Can you identify if an address is a Coinbase address?

[jwl]

Hi, I am currently going through my old crypto wallets to do some tax calculations and I have an old wallet address which is either an electrum or a Coinbase address.
I know it seems strange but it would be helpful if I knew which it was so I could give up trying to contact Coinbase support
So, is it’s possible to tell from looking at an address if it’s a Coinbase address? Long shot I know!
Thanks!

[1715231517]

1715231517

[Upgrade00]

I do not think there is a way to know the exact exchange which owns an address, although it's possible to determine if it is an exchange hot or cold wallet by looking to the transaction history of the wallet and you can pick it apart from an electrum address.
Exchange addresses are not random and do not belong to a particular user, unlike non custodian wallets like electrum; so there would be multiple transactions of varying amounts in an exchange wallet like coinbase, depending if it's a hot or cold wallet, but this would not be the case in electrum, only txs you sign appear in your history.

There was a service to identify addresses of exchanges, but it seems to no longer be functioning now.

[jwl]

Thanks for your reply although I don’t quite understand it

Are you saying if it was an exchange address it would be the same address for all txs?

The address I have has lots of different txs attributed to it so should I assume it’s the Coinbase address rather than the electrum one?

Thanks!

[Upgrade00]

Are you saying if it was an exchange address it would be the same address for all txs?

Something of that sort. Exchanges reuse addresses for different users and store them in secure hot or cold wallets, so an exchange address would have multiple transactions, possibly thousands, far more than a regular user would make and also multiple outputs. This is one way to identify it.

The address I have has lots of different txs attributed to it so should I assume it’s the Coinbase address rather than the electrum one?

You can assume to a degree of certainty that it's an exchange address, specifying that it belongs to coinbase is more difficult than that.
Try searching it up on this site to know if the exact exchange comes up - https://www.walletexplorer.com/

[odolvlobo]

Hi, I am currently going through my old crypto wallets to do some tax calculations and I have an old wallet address which is either an electrum or a Coinbase address.
I know it seems strange but it would be helpful if I knew which it was so I could give up trying to contact Coinbase support
So, is it’s possible to tell from looking at an address if it’s a Coinbase address? Long shot I know!

You don't have a wallet address at Coinbase. You have a deposit address. When you send bitcoins to that address, Coinbase credits your account. Then, they move the bitcoins to other addresses. When you withdraw bitcoins, you will not receive them from that address. When you buy or sell bitcoins, they will not be moved in or out of that address.

Given that, it is difficult to know if an address belongs to Coinbase or not. However, Coinbase has a record of all of your deposit addresses, so they can probably tell you or maybe you can look it up on the site.

[hatshepsut93]

Something of that sort. Exchanges reuse addresses for different users and store them in secure hot or cold wallets, so an exchange address would have multiple transactions, possibly thousands, far more than a regular user would make and also multiple outputs. This is one way to identify it.

Exchanges don't reuse addresses for different users, if that was true, how would they know which user has deposited to an address? It's just that after you deposit to an exchange address, the exchange will either use those coins to send them to someone who wants to withdraw, or they would send the coins to cold storage if their hot wallet has more funds than they need.

[ranochigo]

Are you saying if it was an exchange address it would be the same address for all txs?

The address I have has lots of different txs attributed to it so should I assume it’s the Coinbase address rather than the electrum one?

Wrong. Certain services exhibits unique behaviors, Binance often sends their funds to this address[1]. If you follow the path for the funds being transferred, you'll often discover that the address is always associated with the deposit in one way or another. Similarly, CoinBase and other exchanges also have similar behavior which would leave clues to what it is.

Of course, there is no way to determine with 100% certainty that an address is associated with a certain service. It'll merely be an educated guess.[2]


[1] https://twitter.com/binance/status/961666467325358081
[2] walletexplorer.com

[FinneysTrueVision]

You can try looking up the address on a block explorer like OXT.me or walletexplorer.com. Those explorers are kind of like a really basic version of Chainalysis and you can use them to track addresses to their owner. You might not even need these tools if it is obvious that the address is related to exchange activity. For example, if they are consolidating large amounts of UTXO's it might be from an exchange.

[pooya87]

For example, if they are consolidating large amounts of UTXO's it might be from an exchange.

Not at all, actually exchanges don't leave that many UTXOs in one address for long. Usually as soon as the address receives any funding, they are going to be spent after a certain number of confirmation (eg. 10-20). That's basically their "hot wallet".
not to mention that address reuse is not rare among regular users even though it shouldn't.

[hugeblack]

Someone correct me, but does coinbase wallet give you a private key? If they manage the private key, you won't be able to get it.
In general, if your coins is not transferred from that address, it is not a platform address (they rarely give you the address of cold storage directly).
Secondly, I do not know your tax system works, but according to what I know, no tax is imposed except when you transfer that coins to cash.

[Findingnemo]

Hi, I am currently going through my old crypto wallets to do some tax calculations and I have an old wallet address which is either an electrum or a Coinbase address.
I know it seems strange but it would be helpful if I knew which it was so I could give up trying to contact Coinbase support
So, is it’s possible to tell from looking at an address if it’s a Coinbase address? Long shot I know!
Thanks!

Its not possible to say whether the address is actually from Coinbase or electrum but can track it down for sure. when you just have the address but if you used them in the past then you can get all the used address for your deposits can be found on the addresses which is possible if you logged into the coinbase desktop site.

Even in Electrum you can see all the addresses used in the past.

[khaled0111]

Not sure how knowing which wallet was used to generate an address can help you with your tax calculations! I believe all you need here is the addresse's history which you can check using any block explorer.
Anyway, if you still have access to your Electrum wallet then you can check if a certain address blongs to that wallet by matching it with addresses on the Adresses tab or by running the ismine('address') command from the Console. If it returns true, then that address was generated by your Electrum wallet.

[nakamura12]

Hi, I am currently going through my old crypto wallets to do some tax calculations and I have an old wallet address which is either an electrum or a Coinbase address.
I know it seems strange but it would be helpful if I knew which it was so I could give up trying to contact Coinbase support
So, is it’s possible to tell from looking at an address if it’s a Coinbase address? Long shot I know!
Thanks!

I don't think you'll know which provider generated that address and all you can do is to check the transactions and by opening it on another wallet provider if you have the key of your wallet. I did know something about a gambling site where I deposited in the address shown when you want to deposit but aftet I withdraw the amount in my accou t I received it from another address.

[Bitcoin_Arena]

To add on what some members have suggested. Walletexplorer is a good tool especially if your address is old. Now most exchanges have even their addresses named but coinbase doesn't have.

But the good news is that there are some strings that wallet explorer uses to group addresses or identify wallets. The one for Coinbase is [00000014ea] or 00000014ea8b260f
If you see your address and those numbers come up, then be sure it's a coinbase address.

This is their wallet - https://www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/00000014ea8b260f/addresses

[ranochigo]

To add on what some members have suggested. Walletexplorer is a good tool especially if your address is old. Now most exchanges have even their addresses named but coinbase doesn't have.

But the good news is that there are some strings that wallet explorer uses to group addresses or identify wallets. The one for Coinbase is [00000014ea] or 00000014ea8b260f
If you see your address and those numbers come up, then be sure it's a coinbase address.

This is their wallet - https://www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/00000014ea8b260f/addresses

Do note that those implementations uses the behavior of the addresses to identify the addresses.

This also means that if the address doesn't contain any outgoing transactions to known addresses, then the linkage won't be shown because the address will look identical to any other addresses. It's impossible to ascertain the services that uses said addresses, often a times you can confuse the explorers by just making a transaction to the known Coinbase addresses and it'll show up and be linked to that.

[GazetaBitcoin]

Excepting the above mentioned Wallet Explorer, I found recently another Blockchain, which may be of use in such situations: https://oxt.me. I am not sure if it will help you with what you need, but I observed that for some addresses it (for example multisig ones), it shows also the addresses which are in relation with the multisig one.

If Wallet Explorer doesn't show you if a specific address belongs to CoinBase, you could search that address with OXT and see if it is a multisig one. If so, you can take then the the addresses involved in the multisig and search for them on Wallet Explorer... Maybe it recognizes one of these addresses.