How to Know address hosted by an exchange

[SatoPrincess]

My cousin is a victim of online deception, she was contacted by a person who offered high returns and was asked to pay in cryptocurrency. After a period of time, it became clear that the investment was a fraud. We have contacted the police. The police have not done anything about the case.
I know there is a hole in this case. For the scammers to convert the bitcoin to fiat they will need an exchange. Exchanges require kyc. Is it possible to know the bitcoin address of an exchange?

[o_e_l_e_o]

Is it possible to know the bitcoin address of an exchange?

Maybe, but not directly.

The vast majority of centralized exchanges provide each customer with their own deposit address, sometimes a fresh one with each deposit. These addresses are not publicized anywhere else, so are impossible for you to identify. However, most centralized exchanges will also sweep all deposits together in to a few central wallets, from which they will process withdrawals. For some exchanges the central wallet addresses are widely known, for example Binance's main central wallet is 1NDyJtNTjmwk5xPNhjgAMu4HDHigtobu1s. For others, such as Coinbase, they use thousands of different and constantly changing addresses, so it is near impossible to identify that they are owned by Coinbase. You would need to follow the transactions from the scammer's wallet and see if they end up in an identifiable exchange address. This would be a useful site to use: https://www.walletexplorer.com/

However, most scammers aren't stupid enough to cash out stolen coins via a centralized exchange under their own credentials. Thanks to the number of centralized exchange hacks and data leaks, it is fairly trivial for a scammer to use someone else's account or use their stolen KYC data to open an account in their name. They can also coinjoin or mix the coins to make them harder or impossible to trace, or they could cash them out peer to peer without completing KYC, or they could swap them for an altcoin on a non-KYC converter, and so on.

[HeRetiK]

For some exchanges the central wallet addresses are widely known, for example Binance's main central wallet is 1NDyJtNTjmwk5xPNhjgAMu4HDHigtobu1s. For others, such as Coinbase, they use thousands of different and constantly changing addresses, so it is near impossible to identify that they are owned by Coinbase. You would need to follow the transactions from the scammer's wallet and see if they end up in an identifiable exchange address. This would be a useful site to use: https://www.walletexplorer.com/

There's also a list of the richest Bitcoin addresses which include the known wallets of quite a few exchanges:
https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html

It is far from comprehensive though and be aware that even if you manage to trace her coins back to a centralized exchange chances of recovery are rather slim.

[ABCbits]

I know there is a hole in this case. For the scammers to convert the bitcoin to fiat they will need an exchange. Exchanges require kyc. Is it possible to know the bitcoin address of an exchange?

Aside from what @o_e_l_e_o said, i doubt the exchange will do anything without demand from police/government.

This would be a useful site to use: https://www.walletexplorer.com/

You also could check similar service such as https://ethonym.com/. There's also paid service with free trial such as https://blockchain.ey.com/, although i never tried it.

[NeuroticFish]

Aside from what @o_e_l_e_o said, i doubt the exchange will do anything without demand from police/government.

It depends on country's legislation. In some countries the exchanges may also auto-report to authorities for monitoring their users' income.
I don't know though how it works and who is complying.

https://www.walletexplorer.com/

You also could check similar service such as https://ethonym.com/. There's also paid service with free trial such as https://blockchain.ey.com/, although i never tried it.

I think that https://oxt.me/ may also be worthy for the list. It looks more up-to-date than walletexplorer, especially for the new transactions.

[dkbit98]

For the scammers to convert the bitcoin to fiat they will need an exchange. Exchanges require kyc. Is it possible to know the bitcoin address of an exchange?

There are ways for converting bitcoin to fiat even without kyc, using p2p trading or decentralized exchanges, and I think there is nothing bad about having that option.
Following address your cousin used to first send bitcoin can lead you to exchange or service they used, and other members already posted some good suggestions,
but the problem is that addresses of many smaller exchanges are not always released publicly and might be hard to find.
I will only add two more tools that can be used for this purpose, that is Breadcrumbs and Blockpath, note that using Tor browser or vpn with them might be a good idea.

[witcher_sense]

My cousin is a victim of online deception, she was contacted by a person who offered high returns and was asked to pay in cryptocurrency. After a period of time, it became clear that the investment was a fraud. We have contacted the police. The police have not done anything about the case.
I know there is a hole in this case. For the scammers to convert the bitcoin to fiat they will need an exchange. Exchanges require kyc. Is it possible to know the bitcoin address of an exchange?

If the scammer that has stolen the funds is not stupid he will try to break the connection between the address your cousin sent money to and the address he will later use to make a deposit to an exchange. There are so many privacy techniques, centralized and decentralized methods of mixing the history of transactions that even blockchain surveillance companies are sometimes unable to figure out where funds went. In such an unfortunate case, I am afraid, you can't do much. On the other hand, if the scammer decides to deposit to exchange directly from the original address, then you can try to prevent him from cashing out by reporting a scammer's address to all popular exchanges. Ideally, once stolen funds are credited to a scammer's account, the exchange blocks stolen funds and reports to the police.

[qwertyup23]

My cousin is a victim of online deception, she was contacted by a person who offered high returns and was asked to pay in cryptocurrency. After a period of time, it became clear that the investment was a fraud. We have contacted the police. The police have not done anything about the case.
I know there is a hole in this case. For the scammers to convert the bitcoin to fiat they will need an exchange. Exchanges require kyc. Is it possible to know the bitcoin address of an exchange?

First of all, I am very sorry for such an unfortunate event to happen on your end. Unfortunately, your cousin fall into a ponzi-scheme which ultimately deceived her during the process.

On your situation, this would depend on a number of factors. First, you may contact the exchange IF the scammer deposited his funds in such exchange, though I highly doubt that they would do this. There are also lots of mixers that could make their transactions more anonymous and secretive. In addition, you may also talk to the exchange but your cousin must be the one to contact them directly.

I remember there was a case of loan fraud which happened quite recently but I doubt that the loanshark was able to recover his money. Best of luck though!

[AnonimKHII]

I can not guarantee whether your cousin's money can be returned or not. on one hand you are from Nigeria and if I am not mistaken the cryptoqurrency status is still considered illegal. but if you don't mind can you tell us the wallet address or transaction history used by your cousin?
if what you say is true. please immediately collect all the evidence to facilitate the next process.
I will try it.

[GeorgeJohn]

It seems that it will be difficult to detect the scammer because since the transaction has been made in exchange it will be complicating, because denoting the transaction the only thing that can be found out is the exchange wallet address, some start with bc1 and start 3N, 3c with different alpha numeric codes according to the exchange wallet identification numbers ..so it's the exchange that can be noticeable From my own perspective. And the exchange can fish-out the transaction, which i know is not going to be possible to track easily.

[o_e_l_e_o]

https://ethonym.com/.

https://oxt.me/

Those two sites are great, and I didn't know about either of them. https://oxt.me/directory in particular looks very helpful for identifying addresses which belong to various exchanges and other services.

Breadcrumbs

I've always liked the layout of this site, but I've never been able to justify paying the subscription to use it to its full potential, which is a shame because it would be great for this kind of thing. I suppose OP could make a free account if he is only going to be using it for this one scenario.

[Pmalek]

On your situation, this would depend on a number of factors. First, you may contact the exchange IF the scammer deposited his funds in such exchange, though I highly doubt that they would do this. There are also lots of mixers that could make their transactions more anonymous and secretive. In addition, you may also talk to the exchange but your cousin must be the one to contact them directly.

I wouldn't bother and waste time doing this. The exchange won't reveal identifiable information about their customers to just about anyone. If they did, what would prevent me from contacting an exchange you use with a made-up story of how you scammed me and deposited the stolen coins on their site (assuming that I know which address you sent money from and to which exchange)?

OP needs to get law enforcement involved if Bitcoin and crypto is legal in his country, and they are the ones who have to request information on the thief/scammer. If bitcoin and crypto is illegal in his cousin's place of residence, she could get into more trouble reporting the incident to the police.   

[Mpamaegbu]

I know there is a hole in this case. For the scammers to convert the bitcoin to fiat they will need an exchange. Exchanges require kyc. Is it possible to know the bitcoin address of an exchange?

Your assumption is that it was moved to an exchange and sold. But this may not be it. The scammer could've sold it through a P2P on any social site, be it telegram, Facebook, WhatsApp and others. Have you ever thought of that? Again, tell your sister to quit looking for quick gains in cryptos. It's not a ponzi or a Get Rich Quick Scheme.

And the exchange can fish-out the transaction, which i know is not going to be possible to track easily.

The only nag there will be that the exchange (if at all it was moved there) it was moved to will be reluctant in releasing the identity of the "scammer" as that may defile the privacy of their customer. Other than that, it's not difficult tracing the account to the owner and nailing them since most of the exchanges now have a verification on their site through a KYC. KYC bears the name and other stuff of each registered user. Remember that there's always an assigned deposit wallet address to each account. So, it won't be difficult tracing who did it if the exchange would set aside that privacy rule.