What the public record actually contains
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, Solana and the major networks used in fraud cases publish every transfer as a permanent, public entry. Each entry carries the sending address, the receiving address, the amount, the fee and the exact time it was confirmed. Nothing is deleted, and no participant can edit an entry after the fact.
That permanence is why tracing works at all. A trace is not a lookup in a private database; it is the disciplined reading of a record that is already open. Anyone holding the same hashes can repeat the work and reach the same path, which is exactly what makes the output usable as evidence.
Which networks are traceable, and which resist it
- Bitcoin — fully public. Outputs can be followed forward and addresses clustered where spending patterns imply common control.
- Ethereum and other EVM networks — fully public, including token transfers recorded by contract events rather than native value.
- Tron — fully public, and heavily used for USDT. Low fees mean far longer hop chains for the same loss.
- Solana — fully public, with high transaction volume that makes automated following essential.
- Privacy networks such as Monero, and mixing protocols on public networks — designed to break linkage. Statistical association is sometimes possible; deterministic following usually is not.
How far a trace normally gets
A trace follows value forward from a starting point you can evidence, hop by hop, until it reaches a terminal point. In practice there are only four of them: a deposit address at a centralised service, a bridge or swap into another network, a privacy protocol, or an address that has simply gone quiet.
Reaching a deposit address at a regulated exchange is the most useful outcome, because that service holds identity records and can be approached by law enforcement or through legal process. A dormant address is not a dead end either — positions change months later, and a documented trace lets you act quickly when funds move again.
What tracing cannot do
- It cannot reverse, cancel or freeze a confirmed transfer. No one can, including us.
- It cannot turn an address into a name. Attribution requires records held off the ledger and released under lawful process.
- It cannot follow value through a privacy protocol with certainty, and any report claiming otherwise is overstating its evidence.
- It cannot compel a service to act. A trace produces evidence; enforcement sits with police, regulators and the courts.
Doing the first steps yourself
You do not need a firm to make a start. Find the transaction hash of the payment you made, from your own wallet history or your exchange withdrawal record, and look it up on a public explorer for that network. Record the receiving address, the amount and the confirmation time, and take a dated screenshot.
Our free lookup page identifies which network an address or hash belongs to and sends you to the right public explorer, along with a short list of what to record before anything changes.
When a professional trace is worth it
Following two or three hops by hand is realistic. Following a route that splits across dozens of addresses, crosses a bridge and recombines is not, and neither is writing it up in a form a bank fraud team or a solicitor will accept.
A professional trace is worth commissioning when the loss is large enough to justify legal or insurance action, when funds appear to have reached a regulated service, or when someone else — a bank, an insurer, a court — needs the path documented and independently verifiable.
If you are looking at your own case rather than reading generally, our cryptocurrency investigation service explains how a case is scoped and worked, the asset tracing hub covers the network-specific work, and our overview of cryptocurrency scam recovery in the UK sets out what is realistic. Asset pages: USDT tracing, Bitcoin tracing and Ethereum tracing. You can also contact the investigations team directly.
Common questions
- Can cryptocurrency transactions be traced?
- Yes, on all the major public networks. Every transfer is recorded permanently with the sending address, receiving address, amount and time, so the path funds took can be followed and verified by anyone holding the transaction hashes.
- Can Bitcoin be traced to a person?
- Not by onchain data alone. Tracing establishes which addresses received the funds and what kind of service they belong to. Linking an address to an individual requires identity records held by a regulated business and released through lawful process.
- Are crypto transactions anonymous?
- They are pseudonymous rather than anonymous. Addresses do not carry names, but every movement between them is public and permanent, which is why patterns of behaviour across a long chain of transfers are often more revealing than any single transaction.
- Can a traced transaction be reversed?
- No. A confirmed transfer is final. Any realistic return of funds runs through the service holding them, law enforcement or civil action — never through altering the record itself.
- How long does a trace take?
- A first assessment of whether the record supports a traceable case usually takes a few working days. A full trace with a written report typically takes around two weeks, depending on the number of hops and networks involved.
Have a case you want reviewed?
We scope at intake and tell you honestly whether the onchain data supports a traceable case.
Key terms in this guide
Plain-English definitions from the Wallsec glossary.