watch-only Bitcoin Core wallet to track OFAC sanctioned transactions

[0xB10C]

I've used the following steps to create a Bitcoin Core descriptor wallet tracking transactions on the OFAC sanctioned addresses:

1. Create a new wallet

bitcoin-cli -named createwallet \
  wallet_name=ofac-sanctioned-watch-only \
  disable_private_keys=true \
  blank=true

2. (optionally) Load the wallet again

bitcoin-cli loadwallet ofac-sanctioned-watch-only

3. Get the descriptor checksums from the addresses and construct a JSON array with all descriptors

descriptors=()
while read addr; do
    if [ "$addr" != "TUCsTq7TofTCJRRoHk6RvhMoS2mJLm5Yzq" ]; then
      descriptor=$(bitcoin-cli getdescriptorinfo "addr($addr)" | jq -r '.descriptor')
      descriptors+=( $descriptor )
    fi
done <sanctioned_addresses_XBT.txt

# https://ofac.treasury.gov/faqs/562
# released on March 19, 2018
timestamp=1521441000

json_array="["

for desc in "${descriptors[@]}"; do
  json_array+="{\"desc\": \"$desc\", \"timestamp\": $timestamp, \"label\": \"OFAC sanctioned $desc\"},"
done

json_array=${json_array%,}
json_array+="]"

echo $json_array

4. Import the descriptors

bitcoin-cli -rpcclienttimeout=0 -rpcwallet=ofac-sanctioned-watch-only importdescriptors "$json_array"

The rescan might take a while (possibly multiple hours)

[0xB10C]

Warning

Bitcoin Core will attempt to rebroadcast all unconfirmed transactions it has in a wallet. This means, you're node (with your IP) will rebroadcast sanctioned transactions. Rebroadcasts are detectable on the network and it's assumed that spynodes/chainanalysis companies do this. You're IP might end up on a list if you run the above commands.