Topic: Can i track people by looking into Bitcoin transaction? (Read 295 times)

You might be able to track people through bitcoin transactions. There is some cases that you can still track the transactions but you won't be able to identify the owner of the address unless that person's identity is involved in creating that wallet or affiliated. Some wallet provider won't require some personal info and you can just create wallet.

Not true?

Apart from the example MK4 has given, here is another possibility:

If you, for example, can prove that you owned the bitcoins on adress X, which then were transferred to adress Y in the form of a theft (the bitcoins were stolen from you), and then went from adress Y to adress Z, which, for example, is a coinbase adress;

I'm pretty sure that if we're talking about significant amounts, you could most likely legally contact coinbase to ask them to block those funds from being cashed out, and for the owner of those funds to prove where he obtained them from. (Or if your funds are already gone, at least coinbase will share certain KYC information with you or the authorities).

I'm not saying you could get them back, that's for a judge to decide (or if you were even on time), but you can definitely find out who's behind a certain UTXO by tracking all the offramps it went through or came from (KYC-required exchanges such as coinbase, bitstamp, etc)

Of course, you can't always link an identity to a UTXO, often there are a lot of "ifs" involved, especially not as an individiual, but it is far from impossible to do so as an individual, especially if you have certain legal resources to contact exchanges and make them co-operate. That is of course; you have a valid case.

See:

Difficult? Yes. But impossible? Definitely not. Don't underestimate the laziness and carelessness of people.

I'll give one example.

Let's say Bob withdrew his coins from Binance to wallet address 1CJXWQnK1asiiUPGC4tV9Er3bDtxFbH9wz. But, while looking at the address itself doesn't give much information,  Bob uses the same address to receive donations on GitHub, effectively affiliating Bob's wallet address to the withdrawn funds.

This is not true, you cannot track the identity of the owner of transactions, and this is due to the anonymous nature of addresses. Only few companies exist that are specialized in this work, by spending a great time they can only analyze the address and the identity of owner of the transactions. A normal person cannot track this, people are just spreading wrong information about it.

i can says its something approach impossible, why?
if the address using TOR Network is approach imposible, some address can instanly be tracking if someone posting it in forum, website or tags in blockchain.info,

if you want to learning about TOR connection in bitcoin read here
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Setting_up_a_Tor_hidden_service

But once the transaction made from exchange wallet to the wallet which gives full control to the owner then its impossible to find who received that bitcoin.

Everything will depend on how much effort was made by the person in order to remain anonymous. If different IP addresses are used via Tor and VPN when working with a wallet, it will be impossible to track it. The weak point of anonymity is passing KYC. In this case, it is possible to identify the owner of the wallet.

Some instances believe tracing is a thing. For example HM Revenue & Customs is ready to bail out 100K£ for anyone who can come up with a tool that fulfils these objectives:


Specifically, they ask the tool to, amongst other:
Therefore, backtracking to service providers who the can try to push to reveal personal Id information tied to those TXs and amounts.

https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/ec88ae4b-4f4c-4926-982a-723636cf2f82?p=1

Yes you can but it would be really hard to do.
I also think you could only find them or know their identity if they have a well known address or an address from some exchange or online wallet that have a strong KYC policy.

Yes, its possible that it is not easy as it sounds, you need ip logs, but can do acquire them? So it's next to impossible unless you work on some government agencies or perhaps on CipherTrace.

So the quick answer is no, you can't identify them by just looking at the bitcoin transaction history.

Unless if that address was published into someone's social media or forum account, you may finally know and track the owner of it. As for IP addresses? The government can request the ISP to track down the owner of the IP address, but not when sending a transaction because it is recorded on the blockchain.

Anyone can create multiple Bitcoin addresses, but they won't disclose all of it. However, if the main address where it was posted publicly in a person's forum or social media account, and was sent to multiple unknown Bitcoin addresses, we can or cannot assume that it's his or owned by someone else.

"you"? no.
"government"? most probably yes.

you can't easily link people to their transactions unless they publicly reveal their addresses like a Youtuber posting his address with his own videos (his face in the video). otherwise it has to be through centralized services for example if you bought bitcoin from an exchange they have your identity both through KYC and banks and also your IP address. but that information is only accessible to the law enforcement with a court order not to average Joe on the internet.
but there is still the limitation that people have to have linked their identity to their bitcoin transactions. for instance if someone has never used any centralized services and have followed some simple privacy guidelines then finding them is going to be near impossible.

There are third-party apps and services that allow you to track people just by looking into bitcoin transactions. Because they require a mandatory KYC before using all the features of apps and services. So you can identify the profile where it came from and where it went.
But in most cases, it is impossible because of the anonymity, only input, and output addresses and amounts you can see.

this is a good example why someone cant really trace the exact identity of a bitcoin user as there are many factors involved before you can pinpoint that particular person as the owner. also what is the reason why the op wants to track a certain btc transaction? IP address alone is not the answer especially if you are using a dynamic one. maybe for static ip users but you need to ask the service provider who owns that address. and i doubt they would divulge the details unless you are coming from a government authority and investigating some fraudulent activities...

You can track, as you suggest some things but you basically need a lot of data to form the identity of the person.

If you track a person like me for example, you probably get an identity online but not of me, of my computer.

I don't mind telling people I share a computer with a lot of others (I kinda live in my office). We all are allowed personal time during our off shifts and even during shifts this forum is completely fine for them since we basically wait around for things to happen before we work.

So I don't even know my IP, it changes a lot, and if most people are like me, we don't even use our own wallets for every btc transaction. And with different usernames and services, tracking my txs can be pointless in a way.

If the address of the doer of the transaction is on public it is possible to track them. But the only thing you can do is to check where they use that kind of address and what are they are trying to buy using that one. I think it is impossible for you to be able to track done who is the doer since it is anonymous. Bitcoin makes every transaction anonymous. So you will be having a hard time if you are going to try to know who is the doer of it.

Although Bitcoin is positioned as an anonymous coin, experts say this is not entirely true. If anonymity is really important for you when making money transfers, then there are appropriate anonymous coins for this, such as Zcash, Monero, etc. You'd better use them.

Pretty much impossible, unless an address is posted on the person's public profile elsewhere. Not only this information is unlikely to be posted in public, but it's also often replaced for every transaction made. If you're dedicated enough, you could see some patterns in transfers and pinpoint some central address to where coins go, implying it is a wallet, though you still wouldn't know the person behind it (unless publicly disclosed).

You might be able to do that if you get a log from the node side. Other than that, simply looking at the input/output etc only won't give you any hints. Unless somebody explicitly stated that this or that address belongs to them.

If privacy is your concern, you should try using a mixer like Chipmixer or do a coin join.

That would be hard but its not impossible to track mate. Transaction of bitcoin is totally transparent even they have KYC on some exchange, they wouldn't divulge its user identity plus there are lots of IP addresses for different places. It's like youre trying to catch a specific fish on a wide ocean. Maybe some tech can do this but that is totally advanced.