Topic: btc address to locate someone - page 2. (Read 1708 times)

if it's used a new btc address (never posted never linked to anyone) is quite impossible locate some one (100%).
there are too many possibilities, "casual" possibilities... to get a clear link between a payment (address) and a "physical" person.

no and this is the reason why bitcoin is anonymous if you don't dump for fiat or anything for that matter

using bitcoin only without a shipping address attached is 100% anon

There is no way to locate someone just with their Bitcoin address. But you can find out what kind of transactions they have made.

The BTC address alone, if used for a single payment... would be near impossible to trace, and even more difficult if the person used Tor/ VPN's / Mixers etc. The node that relayed the tx would give you

a geographical area, but it is as useful as a wooden tit. If it points to say New York, you will never get any closer to finding that person. This is why we always advice people to only use Bitcoin addresses

once for more sensitive goods and services. {Like those kinky lingerie for your lover} 

Finding through search engine is a better option to locate users. The link might direct towards transactions history. From that you may have some options to find the location.

you can also check out his transactions on Blockchain.info to see what is the IP of the node that is broadcasting them. although it won't work 99% of the time but if he is using his own node and sends the tx himself you can find his IP and work from there.

Ask Ross Ulbricht that question.

Bitcoins not disappear. To withdraw to a bank account you will need to send your bitcoins to an exchange, the exchange will keep the bitcoins and sent you the money by bank transference. After that, the exchange will sell the bitcoins to another user.

You might have to hire a BTC bounty hunter

What happens if the only transaction afterwards it a transfer to a bank account, does it just disappear?

nope, you can't. bitcoin address is not enough to get that information. it's random. maybe see the IP is the best way to know someone's location

All they can give you is a Bitcoin address, with that, you can only find out their transactions that have occurred with that Bitcoin address.

Googling the address is your best bet, if they have posted it anywhere else you may have a lead to work with.

In general, no.

You can try googling the address, to see if they posted in on the internet.

Another method is to try tracing the funds

It's a common misconception that if you buy something with your coins, it's immediately possible for everyone to see it's you behind the address.

Say you buy something from Overstock, put your address in your account and pay to the address on file. Now say that you also buy something illegal with the change that is left from this purchase. The police sees the bitcoin address in the drug dealers smartphone after busting him. Say you used a fake name and a burner phone to be in contact with him. Now how do the police find you are actually the owner behind the address the coins were sent from?

First they would need to see what bitcoin addresses you also sent to. One of those will be the Overstock order that has your address in it. But in order to know that it was an address controlled by Bitpay, they would need to search the database of Bitpay. They would probably not subpoena all the possible bitcoin payment processors and companies that handles bitcoin payments by themselves. But only if they have an up to date database of addresses to check, they could associate it with a sale.

If they actually have a subpoena or already have access to an up to date database of bitpay, they could match the address and information from Bitpay would reveal that you or someone closely related to you have paid to Overstock and they get the order number.

Now they have to send a subpoena to Overstock that is forced to give them your order details. If you were using default behavior of a Blockchain.info wallet, they could be pretty sure it was you. If you use the satoshi client, they would get a mess of change addresses to look up, but it could still in theory be possible to find out who made the payment to the drug dealer.

If you used a tumbler like Shared Coin, your coins would have been mixed with other unrelated drug trades so it would not be close to impossible to find a connection between your Overstock and ddrug orders.

you can google the address and see if someone posted it online before or not and with collecting some data about the poster , you might be able to know the address owner. you can also use walletexplorer.com to check if this address is in wallet with other addresses or not and it may help you in your searching

Anything is possible but I'd imagine it be very difficult, if it was easy then the ransomware assholes would have been caught by now.

With only an addressyou can't do most of time nothing. Sometimes you can find some more info when you google the specific address.

Maybe, with a bit of social engineering you could do it. But it's not a bullet proof method.

If you only have a bitcoin address you can't. You need more information.