Bitcoin Forum

If someone knows I have BTC and my address and I deposit it into an exchange, I know they are going to generate a unique address for me, but that will presumably be sent into a large cold storage address. Are these addresses generally known for all the major exchanges, so that someone could figure out which exchange I deposited it into? Or at least could they figure out that I did deposit it into an exchange, because it would presumably get sent to an address with a very large balance?

More or less, all the reputed exchanges cold addresses are known besides with blockchain analysis tools anyone can trace your coin and see where they ended unless you have used a mixer.

You need to make sure that in public you do not make any of your address known. In that case to practice privacy, mixer is your only way to keep your coins anonymous. However, if the exchange has KYC and you are KYCed then the moment you send the coins to them, they know that the receiving address belongs to you.

If someone carries out research using chainalysis tools then Yes, they could easily determine which exchange you deposited the Bitcoins.
One example of such tools is Walletexplorer (https://www.walletexplorer.com). The person behind the project now works for Chainalysis.com but the explorer is still functional. It has a way of linking addresses that belong to the same service or even HD wallet.

Yes it can be known since exchange addresses do store up big amounts of coins neither if its a hot wallet or an HD one.

On the question if it can be known if it do belong to you then, it would be "NO" but when the time that you had complied some KYC thing or verification then thats the time for them to have an informations
about you but if you havent comply everything then i dont see for you to get worried.

As suggested above then i would rather make use of Mixers if you are really that serious when it comes to privacy and anonymity.

In general, this is possible.
However, as a rule, you will receive a new address for the deposit, which will not be tied to the exchange until a certain point, when the exchange starts making transfers from this wallet to its other wallets, which may well lead to the creation of a connection.

You can get exchange addresses with
- https://www.walletexplorer.com/. They have a list of exchanges in the table at bottom (first right column)
- https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html
- Chainanalysis: https://www.chainalysis.com/chainalysis-data/ (not free)
- https://glassnode.com/metrics (not free)

I think almost bitcoin address know which kind of btc address do you use, like if you use transaction by trustwallet your bitcoin address will have unique code by at the first address begin with "bc". I think with other will show if you use exchange bitcoin address on blockchain transaction history and could know which one exchange do you use, almost transaction sending bitcoin always show about exchange wallet like update when have bigger transaction sending bitcoin fund.

Can someone explain why when depositing Bitcoin to an exchange, it sometimes generates new, but sometimes gives old (user have already deposited there) address? Or creates a different address for each user who deposit? Why not just make a few hundred of address and ask users to deposit only there? Instead, for example Binance, has 15,000,000+ (https://www.binance.com/en/blog/418708327988203520/Binance-2019-Year-in-Review) users worldwide. Means exchange manage minimum 15 million address. I understand this is all security measures, but dont understand why manage so many addresses.

It is difficult to confirm who made the deposit if each user uses has the same address, so they prefer that each account has its own unique address to deposit so they can easily saw and verified the amount deposited in that exchange .


You need to also understand the difference in custodial and non custodial wallet.https://appinventiv.com/blog/custodial-vs-non-custodial-wallets/amp/

Bascially, it's worked like this: whenever a new user is going to deposit bitcoin, exchanges give them a new address in order to track that ( that address will be used for that user until exchanges upgarde their system/nodes). And usually bitcoin's transfered from that user address into exchanges hot wallet whenever user triggers any trade. This whole system is done by back-end software of that exchange and none is needed to manage their user's addresses, imo.

When you use coinbase exchange for receiving bitcoin assets every time bitcoin address will change but don't worry you will get and received your bitcoin fund, I think generate address is not impact with your old address gone but you can still use your old address and can received bitcoin, I ever use coinbase long time and always generate address for receiving bitcoin assets because looks good with new address bitcoin.

They definitely could figure out, just check out @whale_alert acc at twitter they literally track the movement of every single whale wallet and could detect from which to which platform it's got transferred because our blockchain is kinda transparent after all, just some logic and you could find out at which platform or exchange you're transferring your money to. But, if your money is clean why bother? it's not like if anyone find out they not gonna steal it anyway since they can't.

Sorry mate,but i wasn't talking about any custodial wallet like coinbase back then. I was talking about exchange wallet management system and how they maintain every interaction between hot wallets and given wallets to users by that exchange. Simple, try to track address and you'll get it. But samething also happen with custodial wallet like coinbase. Also, you can still receive funds of your previous address instead of generating a new address.

It looks like you have a little lack of information on what blockchain or cryptocurrency really works. To fix this, I suggest you look for this @ sloboda-studio.com (https://sloboda-studio.com/) website. They have a lot of crypto info there.

Some addresses are known some are not,  it's actually easier to know an exchanges addresses from the meta data that's attached to some of these addresses,  but this is not the case for newer exchanges.

Also for exchanges that allow you to generate new addresses every time you try to deposit coins I don't think it's easy to track the addresses.

I think the wallet address is known, because nowadays there are many tools that can be used to track crypto wallets.

There will be a trace of transfers to one or two addresses from those individual ones, so we can still identify it as long as we have the tool to do so. AFAIK new chainalysis or wallet explorer tools already collect these addresses so you don't have to do it on your own. Some of them are not free though.