Bitcoin Forum

If we have the wallet address of someone, can we know who is the owner the address?

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Without more data, no, you cannot know who the owner is.

As an individual, most probably not unless the wallet address owner did some dumb stuff like post the address using a doxxed social media account. If you're the FBI on the other hand — most probably yes, especially when the wallet address has interacted with a wallet address of his/her centralized exchange account. Bitcoin can only be private if you're privacy-conscious yourself, and if you know what you're doing.

By simply looking at the block explorer -- NO.

The address is just a randomly generated characters based on a private key where identifying the owner is quite difficult especially if you don't have any source of information that will give you any clues like a publicly posted address on social media that's tied to real person.

It depends on the person and the address!

For example if you receive my address "bc1q3aqjl7c8j..." and then search it on Google, you will easily find my account on bitcointalk and find me simply because I have willingly published that information on the internet (it is visible if you click on my username).
But if I give you another address that has never been linked to my account, you will not be able to find the link through searching. Specially if the address is never used before, there is just nothing to be found.

The decentralized nature of crypto or bitcoin allows openness in every transaction so that every transaction history will be public which makes it possible to track transactions that occur, but to find out who the original owner of the wallet address is, that  is impossible, even though the history of transactions that have occurred is visible to everyone , but due to its very nature pseudo-anonymity the privacy of the original owner will always be maintained, unless the original owner publishes the wallet address to his website and personal social media.

What is the behind motive you want to track someone by his address? Do you want to blackmail or rob the owner of richest address?

Crypto is mostly centralized, so it's not about decentralization or centralization to see the public key or transactions history. Don't forget the exchanges can know you if you ever submitted KYC to them, a hacker can know too if there's data breach from that exchanges.

No, you won't be able to figure out who owns a bitcoin address until someone publishes it or associates it with a known name. That is why a Bitcoin address is 26-35 characters long and it consists of alphabetic and numeric characters. The whole point of owning a Bitcoin is to not reveal the name of the owner.

It greatly depends on how careful that person was in avoiding to link his addresses to his person or IP, what kind of transactions he has done (did he use KYC platforms?) and, obviously one's skills and information at hand, meaning here that chain analysis companies can have more info - for example from block explorer and SPV server logs - than you or me could gather.

Only if you know that owner personally having that wallet address you know and you're like the database manager of an exchange. Otherwise, it's unlikely to know the owner of an address if it's only the address that you have in data.

This is why we're all liking bitcoin and decentralization.

it is difficult to find who owns the wallet we are looking for even though we have the wallet address, unless the wallet has been published frequently and is usually registered in forums like bitcointalk,
but you can only find the virtual owner of the wallet, not to know the real owner of the wallet with real data unless you are an expert in penetrating KYC data in an exchange that requires KYC

No, but you can track his transaction from the very start to the very end but without other information there's no way you can identify the owner of that address that's why the Bitcoin is pseudonymous and not totally anonymous but there are ways to be anonymous either using privacy coins such as Monero or using coin mixing service such as Chipmixer.

I don't think anyone can know the owner of an unknown wallet address. You are entitle to your own wallet address, and you will be the only one to claim the ownership, and no one else can kmow the owner. In case you want to prove the ownership of your wallet address as the case may be you will need to present a degital signature which you generate from your private key to claim the ownership.

Strictly speaking no.

But if we try to elaborate on this, considering majority of the users of bitcoin to be a part of this forum, doing a search engine lookup on that wallet address might reveal a linked forum account in case the address was staked here.

Beyond this, I dont see how we can search out the real owner of the address, its not like people wear it around their neck or go around announcing everyone about their receiving address. Obviously everyone is paranoid of their holding so they would rather keep it secret in real life.

Can you tell us what exactly are you trying to achieve here?

It is a big NO with only that,but even if you have other information is extremely difficult.Even if that person is registered in Binance for example and pass KYC he may choose to opt to only withdraw crypto to another wallet for example that of a casino/gambling site and then withdraw from the casino to another wallet of his and then he deposits to another exchange where he withdraws the FIAT money.Even services specialized in finding such addresses will have a lot of difficulty to track it down because the withdraw time is different and also the casino wallet can be different,personally I use the above scenario and I considered myself to be somewhat more safe than an average user of cryptos.

The address itself do not contain any information about the owner. It's just a bunch of random characters. But its history (transactions in and out) which is publicly available on the blockchain may help to identify the owner or to know more about him.
So, yes it's possible in some cases but not that easy and certainly not for everyone.

Unfortunately this is a common misconception. Bitcoin is not anonymous it's pseudonymous. If you want better anonymity then you should use coins like XMR, Zcash, Grin...

Well possible if the transactions history of that address will perhaps link to the address that has data of information in the ownership.
But usually, you cannot because there is no further data information included and most people now know how to keep their privacy safe and did not use the same wallet on receiving and sending bitcoin. Bitcoin transactions cannot be anonymous but it is pseudonymous.

Unfortunately you cannot find out who is the owner of the wallet address. You only can see his transaction but you cannot necessarily see his identity.

The whole process of getting a person through their wallet address depends on the activities of that person. Your wallet is like an alias, let's take your username for instance. To trace you through this username relies on the information you've provided on your profile or the telegram account associated with the username. So is the wallet address, if you share sensitive information on different platforms where your address is posted and you use just one address then it'll be easier to trace you. But, if you generate new address often it will be a difficult task for a layman. Only the cops can get their way out of reaching you. Because they got the tools required to do so.

To find the owner of a wallet address is a very complicated task, because bitcoin transactions are actually pseudo-anonymous, all bitcoin transactions and wallet addresses involved are recorded on the public blockchain which is the bitcoin blockchain.
and they are open and available for all to see. However, this is only for bitcoin wallet addresses and does not reveal any identifiable details.
Unless you're an expert it's certainly not impossible with some strategy and determination, but for what and for what purpose.

The blockchain doesn't store real names and addresses. It shows transaction history and balances. It's a database.

What you can find out from a Bitcoin address depends on how much information is connected to it.
If that address is posted on someone's social media profile or personal website, it's easy to make the connection.
if the address belongs to a charity organization, it's again quite simple to find out who manages the money. But that's about it the average Joe can find out.

The government and tax authorities can get more information. If they are suspicious of an address and think it's been involved in illegal activities, they can follow the money. If the coins move to a centralized exchange or a gambling platform, for example, chances are that the person who owns the account has undergone KYC and has submitted identifiable information. All they have to do now is get in touch with the centralized entity, request for more information about the client, or ask for account seizure/closure by presenting the needed court orders and documents.     

As others have mentioned, it's not something that can always be done or can easily be done. If you are not acting as an authority with a court order allowing you to proceed, it's probably not going to work, unless a person was clumsy and left info online (which, to be honest, happens quite often). If you have all court orders, access to databases and stuff like that, it's possible to work one's way to the real owner by looking at other wallets and addresses linked to the address you have and determining the exchanges that person might have used, and then demanding info about the details of accounts which sent money to this or that address. And even then, it's not always possible to find out the truth this way.

     This depends entirely on your resourcefulness and of course, it's difficulty would also depend on the type of person fhe address belongs to. If he is careful with his privacy it'll take a lot of effort to locate the owner but if the owner is fond of participating on whitelisting or airdops it would be easier. Just have to piece together the connections on social media/forum/documents that has the address pasted to it till you find the real person behind it. It may or may not happen as you expect and may need you to improvise a bit more depending on the situation. Hope this helps.

You can actually know who owns which wallet address but on a very slim condition, which is linking the sigwet address to a particular CEX where the address holder does transaction regularly but anything outside that you can't especially if this address holder choose not to move btc across exchange rather swapping to other digital assets or transact from their sigwet address directly

I mean why would someone even do that in their right mind? They are only opening up the chances of being attacked in real life and forced to give their private keys to a robber. Again someone could give a fake id and say that the fake id owns that account, sending the one who is asking on a goose chase.

There are forum accounts being staked here. But I cant speak for the number of bitcoin users actually using that service.

Either the OP does not know what they are trying to achieve or their are trying to do something malicious. Either way, I would wait for the OP to reply to some of the posts instead of drawing conclusions.