USDT, USDC and most other assets people are defrauded of are tokens. Moving one does not move a coin; the contract updates two balance entries and publishes a Transfer event recording sender, recipient and amount.
A trace that only follows native transfers will miss a token case entirely. Token transfers are traced through the contract's event log, which is just as public and just as permanent.
Related terms
Stablecoin
A token designed to hold a steady value against a currency, most commonly the US dollar.
Smart contract
Code deployed to a network that executes automatically when called, with no ability to intervene mid-way.
Gas
The fee paid to have a transaction processed, denominated in the network's native asset.
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