How does money actually move?
Compare a traditional bank transfer with a cryptocurrency transaction.
John
Bank account
Balance
£2,500Banking network
Mary
Bank account
Balance
£850- Payment instructed
- Bank verifies sender & recipient
- Funds credited to Mary
Where funds are actually taken
A confirmed transaction cannot be edited or pulled apart while it travels across the network. When people describe funds being “taken mid-transfer”, the diversion almost always happened somewhere else in the chain of events — and each point leaves a record that can be traced.
Before the transaction is signed
The address was changed before signing
Sender
1.00 BTC
Point of failure
Before the transaction is signed
Intended wallet
Receives 1.00 BTC
In each case the diverted funds still move to an address that is recorded on the public ledger — which is where onchain analysis begins.
What a public record actually contains
Select any field to see what it tells an investigator — and what it does not.
Transaction record
Transaction ID
3f7a…c19b
A unique fingerprint for this single transaction. It is the reference an investigator, an exchange or a police officer uses to pull up the exact same record independently.
Nothing in this record names a person. That link is built separately, from information held by regulated services and other lawful sources.
Why a transfer cannot simply be recalled
Move the slider to add blocks on top of the transaction.
Waiting to be included
The transaction has been broadcast but is not yet written into a block. At this point it is visible to the network but not settled.
Same goal. Different infrastructure.
Bank transfer
- Identity
- Usually linked to verified customers
- Record
- Stored by financial institutions
- Intermediary
- Bank / payment provider
- Public visibility
- Usually private
- Example
- John sent £100 to Mary
Cryptocurrency transfer
- Identity
- Wallet addresses are displayed
- Record
- Recorded on a public ledger
- Intermediary
- Distributed network
- Public visibility
- Often publicly viewable
- Example
- Wallet A sent 1 BTC to Wallet B
The key difference
Banking systems generally associate transactions directly with customer identities.
Public ledgers generally associate transactions with wallet addresses. Connecting those addresses to real-world people usually requires additional information and onchain analysis.
Common assumptions, checked
Plain-language glossary
- Address
- A destination string funds are sent to. It identifies a wallet, not a person.
- Block
- A batch of transactions recorded together on the public ledger.
- Confirmation
- Each additional block added after the one containing a transaction.
- Hop
- One movement of funds from one address to the next along a path.
- Network fee
- A small amount paid so the network processes the transaction.
- Onchain
- Recorded publicly on the ledger, as opposed to inside a private system.
- Pseudonymous
- Visible but not automatically named — activity is public, identity is not.
- Hosted wallet
- A wallet held for a customer by a service, which usually holds identity records.
- Self-custody wallet
- A wallet controlled directly by the holder, with no service in between.
- Approval
- Permission granted to a contract to move tokens from a wallet later on.
If this happened to you
Keep every transaction ID, address, message and receipt exactly as it is, report the matter to the receiving service and to the police, and avoid anyone who asks for keys, seed phrases or upfront transfers.
Illustrative example only. Names, wallet addresses and amounts are fictional and shown for explanation. Nothing here is legal or financial advice.