The record does not disappear
Transactions on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron and Solana remain published permanently. A transfer made three years ago can be examined in the same detail as one made this morning, with the same hashes, amounts and timestamps.
So a trace of an old case is entirely possible, and it is often worth doing simply to establish what happened and where the funds ended up. That answer does not become unavailable.
What time actually costs you
- Freezing. A service can only restrict funds it still holds. Within hours this is realistic; after months it rarely is.
- Bank and card routes. Push payment claims, chargebacks and ombudsman referrals all have time limits.
- Off-chain evidence. Websites go offline, chat accounts are deleted, emails are lost. This is usually the first thing to disappear.
- Service records. Some retention periods are finite, and an operator may have closed the account long ago.
When an old case is still worth tracing
- Funds have sat dormant in a wallet rather than moving onward — more common than people expect, and the position can change.
- You need a documented account for a bank complaint, an ombudsman referral or a solicitor.
- The same operator is still active and new reports are being made, so the case joins a larger pattern.
- You never established where the money went, and that uncertainty is itself the problem.
When we will tell you not to bother
If the funds moved through a privacy protocol shortly after the loss, if the loss is small relative to the cost of the work, or if the trail ends at a service that will not act without a court order you are not in a position to obtain, we say so at the assessment stage and do not take the case.
Our first assessment is free for that reason. It exists to tell you whether the work is worth doing, not to sell it.
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
- Is a two-year-old loss too old to trace?
- Not to trace. The ledger record is permanent, so the path can still be established. Whether anything can be done with that result depends on where the funds ended up and whether they still exist.
- Does reporting late make the report worthless?
- No. A late report is still worth making — it contributes to the wider intelligence picture even where it does not produce a case of its own.
- Can funds be frozen months later?
- Only if they are still held by a service, which is uncommon. A freeze is realistic in the first hours and days, not after months.
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.