Bitcoin and its associated block-chain technology has gained tremendous interest in the development of decentralized, but secure, money banking and transaction systems. Bitcoin is gaining recognition all over the world as a convenient financial tool for daily payment and also for transferring money across the national borders. However, there is serious concern about Bitcoin's use for criminal exploits and the financing of terrorist activities. For example, recently Australian's biggest banks have closed bank accounts of at least 17 Australian Bitcoin companies. One of the major reasons is the untraceable nature of Bitcoin. Aten Coin recently introduced a proprietary, privately regulated public blockchain. This technology is the core of the Aten "Black Gold" Coin, and was created to solve problem of money laundering, criminal and terrorist financing and online theft.

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Aten Coin – Born for Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism and Thief-Resistance

In 2012, a group of programmers and entrepreneurs led by Marcus Andrade started working on the Aten Coin project and in early 2014 when development was nearly finished, Mr. Andrade formed the National Aten Coin Foundation (NAC) which is a cryptocurrency named Aten Black Gold Coin (also called as Aten Coin), which is based on the Bitcoin protocol, but with additional features to achieve anti-money laundering, anti-terrorism and thief-resistance. Aten is the ancient Egyptian God depicted as the solar disk emitting rays terminating in human hands. NAC named their new cryptocurrency after Aten because Aten Coin is designed to be a transparent cryptocurrency that cannot be used by the dark markets. After two years of efforts, NAC is now a Platinum Service Member of the American Bank Association (ABA), and Aten Coin is compliant with the following agencies: Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Counter Financing of Terrorism (CFT), Anti-Fraud and Financial Crimes (AFF), Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), USA PATRIOT Act and the FACT Act. Aten Coin has been officially launched in September 2015, and now can be purchased at AtenPay.com. To the best of our knowledge, Aten Coin is also the first cryptocurrency that can meet the KYC/AML compliance.

Privately Regulated Public Blockchain Technology of Aten Coin: The 4^th Type of Blockchain

The blockchain of Bitcoin is considered to be a "public blockchain". Anyone in the world can read, modify and verify it. No one can own and control the blockchain. Anyone can freely create bitcoin addresses and freely use their addresses to receive and send bitcoins. Recently there have been a lot of discussions about how to modify and make use of the Bitcoin's blockchain technology. For example, The Bank of England has said that central banks are looking at ways to implement "hybrid systems" involving distributed ledger technology of the type currently used to record bitcoin transactions. Besides "public blockchain", the concepts of "private blockchain" and "consortium blockchain" have appeared. In such concepts, the blockchains will be solely controlled by either a private entity or a group of private entities. However, such concepts totally opposite the concept of decentralized banking. To tackle with the issues of criminal uses and terrorist financing, NAC has invented a method (EU patent pending and U.S. copyright protected) that allows people to trace and track identities senders and receivers of a cryptocurrency when necessary. This invention involves a "privately-regulated public blockchain", which is a novel concept and can be considered as the 4^th type of the blockchain technology. Anyone in the world can read the Aten Coin blockchain and participate in transaction verification and Aten Coin mining. Aten Coin is only regulated when it comes to KYC/AML compliance and anti-terrorist compliance. The major advantage of NAC's novel blockchain technology is that the key decentralized banking concept of Bitcoin is being maintained, while Aten Coin can overcome the major shortcomings of the Bitcoin protocol.

Aten Coin's Identity-Linked, Credential Authentication Protocol

One the basis of a privately-regulated public blockchain, NAC has built a personal identity-linked credential authentication protocol into the source code of Aten Coin. The protocol involves an integration of three major processes, including personal identity verification, credential authentication and a two-party signature scheme. A regulation system is introduced at the blockchain level in the way that (i) all Aten Coin addresses must be multisignature addresses comprising of a pair of public key and private key from NAC and at least one pair of public key and private key from an Aten Coin user, and (ii) all Aten Coin addresses can only be created by people whom have got an authorization from NAC. Furthermore, (iii) without NAC's authorization, no one can use any Aten Coin addresses to send any atencoins that are recorded (stored) at the Aten Coin addresses. In order to obtain authorization from NAC, all Aten Coin Users must register as an Aten Coin User in the NAC's systems, and in the process of registration all potential Aten Coin Users must provide valid document to disclose their legal identities.

NAC's Founder, Marcus Andrade, discussed how Aten Coin is being regulated.

"Once an Aten Coin User has successfully registered at www.AtenWallet.com, he/she will be given an Aten ID, and will be allowed to create their private Aten Credentials, which will be subsequently approved by NAC's system to be used as valid credentials to obtain NAC's authorization for generating Aten Coin addresses as well as for making Aten Coin transactions," said Andrade. "All the authentication process steps are working at the network level, and the passwords of Aten Credentials are only known by the Aten Coin users who created them and encrypted in the NAC's system. No one from NAC can know passwords of those Aten Credentials. The authentication protocol is built inside the source code of Aten Coin. In other words, no one can by-pass NAC's authentication system," he said.

In the typical transaction process, NAC's authentication system will automatically provide authorization to any request for address generation or transaction creation as well as signing a transaction upon the receipt of a valid Aten Credential. Therefore, most of the time Aten Coin will function in the way similar to Bitcoin, except that by design Aten Coin transactions are faster, cheaper and more secure. All transaction data is available in the Aten Coin's blockchain, which is open to the public. Public will not be able to know the identities of Aten Coin senders and receivers as in the case of Bitcoin. However, real identities of the senders and receivers are kept in NAC's system with protection. Using Aten Credentials and Aten IDs, NAC can trace the legal identities of any senders and receivers when necessary. This allows NAC to reveal identities of senders and receivers associated with any transactions which are suspected to associate with any money laundering, hacking or illegal activities, while maintaining privacy of Aten Coin users.

Aten Coin's core technology allows NAC to monitor every single transaction and identify those suspected for involvement in illegal activities, such as money laundering and terrorist financing through analyzing individual Aten Coin users' transaction records. It is NAC's obligation to report any suspicious transactions and identities of their associated senders and receivers to the relevant government agencies for further action. It provides a practical solution for the current KYC/AML incompliance issues of Bitcoin and various alternative cryptocurrencies. As all transaction creations are being regulated by NAC and cannot be created without NAC's authorization, NAC can also restrict Aten Coin transaction to be created in authorized countries. In such way, NAC can proactively avoid Aten Coin being used into regions prohibited by United States of America or United Nations Sanctions by monitoring the locations of senders. This should help minimizing the chance of using Aten Coin in financing terrorist activities.

Andrade talked further about Aten Coin's unique theft-resistance solution.

"As senders and receivers of all transactions can be revealed, any thieves or hackers who steal the Aten Coins can be easily traced and tracked by retrieving personal identities of the receivers from the client information database," said Andrade. "Moreover, the credential authentication mechanism behind Aten Coin allows a user to change the credential to stop coins being transferred out from a stolen wallet. As a result, NAC's invention can prevent atencoins from being stolen," he said.

About National Aten Coin

Headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, National Aten Coin (NAC) is the creator of the Aten "Black Gold" Coin, a cryptocurrency (a form of electronic money) and its global payment transaction network. The official website of Aten Coin is AtenCoin.com. While maintaining privacy of customers, the NAC utilizes proprietary techniques to verify ownership of coin holders, secure and monitor transactions, trace and track identities of senders and receivers, keep recordkeeping efforts transparent, protect coins from stealing.

For more information please visit: AtenCoin.com, AtenPay.com and AtenWallet.com.

Related Links

http://www.AtenWallet.com

SOURCE NAC Foundation