Bitcoin Forum

question:

is there any way to find out which exchange platform the BTC address belongs to?
i am helping the police to check the transactions and found a few transactions to different addresses. and we know the scammer sold BTC through otc, but just need to find out which platform to do further investigation.
thx

Depending on how the exchange works, it may be possible.
After you make a deposit to your exchange deposit address, the exchange sends the fund to their own wallet.
If the wallet used by the exchange is publicly known, it should be easy to find out what exchange the address belongs to.

Use walletexplorer.com (http://walletexplorer.com).

ok, more question:

i am checking the address on www.walletexplorer.com
 
i.e.
i found 15vYPxzgBpb9hJ7sXKkUxcxK2ns1SQdbMe  and 14Ur3AR7CHxweAvrjnFvZvv8B5CBf5kGnG  showing Wallet Huobi.com-2

but other wallets: 15pncziUQx8bMxeWtTUVywo9rrV3CAJyF8
13EuFUmF3N7uq2No7QCSffY6LgG5CsYryo
showing: Wallet [00000dbdb5] 
what does it mean?

then from 13EuFUmF3N7uq2No7QCSffY6LgG5CsYryo, i can see it transferred to 1G47mSr3oANXMafVrR8UC4pzV7FEAzo3r9
but this address looks like a platform's address as it is actively trading.
but it also shows as Wallet [7d94852b35]
what does the code represent?

thx
 
 

These codes simply represent groupings made by walletexplorer.com. It groups addresses together based on these addresses being used together as inputs in the same transaction, with the assumption that this means they belong to the same entity. Each group of such addresses is given a code if walletexplorer is unable to identify who that group belongs to.

Last I checked, walletexplorer.com is quite outdated and does not know of many of the newer wallets belonging to various exchanges and services. You might have better luck checking out the following sites:

https://oxt.me/
https://www.breadcrumbs.app/

Here is another website to check out that might be useful:

https://glasschain.org/

---

According to glasschain.org both of these addresses are linked to the gate.io exchange.

https://i.imgur.com/P2QmaJw.png
source: https://glasschain.org/btc/Address/13EuFUmF3N7uq2No7QCSffY6LgG5CsYryo

so, i do find there is an address holding 24 btc and got transactions from some suspicious addresses.
can I report this address or red flag it so that the scammer can't transfer the money anymore?

No because bitcoin is not centralized to have any option that would prevent anybody from spending their own money. The only possible scenario is if a government pressured a centralized service (like a shop accepting bitcoin payments in that government's jurisdiction) to refuse receiving payment from a certain address. But that still can't prevent the owner from spending their coins or moving them to a different address then making the payment.

That some bitcoin addresses had received transactions from "suspicious" addresses doesn't automatically make its owner a scammer or criminal because rational bitcoin users don't do chain surveillance neither on their payers nor payees: they instead accept each bitcoin transaction regardless of its source because it is a right thing to do if you want a global adoption for a censorship-resistant, decentralized money such as bitcoin. Don't be like those chain surveillance companies that think they have a right to dictate what is a "dirty" or "clean" transaction, don't be an arbiter of truth like they are striving to be, and don't force your moral principles on others, just be an honest bitcoiner who respects yourself and others' rights to privacy and freedom.

Is this related to your previous thread? Which address that you judge as a scammer btw? Even if you managed to do that I think it will only show as malicious on explorer (just like how Etherscan works for example). Some exchanges might block transactions coming from those "malicious" addresses if they use the same blacklist database but you can't do anything if they refuse to do it.

The protocol isn't a court. Suspending their access to bitcoin, because, according to your jurisdiction, they shouldn't have it, doesn't mean the rest of us agree with such anti-freedom and anti-fungible mindset. Bitcoin transactions are non-reversible, and money ownership is censorship-resistant. Those are the rules; you either accept them, or leave the place.

If you believe they're a criminal, you should report them to the police. It's highly unlikely to find them if they know what they're doing, but that's your best course. You can't suspend criminally-linked Bitcoin activity at the expense of innocent users.

There is another possible scenario.

You can monitor those coins, and once they go to some centralized exchange like binance/coinbase you can inform the police and the exchange so the exchange freeze the funds.

You cannot stop coins flowing through the blockchain, but when he tries to convert btc into fiat (through exchanges) it is possible to get them back.

thx for the suggestions.

How do you tell when or if the coins ever left the possession of the (alleged) criminal, though?
Imagine how unfair it would be if this person bought a laptop with these stolen (just as an example) Bitcoin. Then the laptop seller used those BTC to get haircuts for himself and his whole family, and now the barber wants to exchange the coins they received, for fiat, to pay bills. Now the exchange is supposed to freeze the barber's honestly earned coins, just because they could be traced back to a criminal?

I strongly disagree with this. Why punish an innocent person?

Do note that there is no way to tell whether the criminal just bounced coins between their own handful of wallets, or whether actual money transfers happened like in the scenario I described.
But to prevent innocent users' coins to be frozen or confiscated, we need to accept each and every coin, even if we suspect it could originate from a crime and still be in possession of that person. Because there's no way to tell for sure, except if they never moved it at all.

True but first they have to prove that those coins are actually acquired through scam otherwise it is not possible to randomly call up the authorities and tell them you want an exchange to freeze some funds just because you claim the owners are scammers.
In other words it takes time to prove it and by then the coins could be sold already and cashed out.

Ofc punish innocent people is one of the worst things that can happen  .

If there is no way to prove the link between the criminal and the coins, nothing can be done.

However, we are talking about 24 btc and not 25 usd . He didn't cut his hair for half million dollars and it is very unlikely 24 btc is just changing hands every few days.

Edit: anyway, who am I to punish anyone. I was just suggesting the only technical way I can think of the user can retrieve his coins, I don't know even if he story is true...

I don't see this happening. The justice system works and eventually gets there but not in time. You will have to file a police report, provide evidence that the police might not even understand or care about, and get a court order to confiscate the coins. Who knows if that's even enough because the exchange could be operating from any territory in the world. It could take months before the papers are ready.

---

@fuyicn
You could contact Gate.io and Huobi support and ask them what kind of proof/information you would need to provide them with, to have a hacker's funds frozen, confiscated, and identified. That way you will know how to proceed and it it's worth it.

If the amount involved is substantial, it is advisable to hire a lawyer. A lawyer who has experience with similar cases will be preferable, as he will know what steps to take in order to get a court order freezing funds. With such a court order, the exchange can be ordered to freeze the account and hold the funds until a decision has been reached on whether they should be returned to you or not. In some cases, a lawyer will advise you to file a claim with the court and wait for its decision before taking any other steps.

It's not about proving link between criminal and coins; it's about proving link between current holder of coins and coins.
24BTC can easily change hands quickly. Sure it's half a million dollars, but the criminal could have sold them to an exchange, which already sold it to various different customers.
Just one of various scenarios. The criminal could also have bought a car, yacht, anything else with those coins and the seller already sold the coins on an exchange. Now you freeze the exchange's funds? I don't think they will like this.

It doesn't even have to be something expensive like a car or yacht. The criminal in question could quite easily just start spending those 24 BTC to cover their daily expenses, groceries, gas, bills, etc. We never ask merchants to ask for the history of the fiat they accept, and we never raid them and take away bills in their registers which was once used by criminals.* Why would we accept this treatment for bitcoin?

*This is despite the fact that due to serial numbers, bills can be traced precisely, and I can say with 100% certainty that a specific bill was used in a crime, whereas this is impossible as soon as bitcoin has been split or consolidated, as you can no longer say which bitcoin is which.

That is if OP is lucky enough that the hacker will keep those coins in the centralized exchange long enough for the paperwork to be completed for the freezing to take place. If I was a thief, I would probably try to get away as fast as possible and not use those centralized exchanges for those purposes at all.

If the scammers had to go through KYC at Gate.io and Huobi, a good lawyer could eventually get the exchange to reveal the names of the account holders. By then, the coins will probably be long gone. But OPs lawyer could then go against those individuals, assuming they didn't use stolen identities and KYC information of some poor bastards that have nothing to do with this.     

Yes. That is right. The OP can't really do much about a scammer on his own. That is why I recommended that the OP hire someone from the legal profession, so that he could request a freeze of funds and/or contact information of the scammer if he discovered that the stolen coins ended up on a centralized exchange. If the scammer sold them on an exchange that is regulated by FinCEN (or some other similar agencies in other countries in the world), then the OP would have a pretty good chance of getting at least some info from the exchange, which will ultimately enable him to take further legal action.